VIDEO GAME REVIEW 'Fight Night 2004' puts innovation in the ring

Users can design eerily detailed characters, and the play is realistic.
By PETER HARTLAUB
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Every 12 months, gamers can choose from two or three decent football, basketball, hockey and soccer video games. But for unknown reasons, quality boxing games emerge with the frustrating frequency of a comet -- they arrive on shelves every 15 years or so.
There was the primitive-but-effective "Activision Boxing" for the Atari 2600 in the 1970s, "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" for the Nintendo in the late 1980s, and now the superb "Fight Night 2004."
Electronic Arts already had a boxing game with the steady-but-not-spectacular "Knockout Kings" franchise, but it started from the beginning and relaunched the series -- much as it did with "MVP Baseball" last year. "Fight Night" is an improvement in every way, managing to accommodate serious boxing fans while delivering entertainment to those who can't tell Sugar Shane Mosley from Sugar Ray Leonard.
The characters
Both of those boxers are playable characters in "Fight Night," along with 30 other famous pugilists from the past and present. But the best feature is the create-a-boxer mode, which allows players to generate boxers in their likenesses and rise up the ranks from unknown brawler to Caesars Palace headliner.
It's a tribute to this game that the largest gripe is the inability to pick your boxer's nickname or choose his hometown (EA gives you a short list of nicknames and big cities). The detail possible when forging a new face and body is almost creepy. Unless you have some really weird tattoos, chances are a boxer can be cloned in your image. (Although female boxers would be a nice addition -- didn't these guys see "Girlfight"?)
EA has been making the most advertising noise about its innovative punching format in "Fight Night," which lets players use the left thumb stick to move and the right thumb stick for jabs, hooks and uppercuts (instead of the repetitive-stress-injury-inducing button mashing on the controller).
Defending yourself
But the real innovations are on defense. Unlike brawling-focused games such as "Knockout Kings" and the decent "Ready 2 Rumble" series, players in "Fight Night" can easily bob, weave and block, opening up more opportunities for counterpunching. Short of the ability to clinch -- which would be boring anyway -- "Fight Night 2004" allows players to comfortably execute any boxing maneuver that can be dreamed up in real life (yes, Andrew Golota fans, that includes low blows).
The game has also lost most of the arcade-style leanings of its predecessors. Most boxing games look more like "Rocky IV" than real life, with players taking turns punching each other in the face and knocking each other down 10 or 12 times per fight.
"Fight Night" is much more tactical, and as a result, much more akin to a real boxing match. We pitted Roy Jones Jr. against Lennox Lewis, and that dream match went eight rounds before the bigger Lewis finally caught up to the faster Jones and knocked him to the canvas -- ending just the way it probably would in real life.
The game also includes fighters such as Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston and Roberto Duran, although George Foreman and a few others are curiously missing. That's one small improvement to look forward to in 2019, when the next good boxing game comes along.
X"Fight Night 2004," by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, is rated E for everyone.