Fight Night: Champion has the standard components that you will find in most fighting games; you can jump right in and fight, choosing from a diverse range of past and present boxing legends, or you can choose Legacy Mode, which will see you building up your fighter from scratch.  Some will find this slow and tedious, because it is going to take a lot of effort to get anywhere.  Some people don’t mind grinding away for hours and hours.  Me, I’m not that patient.

And this is where Champion Mode comes in.  This for me makes Fight Night: Champion.  Without it, the game would be just another fighting simulator, albeit a good one, with an easy to pick up control scheme and plenty of challenges.

Champion Mode sees you taking part in the rise and fall and re-birth of a fictional boxer named Andre Bishop.  It’s hardly what you’d call an original story, but it’s one that grabs you, pulls you in and makes you want to do all that you can to help poor Andre be the man he was destined to be.

Of course, being a story, it’s incredibly linear, and whilst you’ll get to fight a decent amount of standard fights, some will be fixed so you have to win them a certain way.  This may be frustrating to some, but for me, it made the challenge of the game more interesting.

As part of the story you find yourself doing time in prison, and have to face up to some nasty guys in a few round of no holds barred, bare knuckle fighting.  This is where the game gets real brutal.  There is no kicking or hitting a man when he’s down, but because there is no ref either, you can head butt all you like without getting penalised.  Nice.

I won’t say too much more about the story, but it is the element that elevates Fight Night: Champion to being the best fighting game you can buy.

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When I played EA’s MMA game last year, I leaned towards a fighter who primarily focussed on boxing, rather than going for all the kicking a groping on the floor.  The only time I wanted to be on the floor was when I was on top of some poor fool whose face I was pummeling into submission.

Unfortunately, Boxing is more of a gentleman’s sport and you’re not allowed to hit a man when he’s down.

So is Fight Night: Champion just a tamer version of MMA, or does it hold it’s own?

Well, to be honest, it is a totally different game, and at times it is just a vicious, especially the new story mode.  But lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Fight Night: Champion has the standard components that you will find in most fighting games; you can jump right in and fight, choosing from a diverse range of past and present boxing legends, or you can choose Legacy Mode, which will see you building up your fighter from scratch.  Some will find this slow and tedious, because it is going to take a lot of effort to get anywhere.  Some people don’t mind grinding away for hours and hours.  Me, I’m not that patient.

And this is where Champion Mode comes in.  This for me makes Fight Night: Champion.  Without it, the game would be just another fighting simulator, albeit a good one, with an easy to pick up control scheme and plenty of challenges.

Champion Mode sees you taking part in the rise and fall and re-birth of a fictional boxer named Andre Bishop.  It’s hardly what you’d call an original story, but it’s one that grabs you, pulls you in and makes you want to do all that you can to help poor Andre be the man he was destined to be.

Of course, being a story, it’s incredibly linear, and whilst you’ll get to fight a decent amount of standard fights, some will be fixed so you have to win them a certain way.  This may be frustrating to some, but for me, it made the challenge of the game more interesting.

As part of the story you find yourself doing time in prison, and have to face up to some nasty guys in a few round of no holds barred, bare knuckle fighting.  This is where the game gets real brutal.  There is no kicking or hitting a man when he’s down, but because there is no ref either, you can head butt all you like without getting penalised.  Nice.

I won’t say too much more about the story, but it is the element that elevates Fight Night: Champion to being the best fighting game you can buy.