Fight Night Round 3

PlayStation2

EA Sports

$39.99

The beauty of boxing is its simplicity. It’s a sport of man vs. man with nothing but some barely forgiving gloves and only-somewhat concerting low-blow protection. This focus on the human form – one of the toughest challenges for game designers – makes boxing video games a struggle to perfect, kinda like trying to make a ballet video game. Fight Night Round 3 takes some great strides toward capturing the technical grace of pugilism. Even for the increasingly dated PlayStation2, the visuals are impressive; the controls are tried, true, and intuitive; and the character creation options are respectable. That alone makes Fight Night a winner. Not quite a KO, the soundtrack consists of too few hip-hop tracks – many with mind-numbing fighting imagery (“Mama Said Knock You Out” is thankfully absent). The sound effects are unobtrusive until a blood-/spit-misted knockdown punch is replayed in slow motion and the Foley artist gets a bit overzealous.

**.5

(See the full review)

This article appears in December 8 • 2006.

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James graduated from Columbia University in 2000 and moved to Austin a year later. Ever since, he has followed the arts and video game scene in ATX, editing and writing stories for the Chronicle along the way. Over his more than 20 years with the paper he has climbed the "corporate" ladder from lowly intern to managing editor.