Fight Night: Round 3 for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

STORY - The career mode is pretty linear with a lot of repetition. Obviously this is a boxing game, but it would have been nice to do bit more than just fight and train the whole time. Perhaps a little more variety in the training mini games other than the three you can pick from would have helped but even then you may still want more unless you're a die hard boxing fan. In my weight class I only fought three legends (Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones Jr.) about three times each and after forty plus fights against nearly the same ten opponents, I won't say I was bored but, I was really hoping for someone new to fight that wasn't a randomly generated nobody.

SOUND - In ring sounds are very realistic. When a powerful hit is landed, other people in the room just may turn their heads to see the hurt you're dishing out... or receiving. Aside from decent grunts, all fighters are silent. Some scripted scenes with trash talking could have added a great amount of tension between fights but that feature didn't find its way into the game. Ringside commentary doesn't sound bad but is often behind the action and occasionally inaccurate. As far as music is concerned, I hope you're ready to listen to the same twelve hip hop songs over and over again.

VISUALS - For a launch title, Fight Night Round 3 looks surprisingly good for the most part. Other than a lack of variety in cut scenes and the oddly anorexic ring girl character models, the game delivers a pretty genuine presentation. Replays of knock downs show great detail in facial ripples and blood splatters.

CONTROLS - Possibly the best and worst part of this game is the serious learning curve involved in mastering the controls that use primarily the thumb sticks to throw various punches. Even as I approached my final fight I was still struggling with timing and connecting punches. A great system if you can actually wrap your head around it.

STORY - 6.0
SOUND - 6.5
VISUALS - 7.0
CONTROLS - 7.0

Let me say this, no button mashing here. One of the best and more annoying aspects is that the more you throw punches, the more tired you get, regardless if they land or not.

I did like the "Create A Boxer/Career" mode. I even played as Holyfield's career. There are some subtle differences in the match types you can choose. I especially loved the Hard Hits fights, which doesn't use a clock for the rounds (they use knock downs). I also enjoyed that the higher the rank, the more difficult the fights become, so it really does force you to change up your tactics, though this can be a deterrent for some gamers.

Now, the problems I have seen. The reason why it doesn't deserve to be more than a 6 for me, is that while the visuals are great, and the matches are very well done. The fighting is simply repetitive. WAY TOO repetitive! but that is most sport games really.

Nitpicking here, there were some instances, especially during the Holyfield fights. I would throw a left or a right hook and there would be a lag where your character would just stand there exposed at the end of the punch and I could do nothing to block. If I was button mashing or well into the fight, I would understand. Yet this happened with every punch I threw during the first round. This wasn't too big of a deal, until I was in the Heavyweight Division, and one of the matches got so bad during the second round, I simply turned the game off.

Another annoying nitpick, was some of the speed guys. If you choose a power puncher, beware the speed guys as they use it to their advantage. Which is fine and expected, although just be aware that they do not stop running. I ended up facing a speed guy with Evander Holyfield. The entire match he wouldn't stop running backwards. It became a pain in the butt to simply throw jabs since they wouldn't land at all because your opponent would stop running away. It would have been funny, if it wasn't for trying to get certain Achv's before certain rounds.