Boxing is a martial art in which respect for the opponent is elevated to absolute and firmly enshrined in the rules of the fight. No other contact sport has so many conventions and restrictions. Finding yourself in a confined space of five by five meters and seeing in front of you the enemy’s face distorted with rage, you can nevertheless be sure that no one will begin to crunch your arms, gouge out your eyes, try to crush your kneecap and caress your genitals with their knee unless you ask for it. The only serious trouble that can happen to you in the boxing ring is forced loss of consciousness.

But it was these restrictions and conventions that made boxing so popular. When you don’t have to worry every second about the integrity of your joints and the safety of your groin, you can devote yourself almost entirely to strategy and tactics, feel like a real grandmaster of fist fighting and remain relatively unharmed.

So he pinned me in the corner

The next logical stage in the development of a fist fight is pure strategy, so to speak, without direct physical contact. Series Fight Night – exactly about this. More precisely, not only about this: the opportunity to raise a pimply teenager who first looked into the gym into his own Muhammad Ali has not yet been canceled. It is much more interesting to understand how the battle works from the inside: to see with your own eyes how the enemy fails a seemingly perfectly executed cross; understand why it is so difficult for a puncher to oppose an outfighter (and also what all these terms mean); feel with your hands how an uppercut launched against the defense knocks the wind out of your opponent.

Finally, Fight Night is the only place where you can arrange a fight between Tyson and Lewis thirty times a day and every time you wonder whether it will end in the eighth round. And if it ends, in whose favor??

While remaining quite hardcore boxing simulators, the games in the Fight Night series have always had an extremely low barrier to entry. A completely unprepared person could enter the virtual ring and after half an hour he could quite intelligently punch the polygonal Hasim Rahman or Holyfield, realizing that it is almost impossible to knock out with a jab, and the opponent’s swing can be read even before it hits the liver or temple.

But a boxing simulator is a boxing simulator. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay and cinematic action (and the fights in Fight Night are stunningly beautiful), the games in the series have not often attracted the attention of people from the outside. Fight Night Champion corrects this annoying omission. When you buy a box with a game, you are essentially purchasing a ticket to a movie theater where you will be shown a virtual version of the film ” Fighter „, only without Christian Bale and alcoholic sisters.

Boris Butkeev, Krasnodar

The developers abandoned the old idea of ​​cutscenes connecting several fights from the Legacy mode. Instead, they made a whole sports drama out of the game, starring young boxer Andre Bishop. And even though they don’t give Oscars for this anymore, in the game it looks fresh and exciting: every fight is now choreographed to suit the plot and is therefore remembered for a long time.

Traditionally, ignoring the words of the coach, we jump into the ring, rush at the enemy and fall, struck by just a couple of well-aimed blows. This is where it turns out that the coach was not talking nonsense that is traditional for boxing simulators, but was actually explaining how to behave with an opponent. And if you don’t start listening to his words, then it’s almost impossible to emerge victorious from the fight.

One opponent moves perfectly around the ring and is capable of wearing you out in a couple of rounds, if you don’t squeeze the prankster in the corner and calm him down with a dozen or two hooks. The other has a knockout right hand, and if you don’t knock his hand down with constant pressure from the left, he will knock Bishop down in a couple of minutes. The third is excellent at taking a blow to the head: round after round you have to turn his liver and kidneys into a chop. And so in almost all battles. Each opponent has a bright personality. With its own character, way of moving around the ring, fighting style and weak points.

And between the fights the real drama plays out. Bishop’s wings are clipped right at takeoff – at first gently, and then more and more harshly they try to force him to play by the rules of the not entirely honest boxing business tycoon McQueen. When Andre does not agree to the proposed conditions, he is simply framed and thrown behind bars for five years.

Bishop wastes no time in prison. He trains tirelessly, participates in fights without rules (yes, here we are given the opportunity to caulk a kettle for several prisoners, of course – without gloves) and is released as a seasoned male in the weight category of over ninety. He is angry, ferocious and ready to smack the faces of everyone who gets in his way.

Having emerged victorious from several serious troubles (we won’t retell them, we’ll just say that there will be cunning intrigues, a love story, and a difficult relationship with his brother) and a dozen difficult fights, Bishop eventually finds himself in the ring with his main opponent – Isaac Frost. The battle with this walking propaganda of tattoo parlors lasts almost longer than all previous battles combined. In general, a real final fight according to the golden canons of boxing action films, laid down by the first “Rocky”. The first two rounds we keep our distance, the next three rounds in a row we work on the body – and so on until victory. When Frost staggers and collapses in a heap, it will seem to you that several hours have passed, although in fact only fifteen minutes have flown by.

Throughout the entire game there is not even a shadow of doubt that everything that happens on the screen could very well happen in real life. In any case, the developers are trying to convince us of this: most of the upcoming or already past fights are told to us in television news, which is hosted by none other than Brian Kenny, a TV commentator and news presenter familiar to all boxing fans.

I haven’t been able to hit a person in the face since childhood

There are many myths – although who knows if they are myths?? – that there are points on the body, one poke at which is enough for a person to fall dead. We don’t know such deadly points, but we know the places where they hit much more often. We decided to evaluate how easy it is to incapacitate a person if you hit well-established areas.

Adam’s apple

Hit difficulty: high.

Technique: Grab the enemy by the nose, jerk him upward with a sharp movement and, when his neck is exposed, beat him.

Peculiarities: Crushing an Adam’s apple is no joke. And although the cartilage of the larynx, colloquially called the Adam’s apple, is quite strong, when a blow is struck to the throat, they usually move relative to each other, crushing the muscle tissue along the way, which forms a powerful corset around the Adam’s apple, and tearing the blood vessels. Actually, the fracture of the larynx itself is not so terrible, what is scary is the bleeding that begins after this. Blood enters the lungs and the person chokes. The matter is complicated by the fact that bleeding from the larynx cannot be stopped just like that – just go get there.

Protection method: Wear a https://nongamstopcasinosites.co.uk/review/love-casino/ plaster neck brace. It is extremely difficult to break through it with your hand.

Hit difficulty: low.

Technique: Spread your opponent’s legs shoulder-width apart and immediately strike with your knee, foot or head.

Peculiarities: Not only can a blow to the groin itself bring many unforgettable minutes, it can cause severe painful shock. Nerve impulses arriving along afferent nerve endings literally explode the brain. A huge number of zones become active, because of this, reverse nerve transmission is disrupted, and, as a result, the functioning of the respiratory center may be disrupted, and the person will die.

Protection method: Everywhere and always, in the toilet or in bed, wear the inguinal shell without removing it. She is a panacea.

Solar plexus

Hit difficulty: average.

Technique: Immediately, without hesitation, hit with anything and in any way at chest level.

Peculiarities: The accumulation of nerve nodes on the mesenteric and celiac arteries innervates almost all the organs of the abdominal and thoracic cavity at once. But the most dangerous thing that can happen with a blow to the gut is, of course, cardiac arrest due to increased parasympathetic innervation, which, so to speak, “clogs” the heart’s own pacemaker. Interestingly, to start the motor again, you also need to hit the chest hard, but only right above the heart area. This blow is called precordial.

Protection method: During any attack, fold in half, assume a fetal position, roll on the ground, reducing the likelihood of being hit.

Hit difficulty: high.

Technique: Squat down, take careful aim and hit quickly, inevitably with your forehead on the nose. The blow should be directed from bottom to top, as if you were trying to move the nose towards the eyebrows.

Peculiarities: Contrary to popular belief, it is quite difficult to kill a person with a blow to the nose. Even a crushing direct blow to the face will likely only crush the cartilage, tear it away from the nasal bone and crush the surrounding soft tissue. To kill a person with a blow to the nose, it is necessary to very accurately punch from below, thereby breaking the nasal bones and displacing their fragments towards the brain. Rumor has it that some combat sambo masters can perform this trick with the edge of their palm, although traumatologists doubt this.

Protection method: A sling-shaped bandage with cotton wool can not only soften a dangerous blow, but also make your opponent wonder whether it’s worth contacting you at all.

Hit difficulty: average.

Technique: Gently and carefully place the thumbs of both hands on the wide-open eyes of the opponent and gently press until the whites completely flow out and the fingers are immersed the entire length into the cavity of the orbit.

Peculiarities: In games and movies, we are regularly shown how someone easily gouges out the eyes of an enemy, after which the enemy dies. Two nuances. It’s quite difficult to gouge out your eyes. The eyeball itself is elastic, and around there are layers of muscles and bones of the orbit that prevent the fingers from sliding freely. But even if the eye is gouged out, this does not mean that the victim will definitely die. There are not so many pain receptors inside the eye socket, pain shock may not develop, bleeding is also easy to stop. If a person dies, it will be after a fairly long period of time – from an additional infection. Or out of frustration.

Protection method: Have only one false eye, like the mythical Graia sisters, and take it out before battle.

Coccyx

Hit difficulty: low.

Technique: Approach your opponent from the rear, take one of the lower limbs back and inexorably punch into the sacrum area.

Peculiarities: A fracture of the coccyx itself is not so dangerous, although it is accompanied by severe pain. Any traumatologist will be able to set your tailbone back by inserting two fingers into the rectum and applying the correct amount of pressure. Much worse than the other. There are several known cases when, when hit on the tailbone, the attacker’s leg slipped lower and, by inertia, ruptured the tissues of the already mentioned rectum. The resulting bleeding is almost impossible to stop (the veins are very wide and do not collapse on their own). An offensive and utterly ridiculous death.

Protection method: Never, you hear, never turn your back to the enemy.

But he got through – he’s a Siberian

The only sad thing is that, for the sake of cinematography, developers often deprive us of the right to choose battle tactics. Take, for example, Bishop’s fight with Marcus Palmer, who tirelessly jumps around the ring, and it’s almost impossible to catch up with him – the game assumes that you will press him to the ropes and put him down with an uppercut. But it’s extremely difficult to target the jumper. As a result, for several rounds in a row you crawl around the ring without landing a single blow, and you feel like a tired slug who for some reason is forced to hunt a grasshopper.

Sometimes you’ll be pitted against some puncher who can only be taken down with one specific punch. It is impossible to understand why a hefty Negrila collapses as if knocked down from a cross from the right, but flatly refuses to lose consciousness from the same cross from the left. In story-critical battles, it all comes down to playing according to rules set in advance by an invisible hand: you don’t need to read your opponent, you don’t need to adapt to his rhythm, you don’t even have the opportunity to choose how to knock him down. You just methodically attack the specified point over and over again, and sooner or later the big guy falls. At moments like these, Fight Night Champion most closely resembles an eight-bit arcade Battletoads , and the vaunted strategy dissipates like smoke.

Another annoying nuisance is that neither you nor your opponents get tired during the battle. Yes, the strength indicator drops lower and lower with each round, but this has almost no effect on the behavior of the fighters. When two hefty hogs beat each other non-stop at a speed of one blow per second, by the fifth round you begin to understand that in real life at this pace they would have long ago been lying on the floor from overwork. And here there’s nothing – they stand there, woo each other with their big fists, and even whine.

I don’t even want to talk about the fact that some fights are staged in such a way that it is impossible to knock out an opponent in the initial rounds. You can replay the round over and over again, trying to knock down your opponent, but only when you give up on this matter and finish playing, say, the third round, you will understand that there is a scripted scene, because of which the developers did not allow you to win earlier.

And I told him „weirdo!»

The last drop of poison is once again redesigned controls. If you haven’t played the previous Fight Night, let’s explain. The authors have been experimenting with a controller for several games in a row now. At first, all the attacks were on buttons, then, considering that the feeling of powerful attacks could not be conveyed this way, the developers came up with a cunning move. They made us spin most of the shots with sticks. By rotating the handles, you could really feel how you raise the boxer’s hand, how you release the blow and slam your fist. But you had to pay for the sensual connection with your polygonal protégé with long hours of training – to start boxing technically, you had to spend a lot of time, plus the fight process itself turned out to be slightly slow, with a touch of slow-mo.

Fight Night Champion brings controls back to basics. Now one hit is one button, or tilting the right stick to the side. A separate button is responsible for the block, a separate one for the power modifier of punches, and another one for working on the body (the boxer crouches and delivers the same blows, but lower). As a result, we completely lost the feeling of swinging, but the game became faster and more technical. If you don’t give in to the temptation to win a fight by mindlessly pressing all the buttons at once, then a huge scope for creativity opens up. The main thing is that now it is possible to react very quickly to pressure from any side. The enemy barely begins to probe you with jabs to the left, and you are already extinguishing his activity with a cross. They are trying to get you with an uppercut, and you are already in the clinch – hugging your opponent’s sweaty body with a grin.

In online mode and in Legacy Mode, you can find a whole bunch of other cosmetic changes, tweaks and improvements, which, coupled with the new control system, have greatly changed the game. But one thing has remained unchanged – Fight Night is still the best boxing simulator in this part of the Galaxy. Moreover, now this simulator can be called a folk simulator with a clear conscience.

Replay value — Yes

Cool story — Yes

Originality — No

Easy to learn — Yes

Gameplay: 9

Graphics: 9

Sound and music: 8

Interface and control: 8

We waited? The first attempt of boxing simulators to get closer to those who are not interested in boxing in principle. The best part is that the deflection is counted!