Fight Night 4
X-Box 360 - EA

First off, I'll fess up. I hate boxing games, I've never enjoyed them. Whether they involve waving my arms about like a drunk outside a kebab shop at 2 in the morning on the Wii, or ludicrously button mashing, er I mean executing a skilful sequence  of perfectly orchestrated manoeuvres on a standard console, I'm not up for it. This being the case, I was looking forward to reviewing Fight Night Round 4 for the X-Box 360 in the same way you might look forward to having your testicles sandpapered. 

However it turned out that I needn't have been so apprehensive because this game is really rather good. Firstly, it looks the business, the sight of two men violently beating the snot out of each other is captured beautifully in glorious HD graphics and secondly, the control system utilises the analogue stick which feels intuitive and prevents button mashing thus forcing you to learn some moves whilst  stopping the scenario whereby after hours of you practising said moves, a friend can play for the first time and beat you by having an epileptic fit on the controller. Whilst I've seen a few people on-line fail this new control system for the Fight Night series, it seems a logical move to me. After all, who actually buys a game like this to button mash? That's just stupid.

The career mode works fine and whilst the AI opponents fight well enough, there's no substitute for playing a real person and on-line play is solid, as you'd expect from an EA title. If you're a fan of the boxing game genre, you'll find lots of touches you'll appreciate that I don't really care about, just know that if you are, this is a must buy.

Whilst it's true that I'd rather shoot aliens, steal cars, collect stars or capture flags, strangely I seem to have found a boxing game that I enjoy playing.