Fight Night Champion Demo Available Now, Post Impressions Here (360, PS3)

I've been playing the demo for a few days now as someone uploaded a version you could burn to a data disc on the EA Forums last week, I played a ton of FNR4 and in the end grew to hate that game, my impressions of the demo:Overall it's a big step up in pretty much every area except Presentation and Commentary.

The graphics, lighting in particular are impressive. Fighter models are more well proportioned, look at Tyson and Pacquiao on both games in particular, they were roided out on FNR4. The addition of the ref is nice even though he doesn't actually do anything, EA could have at least made him break up long lasting clinches. The camera looks and moves great. I like how it kind of swings a bit if you do a lot of moving around, its hard to judge distances when it goes North/South but it always readjusts pretty quickly. That definately adds a certain freshness to the game as opposed to the stationary cams from last year.

Gameplay wise I like the improvements to punching and blocking. Full Spectrum Punching is great as its easier to throw from both sides now, as they were right, in FNR4 the analog motions were a little uncomfortablee throwing hooks and uppercuts from the left. You also have a few more punches available now (arcing uppercuts and overhands). I don't like the fact that it's still not really 1 to 1 responsive though as like FNR4 you are essentially queuing up combos. This doesn't allow you to make split second adjustments and a lot of times you will throw an extra punch or 2 that will leave you wide open to get countered.

Punch wise you will need to hold an extra button to throw body punches. This combined with the change to the blocking mechanic drastically changes the fighting for the better. Gone are the stupid "guess high/low" mashfests of FNR4 as body punching half the time along with taking advantage of the counter freeze was the only way to be successful. Now you have to think about hoing to the body more and it becomes more of a strategy than an involuntary reaction to throw to the body. Accuracy seems to be a little too high right now as I'm consistently landing 60% which is that about double what real fighters throw when they have good accurate rounds.

Right now stamina seems to be an issue as you can essentially throw all round long with little short term penalty as long as you mix left and right up a little bit. The ratings now differentiate between long and short term stamina ( I think they call it Endurance and Fatigue ). In a 3 Rd Demo it's impossible to tell how stamina will look in the later rounds if you keep the busy pace up that the game currently allows.

The other issue I see that kind of goes hand and hand with stamina is that each punch doesn't do enough damage. Also you can rarely br interrupted by getting hit. Both of these design decisions encourage the all out wars that the series has been known for. Despite the introfuction of "Fight-Ending KOs" at anytime, you still need to fight all out to win as opposed to fighting smart. If you actually had to worry about what was coming back at you more it would force players to pick their spots more instead of every round being a Gatti-Ward slugfest.

The dev's have been taking feedback since they first showed the game at Community Day and have built "tuner adjustments" into the game like some of the other EA Sports games so they can adjust gameplay server-side without the need for normal "patch", so I think some of my concerns right now will be addressed, and even if they are not there were sliders to tweak these problem areas in last year's game.