Without fail, every time I bring up this job and its subject, usually with folks outside the business, the topical jokes start rolling. Whatever the latest controversy or embarrassment is in sports, people ask if that's going to be simulated in the next edition of Madden, Tiger Woods or NBA 2K.
Fight Night Champion notably included bare-knuckle fighting during the prison chapters of its narrative mode, but the fighters in the main roster didn't participate in such bouts. Now some will. The game's first DLC extension, due out next Tuesday, adds bare-knuckle "Old School Rules" to online and offline play.
Two weeks ago, a video leaked out legit-looking screenshots claiming to be an alpha build of Fight Night Champion's first downloadable content. EA Sports is announcing what's in the first pack tomorrow, but if this video is real, it's five all-time great fighters, plus Cowboys Stadium as a venue.
The concept behind Fight Night Champion's narrative "Champion Mode" inspired me when I read of it. I looked forward to it as a breakthrough opportunity for the sports genre. But it served up a tray of disappointingly bland cookie-cut characters and conflicts, and the progression of your career was too short and too…
I've taken head butts and held on through jaw-cracking, brain-rattling missiles; I've fought against runners and cowards and cheats and made them all pay. Never have I fought in a place this unfair, with these terms dictated to me.
It's an appropriate opening for a song placed in a game that begins in prison. "You know you fucked up, right?" begins "The Loser Wins," by Atmosphere. In another sports game, this would have to be blanked out, or just not used.
In the second scene of Fight Night Champion, the most unusual boxing game EA has ever made, you're getting beat up in a prison bathroom. You're a guy named Andre Bishop, and you've just beaten a neo-Nazi-looking guy fair and square in a bareknuckle fight in the middle of a ring. Prisoners in orange jumpsuits were…
Fight Night: Champion's demo arrives Tuesday, but apparently some in the UK have gotten their hands on it. Notably, the demo will include online multiplayer. This series of four videos gives you a look at what to expect from it.
Two years ago, EA Sports president Peter Moore called boxing "the past of fighting." Mixed martial arts was the future, with his company hard at work on that game. Thursday, Moore wrote, "let me be clear, boxing's not dead."
"Women weaken legs," said the famous trainer Mickey Goldmill. So does a sledgehammer to the kisser. Fight Night Champion's going to bring a more sophisticated stamina system that you'll need to know to keep from being a two-punch chump.
Wanna watch Cristobal Arreola's gut ripple when Mike Tyson slams him with a righthand missile the midsection? Pick up Fight Night Champion. It'll bring that, plus a lot of blood.
From what I can tell in this video, here's how Andre Bishop's fight career ended up in the crapper: Someone told him to take a dive and he didn't. When the muscle showed up, someone got shot. (NSFW language.)
Anyone old enough to remember Marv Albert on NBC calling a James Scott bout live from Rahway State Prison will want to pay attention to this, the bareknuckle jailhouse fight within the "Champion Mode" of Fight Night Champion.
Manny Pacquiao and Sugar Shane Mosley duel May 7 in one of 2011's first big fights. By then, Fight Night Champion will have been out two months, and they will have fought repeatedly. Here's what their introductions will look like.
After watching the latest trailer Fight Night Champion's new narrative mode, Champion, four times, I'm still shaky on what's going on here. Andre Bishop, the protagonist, I recognize. His brother, I know, ends up in the ring. Who's scorpion guy?
Electronic Art's digital mag, PWNED is back, this time taking a look at the Swedish studio behind Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam, a new weapon in Bulletstorm and more.
In a cutscene, but if Fight Night Champion's gonna get an M-rating, it won't be sending Andre Bishop to the slammer for stealing cable TV. This sequence looks like something out of Mafia II, almost. With better brawling, one hopes.
Arturo Gatti couldn't make Fight Night Champion. It's not because he's dead - so's Sugar Ray Robinson, and he's in the game. It's just that negotiating likeness agreements with boxers is head-bangingly more frustrating than in any other sports game.
Yesterday we saw Eric Esch - aka Butterbean - getting his flab knocked around in Fight Night Champion. He's one of 13 new boxers on a roster of 54 licensed personalities appearing in the game when it releases next year.
In case it wasn't clear, "Champion Mode," which is the role-playing career of fictional fighter Andre Bishop, is a wholly separate mode in Fight Night Champion. Legacy, the old career, will still return, with improvements.