Fight Night Round 4 Hits Hard
EA show they own the ring when it comes to boxing gamesPublished 29/06/2009 at 12:30 by xvLIAMvx
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Fight Night Round 4 has smashed its way to the top of the UK all format Gfk Chart Track for the week ending 27th June 2009. This is the first time a boxing game has reached number 1 in the much respected ELSPA/GfK – ChartTrack, and it went up against some heavy hitters.
EA Canada’s Fight Night Round 4 has blown many away with its realistic models and fantastic controls, putting you firmly in control of today’s top fighters, and giving the player the option to play as legendary hard hitters such as Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
EA have every right to be happy as it knocks out Activision Blizzard’s Prototype only for the sandbox anti-hero game to awake now in second place. EA’s own life simulator “The Sims 3” has also dropped a position to hold a respectful 3rd place in the charts.
The top ten looks like this:
1. Fight Night Round 4 – EA
2. Prototype – Activision
3. The Sims 3 – EA
4. Wii Fit – Nintendo
5. UFC 2009: Undisputed – THQ
6. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen – Activision
7. Call of Duty: World At War – Activision
8. Virtua Tennis 2009 – Sega
9. EA Sports Active – EA
10. Ghostbusters – Sony
As you can see – EA have three titles in the top ten alone, a big reminder that they are certainly one of (if not the) biggest contender in the industry. It would seem that with all the nice weather we are getting here in the UK, everyone is keeping there sports indoors as the top ten sees no less than five sports/fitness titles competing for the top spot.
There will be a review here very soon, and it will be interesting to see if Fight Night Round 4 can go a full twelve rounds and remain top spot next week.
Source: GfK Chart Track, via MCV.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
colossalblue | 29/06/2009 12:53
Team TSA: Editor
1381 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
EA are responsible for two of the best (most under-appreciated) games of last year (Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space) and their sports franchises are always top-drawer so it’s really good to see that filtering into chart success.
I also hope that FNR4 outsells the UFC game, that would give me back some of my faith in humanity.
Matt_NI | 29/06/2009 12:58
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138 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
FNR4 is a spectacular sports game. EA assert their dominance on this genre once again, the graphics are otherwordly and the gameplay is so intuative and real.
BUY IT!
BoyDay | 29/06/2009 13:01
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901 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
I was about to say the opposite – the graphics aren’t even as good as Round 3, the gameplay feels slow and awkward and there’s no big punch feel to it.
I bought it and am glad I’ve finished LEgacy Mode already because I’ll be returning it this Friday for Tiger Woods 10.
My advice for Fight Night Round 4 – steer clear, it’s shite. Amazed it’s done so well in reviews.
nofi | 29/06/2009 13:13
Wants a custom tag.
4292 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
This is complete nonsense. Go back and play FNR3 again…
Roynaldo | 29/06/2009 13:17
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All I can say is if the demo is anything to go by it really is a poor game.
spooner_22 | 29/06/2009 14:21
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I’m with you mate, it’s a load of crap
El_Diablo_Guapo | 29/06/2009 13:00
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“EA Canada’s Fight Night Round 4 has blown many away with its realistic models and fantastic controls,” I would completely disagree with that. My impressions after playing the demo were clunky controls and pretty unrealistic models. Just another opinion. I also bought UFC and think it totally wipes the floor with Fight Night.
cc_star | 29/06/2009 13:38
Team TSA: Writer
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The controls are on the analogue sticks so it doesn’t turn in to a button masher like every other fighting game out there.
There are rumours that their will be a patch which will enable to controls to be mapped to the face buttons, for those who would simply prefer X, X, X, X, O
But I think that will detract from the gameplay.
El_Diablo_Guapo | 29/06/2009 14:34
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I think that’s a wee bit of a broad sweeping generalisation that some beat fighting game fans might disagree with you. By simply calling “every other fighting game out there” a button masher.
Of course there are games out there that do actively encourage this type of behaviour especially in players who may not fully grasp the finer controls and just mash the buttons until something happens. I found the controls on FNR4 to be not very accurate, cumbersome and lacked any sort of tactile feeling but again each to their own. I guess I just couldn’t get a handle on FNR4 controls and found myself to be analogue mashing, (if there is such a thing
) but again to reiterate: what ever floats yer boat.
If this doesn’t sound too bizarre – on my first play through of the FNR4 demo it kinda reminded me of Skate in it’s control method where you would have to do a certain flick of the analogue controller to successfully perform a move, or some mince of that ilk. I just found that, again from a personal point of view it seemed more inhibitive than intuitive and kinda sluggish. I find the controls on UFC which some may describe as simple compared to FNR4, to be a perfect balance between simplicity [Button Mashing] and and more refined controls such as using the analogue sticks for take downs, ground grappling and the transitions between such moves, it just instantly worked for me. I gave both games a good try on the demos…but for some reason I just kept going back more and more to UFC and Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell taking on Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and making their faces turn into bloody meat blobs. I just couldn’t get enough. So I took the plunge and bought UFC yesterday (which is probably making me sound rather biased now) and have to say I’ve been really impressed with it so far!
Online I’ve yet to venture into that side of it yet but I was intrigued by FNR4 online fight structure and would be interested to hear how that’s working out.
jbelly | 29/06/2009 13:11
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58 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
played against nofi on saturday night. not the genre i’d usually be tempted to tuck in to, but it’s very playable. the amount of control you have over your boxer is fantastic. although i don’t have much to compare it to. i lost by the way and played liked a 5year old having a punch up in the playground.
DarthSharkey | 29/06/2009 13:34
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1041 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
It deserves to be up there, the controls are perfect and it’s not just a button masher. Well done EA.
BryOnRye | 29/06/2009 13:56
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I really enjoyed the demo so will be looking to get it once I’ve finished prototype.
hannes_truce | 29/06/2009 13:58
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Nice one EA. Can’t wait to get this.
spooner_22 | 29/06/2009 14:22
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This has nothing on UFC! Fight Night has terrible graphics and the controls are sucky!
double-o-dave | 29/06/2009 14:24
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995 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2008
I wasn’t that keen on the demo but I’m gonna buy it anyway just to stop my brother harassing me repeatedly saying…
“Buy it and we’ll fight each other online… Have you bought it yet… When you gonna get it… Buy it and we’ll fight each other online… Have you bought it yet… When you gonna get it… Buy it and we’ll fight each other online… Have you bought it yet… When you gonna get it…” again and again and again and again etc!
berto54 | 29/06/2009 14:44
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I think its crazy that both EA and Activision have 3 top 10 titles, it would be a shame if these really big devs muscled out the smaller competition. However, as CB said way up there ^ Dead space and Mirrors Edge were amazing, and a complete departure from the ‘churn out another iteration’ ethos that must be tempting.
. But FN4 is looking tempting hmmm…
Ive never been a fan of fighting games, probably because im a bit rubbish
rht992 | 29/06/2009 14:49
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i hate the top ten. that stupid wii fit just stays there and it gets annoying and boring after two weeks
Timesh1993 | 29/06/2009 15:32
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EA’s sports franchise is top notch.
It doesn’t surprise me that Fight Night Round 4 is top, after playing the demo I was rather impressed by how fantastic the controls were, EA are bound to carry on this spell of great games, specially with Fifa 10 on it’s way, rather looking forward to Fifa 10 specially with some of the improvements they’ve made to it
Michael | 29/06/2009 16:36
Team TSA: Development
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I really enjoyed both the demos (UFC an FN). I thought UFC did a brilliant job of mapping control of an MMA athlete to a joypad. It cleverly maps the less technical to the buttons and the more technical to the analogues; I thought it was done really well.
FN obviously doesn’t have to map as many possible actions as UFC, and I think the choice of analogue for the punching was the right one.
I’m not buying either mind!
Snebjnr | 29/06/2009 17:37
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1612 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
EA have been doin very well recently havn’t they?
Some really good games of late.
It’s supposed to be a good game, plenty of good reviews & its top of the charts!
Though I’m afraid that I’ll stick with UFC 2009
Br0ken | 30/06/2009 11:28
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Does anyone elses PS3’s fans make a really loud noise when playing this game? FNR4 is the only game I have that cause the fans to speed up to what sounds like the maximum level – it sounds like a hairdryer, if its happened to you you’ll know what I mean!…..or is my PS3 on its way out? (The fans don’t make the same noise when playing Killzone2 or inFamous).
BoyDay | 29/06/2009 15:24
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I will – because it’s a better game!