Fight Night Round 3 Review (Xbox)

Fight Night Round 2 was one of our favorite Xbox games of 2005 so Round 3 had some pretty high expectations to meet. Amazingly, EA has delivered a boxing experience that easily surpasses everything that Round 2 had to offer. Better gameplay and more of everything else makes Fight Night Round 3 not only the best boxing game around but one of the best Xbox games period.

Gameplay

At first, Fight Night Round 3 doesn’t seem all that different from Round 2. You still throw jabs, hooks, and uppercuts with the right analog stick (or the face buttons) and can block and parry with the triggers. When you really start to play, though, you’ll find that the sweet science has gotten quite a bit more depth in Round 3. For starters, haymakers are much harder to execute consistently than they were last year. In Round 2 you could throw haymakers at will and overwhelm opponents with sheer power. This time around, haymakers take much longer to pull off and all your opponent really has to do is lightly jab you to stop a haymaker completely. Also, since they take so long to do it gives your opponent tons of time to get ready to parry them which leaves you wide open for a counter haymaker. There are different stances as well as new punching and blocking styles and overall defensive tactics that you have to adjust to. Boxers can now also switch from right to left handed at will which makes a huge difference.

The Sweet Science

Simply put, in Fight Night Round 3 you actually have to fight smart in order to win. Every opponent presents a different style and strategy and adjusting to the changes is the key to victory. Because of the incredible depth of the fighting in Fight Night Round 3, the game is extremely satisfying to play. Switching your lead hand to focus on a cut eye, jabbing a power puncher into submission, relentlessly working the body of a faster fighter and then knocking them out with a haymaker because they are too worn out to retaliate – every fight plays out differently and there are dozens of tactics for every single situation. Blocking and parries were important last year but thanks to the de-emphasis of haymakers in Round 3 a solid defense is absolutely necessary. Your ability to put together a complete fight – one that involves not only strategically planned offense but also smartly and accurately played defense – really has an impact on how satisfying the game is overall. If you just want to throw haymakers and not put in the effort to really learn everything, you won’t like Round 3 too much.

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