88% Great Punch Control Strong Career Mode Can Create Any Boxer

The most dramatic change has been to the controls in the ring. EA Sports have introduced what they call Total Punch Control, something very new to the genre. Punches are no longer button specific, but determined by the use of the right thumbstick. Jabs are performed by pushing the right stick forward and slightly to the left or right, hooks by pushing the stick fully left or right then arcing it around to the forward postion and uppercuts the same way, but by bringing the stick back further before arcing it back to the top. It might sound tricky, but it is surprisingly effective and becomes strangely intuative after a short time. It really feels as though you are channeling power into your punches, something not experienced by mashing buttons. 

So how does it play? surprisingly good! Graphics are souped up from earlier titles. Some of the venues look fantastic, though such detail does press the console hard however. It looks like anti-aliasing has toned down a notch to keep acceptable frame rates. The down side is noticable jaggies as the camera pans around the arenas. This isnt surprising however, one of the venues has waitresses with trays circling the ring others must have over a hundred animated sprites and light bursts present - all very nice touches to the games atmosphere. 

There are only two gameplay options on the Xbox version. Play Now and Career Mode. Play now allows you to match two fighters in the game or ones you have created ingame. You can choose the venue, length of round, whether the three knockdown rule is in effect, duration of the fight and yes, you can have the console simulate the fight for you to watch. CPU vs CPU can be great fun if you wish to make boxers not natively featured in the game. For example you can  create Mike Tyson, Vitali Klitschko, Audely Harrison and pretty much anyone from the feature laden Create a Boxer mode. My only gripe here was many of the best trunks, boots and other apparrel is not immediately available until you unlock it in career mode. This does hamper any early accurate representation of some custom boxers.

Now to the career mode. EA Sports have done a very good job of incorporating a boxing world into the game. There are six weight classes which each have 50 active fighters (between 5-10 real life boxers) at each given time. One thing to bear in mind is, you can only have a one-division career, so you cannot do a Roy Jones and jump between weight classes after a few fights. Each career is unique to one of the six divisions. You choose your fights from the fight schedules from various venues provided through the boxing calendar year. Fight offers only come from boxers rated near you in the rankings, which isnt a bad thing because once you starting mixing with the big 20 in the division difficulty rises considerably. Unfortunately while the game does simulate bouts in the background and alter the rankings accordingly, you have to take the consoles word for the outcome. Some of the results do seem strange (Almost random) and it is not uncommon for a journeyman with no punch or chin to blitz a very capable prospect with high ratings. While this is fine, I would've liked to have seen a full watchable fight card of all of the bouts after your fight has been confirmed so you can actually observe the computer controlled bouts. This is probably the weakest element of the game. You know the boxing world is changing around you, with changing rankings, boxer ratings, retirements, new boxers and title changes but its easy to feel enclosed away from it all. Even highlights of major fights each month would have been a great feature.

In addition to these modes, the PS2 allows for online gameplay. Its not clear why this wasnt featured for XBox Live as it would've certainly worked just as well.

The sounds is good too, though I'm not sure why EA replaced the announcers and commentary with Big Tigger. Jimmy Lennon Jnr or Michael Buffer and genuine commentators similar to Teddy Atlas in KOKings would've been a better bet I think. 

All in all FightNight 2004 is an exceptional improvement on the Knockout Kings franchise. Just about about everything KOKings lacked with its Career mode has been addressed and much of what was good in the first place has been improved upon. The new Total Punch Control is excellent and a fifty fight career certainly adds depth. Add a more detailed and perhaps more open ended career mode and FightNight 2004 is probably the best boxing title available right now.

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