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If Fight Night 3 did to boxing games what Elvis did for Rock n' Roll, What the hell has Fight Night 4 gone and done?.

First thing I would like to touch upon Is the control system. Ever since EA announced that this would be the first Fight Night to use the analog stick exclusively for punch control, (apart from the boxer's signature punch) gamers all over the globe were sh*tting kittens (no kitten's harmed In this review tho ), And In my opinion, the gamers had a right to, er....sh*t kittens, as the buttons were comfortable, and the analog control was less than optimal most of the time. But, notice that I said they “had” a right, because Fight Night 4's controls are great.

I felt like the analog stick gave me much more precision with my punches, and allowed me to do combination's that just really wouldn’t be possible with buttons. So, drop the kitten's people, as the analog punching system has not ruined Fight Night, It has made it even better.

So, The gameplay. The gameplay is great and that doesn’t matter whether you are putting Tyson up against Ali in Exhibition, Taking a created fighter through Legacy Mode, Or you are online trying to show everyone in the world who is really the best pound for pound fighter. New to this year’s Fight Night is the Legacy Mode, which takes career mode and cranks it up a few . In Legacy Mode, you feel like you are a real fighter and not just fighting matches to move up a Ranking list.

You will start off as an amateur, fighting in local gym's, and work on your skills a bit before you turn pro, the amateur fights are as much a learning tool to get you comfortable with all the controls before stepping in with the big boys as it is a part of the story. Once you complete that, winning the amateur belt no doubt, you will turn pro.

Legacy Mode is a little different than what you would expect because now you get to choose when and where you fight your next opponent. So once you schedule a fight, depending on how much time you have in between will determine how many training sessions you have and that is where you increase your skills. Do you spend give yourself more time in between fights to get more training sessions at the cost of time and we all know a boxer’s career is relatively short or do you risk it all and try to shoot to the top of the rankings as quickly as you can?, YOU decide your boxers fate here. You can either do the sessions manually, or simulate them, but the penalty for simulating is that you can never get more than 50% of the total possible skill's increase, which for me was fine, as I still find the training mini-games hard, but that's just me maybe (Someone please back me up so I don't feel a total n00b ).

But its Legacy Mode that really brings it home, by not allowing you to fight for an extended period after a fight just like in real life (we are talking like a month), because no real boxer would fight two weeks after his last fight would they. It works on the premise that you need time to heal after each bout, before you can even begin to think about your next opponent.

Then, When you get you Boxer in the ring the game is superb, as it captures every bone crushing blow that is delivered. The game now features a brand new physics engine that allows for things like glancing blows, as any boxer would tell you, these do a lot of damage, and are often the hit's that cause cut's and KO's, which adds a whole other dimension to fights by making more punches count even if they don’t quite hit their mark.

Once you get in the ring you will feel the urge to want to slug it out, this may work for the first few bouts, but as you move up the rankings, you will learn that its all about technique and brains beat brawn 90% of the time. If you get in and just start swinging away, you will use all your stamina, become slower and more susceptible to a knockout, so be smart and use the weave and counter to set up openings that you can then use to deliver what could always be the knockout punch.

The other great feature of Fight Night 4 is the online battles, which are done very well but would we expect anything less from EA Sports would we tbh. Online you can battle it out with your friends or try and become the online champ, the question is not if you can win the title, but if can you keep it?. And once again EA provide a lag free experience for our gaming pleasure.

There isn’t much bad I can say about Fight Night 4, Although I would have loved to see more variations of the facial expressions as you deliver that KO punch. The game slows it down to focus on it in the replay, but after you do it a couple of times you notice that no matter what boxer it is, they all really make the same ugly face, But then, I guess I would make that exact face when getting knocked out, So maybe Im trying to find a fault In the game.

Anyways, The severity of the facial damage is awesome, you can really pound a guys face into a pulp, which Is highly satisfying, And like In real life, some boxers bruise and cut more easy then others. Some can bruise up after a couple of rounds, others go the fight with not much bruising at all. There is also a great variation on the faces for the created boxer's, and already a number of free downloadable created boxer's that other FN4 players have made, these range from other real boxers NOT Included in the game (yet), to celeb's, so of course that mean's Apollo Creed and Rocky . These are all 100% free to download on the PS3 version, Not sure on the 360 version, I did hear there where problems with content there, Im sure someone can confirm or deny this here tho. The last thing is the AI, by no means is it stupid, but sometimes I wished it would be more a little more aggressive, as sometimes its like it wait's for you to punch so it can block and counter, apart from that it's a good AI.

So for all you old FN3 fan's out there, you can rest assured that FN4 delivers a boxing experience that might make you want to lace up your own gloves and get in the ring. Fight Night 4 definitely will have some staying power in my system for a while because I have to show everybody who’s the greatest and rock's the hardest. In the end I think that Fight Night 4 hits all the notes that EA wanted to address and took what some players thought was a loss of control in completely dropping the button punches, and turned that into one of the biggest strengths of the game. So for EA to make the decision to drop a control scheme that so many of your fan's love, in favor of one that they have never really been happy with. But actually pulled it off, and you really do have a far better gaming experience. Also being a HUGE fan of the boxing genre, All I can say is, Well done EA, on making a great great game.

Fight Night Round 4 Gets an official Game-Pad 9.5/10