Fight Night Champion News Post

Fight Night Champion Video Preview (The OXM Report)

12:28 PM - December 6, 2010 by born_bad

The game looks to have an improved realistic lighting system and the ref in the ring looks like a nice addition.

My only concern was the the punches looked VERY slow, to the point where it looks distractingly bad. Can anyone confirm that the punch speed is going to be as slow as what is seen in this video?

Game: Fight Night ChampionReader Score: 6/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / Xbox 360Votes for game: 17 - View All

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Member Comments

# 21 Phobia @ 12/07/10 10:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LilLowe


	The only thing I'm really mad about is the footwork. Even Prizefighter had better footwork than this game. The thing that makes Pacman great is that his side to side movement is so great. He'll throw two punches, step right, throw another, step left, throw two more. It doesn't look like this will be represented in this game at all. It's a shame.

This was my ONLY complaint after community day. If you have read my blogs you will see I thought the gameplay took a great step in the right direction. Only issue was the footwork. I think this is something to do with the fact no matter how you turn you are ALWAYS facing your opponent 100% dead on. There is no angles to your facing. You can only get off center for a fraction of the time. Which makes using angles and moving side to side on your opponent tough because his punches are always coming straight down the pipe.

Outside of that, the product feels great to me and I miss very badly not playing it. It was extremely fun and even fighting a high class tournament guy such as Term, did not feel like I was not in the fight. It felt really balanced and I hope online can remain this way. There is always exploits to be found, but I think so far it felt really balanced when our time with it.

# 22 BezO @ 12/07/10 10:43 AM

Just a hightlight vid, but I see a few improvements. The knockdowns look good. And I saw some overhand punches. But not improving the footwork makes it look like not much has changed. Still looks like a step, step, slug affair.

# 23 Hova57 @ 12/07/10 10:54 AM

See I thought the punches looked too fast and too many at a time no combinations just wild punches

# 24 DaveDQ @ 12/07/10 10:56 AM

What fight night needs to steer away from is this toe to toe brawling that the game favors. Just looking at that video and you can see the tendency of very little footwork and a whole lot of big punches being thrown. The action always migrates to one area of the ring, and the only time you see movement is when one is chasing down another.

Too much is given to brawling.

# 25 Hova57 @ 12/07/10 10:59 AM

yea i feel the same way too Dave

# 26 Phobia @ 12/07/10 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hova57


	See I thought the punches looked too fast and too many at a time no combinations just wild punches

It looked a tad bit odd for me also. You could not wing punches like that at community day. Other wise your boxer was spent. Plus "true" combos snapped out with great speed and the regular "wild" punches had a slightly slower speed to them.

Some tuning has been done from the looks of it. Hoping they don't screw up the stamina that we got to play.

# 27 BezO @ 12/07/10 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phobia


	This was my ONLY complaint after community day. If you have read my blogs you will see I thought the gameplay took a great step in the right direction. Only issue was the footwork. I think this is something to do with the fact no matter how you turn you are ALWAYS facing your opponent 100% dead on. There is no angles to your facing. You can only get off center for a fraction of the time. Which makes using angles and moving side to side on your opponent tough because his punches are always coming straight down the pipe. Outside of that, the product feels great to me and I miss very badly not playing it. It was extremely fun and even fighting a high class tournament guy such as Term, did not feel like I was not in the fight. It felt really balanced and I hope online can remain this way. There is always exploits to be found, but I think so far it felt really balanced when our time with it.

The footwork is one problem that serves as the source of other problems. The lack of angles you mention.

Ring generalship is a non-factor. In additon to effective punching & defense, it's an element that should play a part in judging a fight.

How do you avoid the step, step, slug style? I felt it was impossible to avoid a brawl with someone who wanted to brawl.

It inhibits fighters that use the ring. Outside of Mike Tyson, my favorite boxers are super middle weights and smaller, many of which were ring generals.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveDQ


	What fight night needs to steer away from is this toe to toe brawling that the game favors. Just looking at that video and you can see the tendency of very little footwork and a whole lot of big punches being thrown. The action always migrates to one area of the ring, and the only time you see movement is when one is chasing down another. Too much is given to brawling.

Exactly!

# 28 MikeRo72 @ 12/07/10 12:10 PM

Butterbean being featured simply shows that they are still catering to the casual boxing fan. I am sure that it cost them very little to sign ButterBean anyway.

As for the game:
I guess it's just me but the game looks pretty much the same in terms of the boxers and movement. The fighters still look robotic and lethargic to me. I'll still make my custom fighters and comb online for the best replications, I dont mind that at all. I just want them to make sure it wont be sold with so many bugs.

# 29 Kanobi @ 12/07/10 12:29 PM

I hate that the footwork remains unchanged. It makes the gameplay look stale and sluggish.

# 30 Vast @ 12/07/10 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phobia


	This was my ONLY complaint after community day. If you have read my blogs you will see I thought the gameplay took a great step in the right direction. Only issue was the footwork. I think this is something to do with the fact no matter how you turn you are ALWAYS facing your opponent 100% dead on. There is no angles to your facing. You can only get off center for a fraction of the time. Which makes using angles and moving side to side on your opponent tough because his punches are always coming straight down the pipe. Outside of that, the product feels great to me and I miss very badly not playing it. It was extremely fun and even fighting a high class tournament guy such as Term, did not feel like I was not in the fight. It felt really balanced and I hope online can remain this way. There is always exploits to be found, but I think so far it felt really balanced when our time with it.

Potential gamekiller man.
Fine its not a game killer but more like a huge game de-emphasizer.

Having an opponent who ALWAYS faces you 100% is absolutely terrible and extremely unrealistic.
In MMA you can get away with this, and even then its very unrealistic. The UFC games actually got it right tho.

But in boxing footwork and side to side movement is soo much more important.
A boxer who throws a lunging straight but misses should be punished by his opponent if his opponent sidesteps the punch at the right time.
This will never happen in fight night because the lunging boxer will immediately turn and face is opponent unrealistically.

Footwork is soooooo ****ing important to boxing. Having a game at this point in development lacking such a fundamental element is very telling of the direction the team is heading.

There is no reason (i can understand) for them to leave sluggish 100% locked on footwork in the game. Other than on purpose. Especially since EA MMA has such quick footwork. Quick footwork is even more prevalent in boxing!!! WTF!

I'm just annoyed man boxing is the one sport thats never been done right.
It's 2011 man. You can't be ****ing up the footwork in 2011. We get a boxing game once every 2-3 years if we're lucky.
It's like a sim Basketball game coming out with no dribble moves and slow terrible movement that takes the organic real sport feel out of the game.

# 31 thorne666 @ 12/07/10 02:12 PM

I'll be quick with what I have to say.

1. How many times will we finance games that don't meet out expectations or suit our playing styles? EA does that same thing every go-round. They either can't or refuse to make a game that includes the boxing nuances that have been requested for years now. I, too, love my boxing games, but enough is enough! I'm now convinced that if EA is behind it, fight night will remain meretricious trash, looking the part but rotten underneath. This will no change until something hits them in their pocket - either a competitor who does well in sales with sim based offering, or FN is boycotted. Then and only then will there be a significant change in the FN engine.

2. Perhaps it is time to forgo this fiasco of licensing real fighters to be in the game. All it breads is imbalance and cheese anyway. The way CAF features are now, if you want a particular fighter in the game, make him. The money used to pay a guy for his image in the game can go a long way towards production, and finally getting the game we really want to play.

# 32 Vast @ 12/07/10 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thorne666


	I'll be quick with what I have to say. 1. How many times will we finance games that don't meet out expectations or suit our playing styles? EA does that same thing every go-round. They either can't or refuse to make a game that includes the boxing nuances that have been requested for years now. I, too, love my boxing games, but enough is enough! I'm now convinced that if EA is behind it, fight night will remain meretricious trash, looking the part but rotten underneath. This will no change until something hits them in their pocket - either a competitor who does well in sales with sim based offering, or FN is boycotted. Then and only then will there be a significant change in the FN engine. 2. Perhaps it is time to forgo this fiasco of licensing real fighters to be in the game. All it breads is imbalance and cheese anyway. The way CAF features are now, if you want a particular fighter in the game, make him. The money used to pay a guy for his image in the game can go a long way towards production, and finally getting the game we really want to play.

Good post.

I personally don't believe that the finances spent on licensing the boxers is the problem.
The engine looks to be top notch. The collision detecting much improved and the knockdowns are looking legit.

The gameplay and production values are high quality, very high quality. Its just the direction the producers and the company are trying to take this game. The destination they are trying to reach is well short of what we sim gamers would call home. They have the expensive mode of transportation, they just don't want to take us where we want to go.

Its just the little things that they refuse to implement.
How hard would it be to loosen up the footwork and make the boxers swift and agile?
To allow a boxer to temporarily become disoriented by a boxer who uses quick and smart footwork?

These are observations from watching a few seconds of footage. If these guys knew about boxing there is no way they wouldn't notice it and change it right away.

And i don't want to hear the excuse of EA big wigs interfering. Make the game SIM, add sliders and place sim and arcade defaults! Hell have seperate game modes for sim and arcade.

# 33 JayBee74 @ 12/07/10 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thelwig14


	Seeing Butterbean has tempered any expectations I have for the game. I swear the FN crew just doesn't get it.

I think that's a little bit of an overreaction thelwig.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LilLowe


	Guess I'm the only one who thinks adding Butterbean is kinda funny? I wouldn't mind fighting with/against him a few times. I'm struggling to see the logic on how adding him takes away from the game.

I personally think it's a waste of CPU memory even if it accounts for 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of total space for all the fighters.

# 34 Phobia @ 12/07/10 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vast


	Good post. I personally don't believe that the finances spent on licensing the boxers is the problem. The engine looks to be top notch. The collision detecting much improved and the knockdowns are looking legit. The gameplay and production values are high quality, very high quality. Its just the direction the producers and the company are trying to take this game. The destination they are trying to reach is well short of what we sim gamers would call home. They have the expensive mode of transportation, they just don't want to take us where we want to go. Its just the little things that they refuse to implement. How hard would it be to loosen up the footwork and make the boxers swift and agile? To allow a boxer to temporarily become disoriented by a boxer who uses quick and smart footwork? These are observations from watching a few seconds of footage. If these guys knew about boxing there is no way they wouldn't notice it and change it right away. And i don't want to hear the excuse of EA big wigs interfering. Make the game SIM, add sliders and place sim and arcade defaults! Hell have seperate game modes for sim and arcade.

I personally think it has to do with limitation of the punching engine.

You can't rotate your fighter to throw strikes in any direction. Instead your punches are always towards the opponent. Which of course is realistic because what fighter goes out there throwing punches 3 feet to the right/left of his opponent. So the system is designed to always have your punches go at your opponent.

The negative of this is footwork is impacted. Sure the slow footwork is most likely a design choice so people are not running all around the ring. Instead they are planted ready to punch.

Example below

The speed of the movement is more aesthetic. Because both fighters are moving at the same rate so that does not affect the gameplay. Sure it might not "look" 100% real but is fine in a gameplay sense.

The issue with the footwork from a gameplay perspective, you have no way of creating angles and forcing your opponent to turn his body to meet yours. Thus forcing him to re-plant his feet to throw strikes with any kind of power.

Instead the punch engine will rotate the boxer at the same moment you are sidestepping around him. Thus causing all his punches to go straight down the pipe and basically giving you no reason to side step. There lies the issue with the footwork.

That is just my opinion on the reason why it is the way it is.

# 35 Hova57 @ 12/07/10 04:23 PM

See to me phobia the re plant is just a re shifting the feet to be a little inside the stance in relation to your power hand or away from there power hand. that creates the angles . you know what i mean you can't fight someone with your lead foot outside there stance you want to be inside there stance,but your body not square if they could figure out how not to totally square up the upper body i think the footwork would be able to follow, you can't punch someone in the back of the head , but lateral movement and the backing out is what needs work

# 36 JayBee74 @ 12/07/10 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hova57


	See to me phobia the re plant is just a re shifting the feet to be a little inside the stance in relation to your power hand or away from there power hand. that creates the angles . you know what i mean you can't fight someone with your lead foot outside there stance you want to be inside there stance,but your body not square if they could figure out how not to totally square up the upper body i think the footwork would be able to follow, you can't punch someone in the back of the head , but lateral movement and the backing out is what needs work

With independent leg and arm stamina implemented, you would think "footwork would get a rework". For example Ali shuffling around on his toes one minute and the next fighting flatfooted to conserve leg stamina.

# 37 Phobia @ 12/07/10 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hova57


	See to me phobia the re plant is just a re shifting the feet to be a little inside the stance in relation to your power hand or away from there power hand. that creates the angles . you know what i mean you can't fight someone with your lead foot outside there stance you want to be inside there stance,but your body not square if they could figure out how not to totally square up the upper body i think the footwork would be able to follow, you can't punch someone in the back of the head , but lateral movement and the backing out is what needs work

yea I agree. They could even leave the same "rotating" of the lower the way it is now and just slow the twisting of the torso on up to simulate someone using angles.

There should be a way to implement that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayBee74


	With independent leg and arm stamina implemented, you would think "footwork would get a rework". For example Ali shuffling around on his toes one minute and the next fighting flatfooted to conserve leg stamina.

Yea that would be nice but the current system "looks" like FN4. But there is just more under the hood ratings that affect these things. They were not displayed in animation form in the build we got to play.

but the torso stamina, arm stamina, and stamina in general all had animations tied to those under the hood ratings. So maybe the footwork will see animations tied to it by release point. Lets hope

# 38 NINJAK2 @ 12/07/10 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LilLowe


	The only thing I'm really mad about is the footwork. Even Prizefighter had better footwork than this game. The thing that makes Pacman great is that his side to side movement is so great. He'll throw two punches, step right, throw another, step left, throw two more. It doesn't look like this will be represented in this game at all. It's a shame.

Co-sign. It looks garbage from a footwork standpoint yet again. Even UFC has better footwork..

# 39 Phobia @ 12/07/10 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCreep


	Thats why they implemented the side step move in FN4. Its the closest they could get to representing the angle with the current engine. Have you guys forgotten about the sidestep? I've used it plenty of times. You can side step left and right to dodge punches. Double tap up or down, also double tap back to hop back. Works fine.

This is true and I utilize it often. But it still does not feel right. I hated RD4 slow moving in sand feeling. When I went into community day that was one of my first complaints. The movement did not feel fast and responsive as EA MMA. I had my head stuck in EA MMA for weeks before community day and was hoping for similar movement in FNC.

Granted the build I got to play they told us ahead of time the footwork was not finished. But the speed of the movement is what I kept pointing out to Mike. I understand their point-of-view with how they don't want guys running around the ring like this is MMA, but I felt like it should be a good bit faster than what we played.

# 40 Hova57 @ 12/07/10 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCreep


	Thats why they implemented the side step move in FN4. Its the closest they could get to representing the angle with the current engine. Have you guys forgotten about the sidestep? I've used it plenty of times. You can side step left and right to dodge punches. Double tap up or down, also double tap back to hop back. Works fine.

yea but it wasn't smooth it was clunky . it didn't matter whether you were a boxer or slugger the sidestep was the same .

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