Fight Night 2004
| a game by | EA Sports |
| Platforms: | XBox, Playstation 2 |
| Editor Rating: | 7.3/10, based on 2 reviews |
| User Rating: | 8.8/10 - 10 votes |
| Rate this game: | |
| See also: | Sport Games, Boxing Games, Fight Night Series |
DownloadsPeople say:
Baseball has homers, soccer (allegedly) has goals, but boxings special moment is the against-all-odds comeback Foreman, Holyfield, Rocky...and now, EAs return to the ring, Fight Night. Fight Night is the first boxing game Id label a true simulation. The days of button-mashing and sore thumbs are gone thanks to the intuitive analog punch controls success comes from being patient with your blows (jamming on the stick with the subtlety of Mike Tyson at a beauty pageant will only land you on the apron). The career mode also aims for realism; challenging training minigames perfect your skills, and tough-as-nails A.I. pugilists keep you hungry. All the bloody noses pay off once you start earning rewards like new gear and customizing your boxers entrance with music, pyrotechnics, and bikini-clad hotties (hey, nobody wants too much realism). My only gripes lie with the irritating announcer and that you cant practice the training exercises, which severely handicaps how fast you build up your fighters attributes. But otherwise, EAs first bout outta retirement registers quite a knockout.
Fight Night does what any good sports sim should: It teaches you how to excel at the sport it sims while still remaining fun, somehow. Success in this game hinges entirely on mastering the fundamentals of real boxing working the ring, deflecting punches, tiring out your opponent. This may sound boring, but the simple controls make it far easier, and far more addictive, than youd think. Also, the action only gets fiercer in the online ring (PS2 only). All my bouts against Bryan (or, according to his created boxers nickname, The Ladies Man) were lag-free. Now lets get it on!
Outside of Punch Out(NES), Ive never been a big boxing-game fan. But Fight Night has convinced me of just how great the genre can be. Granted, it infuriated me at first, due to its lack of a free training/open-gym mode. A couple controller-smashing matches later, though, I got the hang of the controls and really appreciated the level of depth the varied punches, defensive techniques, and fighting styles provide. While the intros, commentary, and modes are limited, the phenomenal gameplay does the sweet science justice.
Download Fight Night 2004
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
Game Reviews
Fight Night 2004 gives you a PhD in the sweet science. This is the first boxing game to truly recreate the look and feel of a real boxing match. You can duck and dance, jab and upper cut, but once you've truly mastered the game you will find, like in the real world, boxing is all about strategy.
The game has an instant fight mode and a career mode. If you select Play Now, you'll pick two boxers from the 32 fictional and famous boxers included in the game. If you just like to watch, you can even have the computer control both and recreate famous or mythical rumble royals. How about Sugar Ray Leonard versus Muhammad Ali or Roy Jones Jr. taking on Lennox Lewis?
The career mode allows you to build a boxer from the ground up, selecting the way he looks and molding the way he fights. Then you have to train and fight him, trying to build a record worth bragging about. What makes the career method so unique is that everything counts, even the training. To start a career you choose you first opponent from a list and then go do some training. The mini-game training session serves two purposes ' it teaches you some of the gameplay basics and awards skill points depending on how well you do. Once the training is complete you get to divvy out the points between two of your boxers eight ratings. The ratings are power, speed, agility, stamina, chin, body, heart and guts to directly effect how well your man boxes.
The graphics are superb, capturing the look and style of each of the famous boxers and allowing you to come up with you own trademark moves and punches as you try to capture a title. The game also features a highly realistic damage system that shows the bruises and cuts your fighter receives in a round and even shoots the occasional spray of blood across the ring. The game sounds highly realistic and includes a sound track featuring songs from the likes of Puff Daddy and Federation.
Although the inclusion of famous boxers and a pretty detailed career mode help elevate Fight Night 2004 past its predecessors, it's the game's controls that truly make this game the best boxer around. Instead of mashing buttons to control which punches you throw, you use the right thumbstick to mimic them. If you want to throw a straight right jab you push the joystick forward and slightly to the right. Want to throw a left jab? Then push slightly to the left. Hooks require a hard move to the left or right and then forward and for an uppercut, you pull back and then push around to the right or left. In addition, the left thumbstick or D-pad control your fighter's footwork in the ring. The two triggers are modifiers for the thumbsticks. If you hold in the left trigger your fighter plants his feet and then the left thumbstick allows him to lean out of punches and the right thumbstick lets him throw body blows. If you hold the right trigger the right thumbstick controls where he blocks. The controls sound confusing at first, but after a few minutes of play you'll find that they are not only easy to use, but quite intuitive.
Fight Night 2004 is a deftly blended mix of strategy and timing, a game that not only remembers that boxing isn't just about brawn and speed it's also about strategy.
Snapshots and Media
XBox Screenshots
Playstation 2 Screenshots
