Fight Night Round 4: Legacy Mode Revealed

Jun 15, 2009

Ask any Fight Night fan the one area where Fight Night Round 3 was seriously lacking and nearly everyone will voice the same opinion: the career mode sorta sucked. The rivalry system was a joke, the training games didn't make much sense, and there were no real ranking systems – or at least none that resembled actual boxing. The series' new developers at EA Vancouver have gone in a different direction with Fight Night Round 4 and are giving players a more fully-featured mode than ever before. My created boxer, Nate White, has been through several bouts – some good and some not-so-good – but I'm going to put the controller down for a second to give you guys a report on what to expect from the all-new Legacy Mode in Fight Night Round 4.

As with most non-team oriented sports titles, you begin your career by creating your boxer. You have the option to start with a current fighter or meld your own using the typically deep creation tools provided by EA Sports or you can import your picture to use with Photo GameFace. I chose the latter and wound up with a decent looking representation of my mug. Some say he looks like Bill Clinton, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

But it's not just the look of your contender that you'll have control over. Instead you'll take a deep dive into their tactics in the ring, you'll have control over their ring entrance, and you'll even get to design your own lettering for their trunks. In the way of tactics you'll choose their stance, their manner in the ring (slugger, defensive fighter, etc…), their blocking style, their punching style and you'll pick their best punch as well as their signature punch. I was a bit disappointed to learn that you can't change any of your tactics after you save your boxer. It seems that as my career progresses I should be able to change my best punch or my style in the ring. Sadly that isn't the case.

On the theatrical side of creating your boxer you'll get to decide if you want to look confident, focused or neutral as you enter the ring and you'll customize things like dry ice and lasers being present as you strut your stuff to the ring. It should be no surprise that I opted for the most theatrical entrance possible.

Another change for Legacy Mode is the inclusion of a real calendar where you'll be able to schedule your fights and training sessions. After every fight you need to take a pre-determined period of time off before you head back into the ring, but from there it's totally up to you when you fight again. You can only train once a week leading up to the fight, so the date you pick is definitely important to your success. Once you pick a day for your fight you'll be presented with a list of fighters that are around your ranking. You can then compare your stats to each and make your selection. Of course their availability also plays a part so you'll need to select from a list of available dates once you pick your opponent.

As you progress in your career you'll see changes to Legacy Central, your homepage for Legacy Mode. Your Legacy Rating will continue to build as you meet certain goals. I'm still waiting for my rating to jump from Club Fighter to Contender. To do this my fight count needs to exceed 15. Other ratings include Champion, Superstar, Hall of Famer, Ring Legend and, finally, Greatest of All Time. Each has its own set of requirements. To be considered the Greatest of All Time you'll need a popularity rating greater than 95%, your pound-for-pound rank (something that wasn't in FNR3) needs to exceed number five, you'll need at least three belts and you'll have to defend those belts at least eight times. In other words, it's no easy task.

It should be of no surprise that throughout your career you'll be bombarded with e-mails at the message center. It lets you know when new boxers enter your division, when other boxers retire, when the championship belt changes hands, and when you're up for one of the many awards that are possible throughout the calendar year.

While the inclusion of awards is definitely a welcome addition to the Legacy Mode formula, it doesn't quite work the way it should. Fighter of the Year nominees will sometimes have less than five fights under their belt and my "Fight of the Year" wasn't even considered an ESPN Classic while other, far less intense bouts, were. Granted I was playing on a preview build so hopefully they'll clean up the inaccuracies by the time the game is final.

These awards are generated by the crazy-enormous amount of stats that Fight Night Round 4 tracks. Every punch you throw goes into your punch history and you'll even be able to track your total amount of punches for different months throughout your career.

One thing that I mentioned earlier – the rivalry system – that everyone hated in Fight Night Round 3, hasn't made an appearance in Fight Night Round 4 one way or another. I'm not sure if there's a call-out when a rivalry develops or if you're just supposed to remember the names of fighters that give you a run for your money. Fighters who I've had classic fights with will instantly challenge me to a rematch, so if that's the rivalry system in its new form then I'm happy with it.

There's no question that there's plenty to do in Fight Night Round 4's Legacy Mode. Aside from training in any of the six new mini-games (maize bag, double end bag, heavy bag push, open sparring, stay on your feet, or heavy bag combos) and actually fighting in the ring, you'll spend a lot of your time analyzing statistics for an upcoming fight and looking at career goals to find out where you should focus your efforts in the coming virtual weeks and months.

Legacy Mode is a big improvement on the Career Mode that bothered so many from FNR3. There are still missing links – I'm not a fan of not being able to hire your own trainer and the lack of a "Rounds Boxed" statistic is also disconcerting considering the abundance of other, more inane stats that are tracked. Still, there's certainly more good than bad. Fans of switching weight classes will be able to do so while watching their boxer's meteoric rise or depressing fall in stardom and there's some nice variation in the new training games. I still need to play more with Nate White to see how things change later in a career, but Legacy Mode seems it'll stay fun for some time to come.

Also be sure to check out the rest of our Fight Night Round 4 coverage before the game launches on June 25.