Eric Vs. 365 - Day 2 - Fight Night Champion

Day two of Eric Vs. 365 features Fight Night Champion and special guest, Andrew. For whatever reason, Fight Night (and UFC games) always brings out our funniest and most nonsensical best and this session was no exception. Keep reading for more insights into why we love Fight Night so much.

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Way back in the early days of the Xbox 360 a little game called Fight Night Round 3 was released in February 2006. We instantly fell in love with it. It had amazing graphics - not just for the time, either, as it still holds up pretty well in 2019 - and abolutely awesome boxing gameplay that still stands, in my mind, as the best boxing game ever. I gave Fight Night Round 3 a 5/5 perfect score when I reviewed it for About.com. People said I was crazy, but I freaking loved it.

Watch Fight Night Round 3 bonus video here

Through most of the rest of the generation, however, no other boxing games really posed much of a challenge to Fight Night Round 3. EA Sports' own direct sequel, FN Round 4 threw out everything good about Round 3 in favor of a faster and more arcadey experience that just wasn't nearly as fun. Round 3 was a boxing game. Round 4 was a fighting game. There's a huge difference. The biggest problem with Round 4, and every other boxing game, was that none of them even attempted to have the same parry / defensive system that made Round 3 so amazing. Boxing isn't just about punching until you're tired. It's about movement and parrying and blocking and defense and Round 4 totally screwed that stuff up.

Much later in the generation EA released Fight Night Champion, which was mostly a return to the series' roots. It still didn't have Round 3's parry system, but the gameplay pacing, presentation, controls, and overall feel were very solid. It was a little more streamlined and accessible than Round 3, which is good or bad depending on who you ask, but it was great fun all the same and easily stands as the second best boxing game ever. It was also, sadly, EA's last boxing title before they went whole hog on making UFC games.

This particular video was recorded in December 2018. I didn't ever use it until now because I kind of just reached a point where I was tired of posting stuff that nobody watched or cared about. We could make great entertaining videos that nobody watched, and after 6 years of treading water on YouTube I sort of gave up until I came up with a new idea that would make things interesting and fun again. Hopefully, as part of Eric Vs. 365, this video won't just get lost in the ether and will get the attention it deserves, because it's pretty entertaining if I do say so myself.