I love Fight Night Round 3 and I play it often. It’s a great game that you can pick up for next to nothing. It’s one of those games that you invest a lot of physical and emotional energy into and get a great feeling when things are going your way. You also feel the pain when you are losing!
I downloaded the demo of FNR4 hoping for great things, but sadly I feel disappointed. The game seems too fast, less controlled and more of a button masher. It could be that you only get to try out one of two lightweight fighters. Maybe the heavyweights are better, all I know is it just didn’t feel quite as good. I’ll keep you updated.
Well I received my game on the 20th as promised by Sendit.com. I excitedly opened the case and put it into my xbox. I spent the next 5 hours playing on the various game modes, trying out all my old moves. What can I say about this version of Street Fighter? It’s great! Probably one of the best versions I have played. Graphically of course it is the most pleasing to look at. The characters have a slightly stranger style than I was expecting. They all look very muscular, but some of them just seem a bit odd to me. An example of this is Chun Li. Maybe it’s just me.
The gameplay is solid and similar to EX Plus Alpha from what I remember of it. I’m not too keen on the new characters that have been introduced. There’s a big fat man called Rufus who looks like a morbidly obese version of Bruce Lee. He’s quite funny, but I didn’t find him very playable, truth be told.
With Capcom’s failure to sort out the leaderboard bugs on the Xbox Live version of this game, I was keen to see how they handled the ranking system here. I was not disappointed. Statistics are recorded faithfully, although there are a few thinks that I think they have missed. Firstly, its impossible (as far as I can see) to work out if an opponent you are about to play is at your level or not. There are custom titles that you earn as you progress up the ranks that are intended to give some indication of skill, but all to often you start to play a self proclaimed beginner only to find out it was all a ruse and they are a Street Fighter mater of the higher order. Within 20 seconds you have lost your rank and are vaguely aware of your own shouting at the television screen. I guess its a good game that gets you so involved, it means the game is doing its job and affecting you. Still, it’s rather annoying. Secondly, scores between friends aren’t saved after you leave the session. This is a shame because it’s good to be able to compare your win percentage with people you play often. Other games like Dead or Alive 4 have this.
The online play is great fun. I have only had a few games that are laggy. You really get into the game and I would say it’s much more fun than arcade mode, which is also fun in it’s own way. One criticism of the the online play is the fact that lobbies can only contain 2 people. Even the XBLA version of Street Fighter which I have talked so much about in the past has mutiple players as well as an online tournament match. Still, I guess maybe this reduces the overall lag in the game which is a good thing.
All in all this is a great game. If you enjoy games such as Dead or Alive 4, Soul Calibre 4 and Virtual fighter 5 then you will not be disappointed with this. If you have never played any of the aforementioned games, but are a street Fighter fan and own an Xbox then you would be silly not to pick up a copy.
I received this game at Christmas after reading many glowing reviews about it. IGN gave the game a whopping 9.4 out of 10 score with Gamespot following not too far behind with a healthy 8.0. I should have remembered not to trust any website that would give Grand Theft Auto a perfect 10 – sure it’s a good game, but let’s be honest, they both got a little excited over that one. Anyway, that’s another story.
I have heard the new Prince of Persia game being compared to a jar of Marmite: you either love it or you hate it. For those of you that don’t know what Marmite is, it’s a yeast based spread that looks like poo but tastes surprisingly good, although rather salty. I think the analogy works best in reverse - this game looks fantastic but there is no depth to it, it plays like poo. After you have been wooed by the lovely visuals there really is not much left to do. Jump. Jump. Jump again. Avoid some black goo stuff. Jump. Fight a predictable boss, then more jumping. Sound familiar? Mario used the same formula, but it has to be said that all of the Mario games were much more fun and satisfying than this one.
Another major problem with this game is the fact that there is no learning curve. The game does not get progressively harder and so you do not feel like you have achieved anything. If you can beat the first level you can beat the last one (although I still have yet to beat the game out of sheer boredom and frustration).
You cannot die on this game. That’s right - you don’t die, well it never happened to me even though I did try. You see, the whole point of the original Prince of Persia game, and in fact the following incarnations, was to avoid falling to your death by jumping about over platforms. If you take away the ability to die then there is no challenge as it just doesn’t matter how careful or skilled you are with jumping, it’s just a matter of time before you manage to get across. A monkey could do it. Oh, by the way, the reason you don’t die is because Annika, your annoying American sounding side-kick will use magic powers to stop you falling…
There is no multilayer or additional game modes to save this game. You just jump about.
All in all I would say that it’s best to avoid this game. Some people think it’s great, but I have no idea why. The game does boast beautifully rendered graphics based on the the Assassin’s Creed engine, but it is nowhere near as good a game. I have the special tinned edition of this game, which you would think has a lot of extra goodies inside it, but instead you can download a single extra skin (which makes you look like an Assassin), but only after registering with Ubisoft. Waste of time.
