For some people, knowledge of professional boxing stretches about as far as the Rocky movies and Mike Tyson. For others, the violent but undeniably entertaining sport is the perfect example of two people pushing their bodies to the physical and mental limits. Either way, gaming versions of the sport of pugilists have been plentiful, although the quality has varied greatly over the years. Particular examples of note would be the immortal Punch Out on the Nintendo Entertainment System, or more recently, Ready 2 Rumble boxing, which launched with the Sega Dreamcast as a means of showing off the raw power of the machine. Interestingly, the Xbox 360 version of Fight Night Round 3 seems to do much the same. But how well do its current generation brethren stack up in comparison? Let's find out, shall we?

Those who delve straight into the thick of combat will immediately notice the extremely detailed textures used on the boxers themselves. Their skin glistens with sweat and light bounces off their leather gloves, giving an impressive sense of realism, not too far removed from the previously mentioned 360 version. The 3D model of each fighter moves fluently, an important attribute considering the nature of the game; an unresponsive and sluggish character model would severely hamper the game's playability, but thankfully no such problems arise here. Possibly the only negative aspect of the character's composition is collision detection, which goes completely out of the window in certain situations. Knock your opponent down, for instance, and as his body falls in woefully overused slow motion, laugh at the absurdity of your fist passing straight through his head on his journey to the canvas. This is then swiftly followed by your fallen adversary's body twitching awkwardly, as if shocked by a thousand volts, a bizarre display that occurs all too often. Still, these two oversights of physics only take up a few seconds each and have no negative bearing on the combat itself.

So we know the fighters look good, but what about the other visuals? Well, sadly, it's the usual story for crowd animations; a few paper-thin, faceless blocks of colour standing around the ringside, punching their fists into the air over and over again is all you get. This isn't as noticeable in the larger arenas, where the crowd becomes a grey-black blur with the occasional lens flare to signal a camera flash, but you have to plough quite far through career mode to even reach this stage, so by then you can't help but notice the woeful figures, only vaguely resembling something human.

Thankfully, the arenas themselves are noticeably better than the crowd that occupies them. In the beginning you're stuck in a drab, grey, stone wall gym, as you commence your ascension through the ranks. Small touches like detailed posters of fights going on at the same time highlight the visible effort put into your surroundings. Then, later on, you'll find yourself in more and more extravagant locales, including Madison Square Garden. Here, lighting techniques are used to maximum effect to create an illusion of spectacle and grandeur (I suppose you could call it a 'sense of occasion'). These stadiums are then unlocked for use in the other modes, so you can always come back later to feel like a superstar again.

Only one other item stands out, graphically, and it's one I feel we'll be coming across more and more in the future - advertising. Fight Night Round 3 is sponsored by no less than three companies, the biggest of these being fast-food chain Burger King. It's their banners and posters that you'll find strewn all over the arenas, and whilst this particular consequence of their sponsorship has little effect on gameplay, there's another that has slightly more impact, which I'll come to later.

Keeping with presentation, the soundtrack comes courtesy of twelve high-profile hip-hop artists (I'm not entirely sure why hip-hop is associated with boxing, though), including Brasco and Akon. If, like me, hip-hop isn't to your tastes, you can disable these tracks in the options menu, leaving you with the satisfying grunts of the boxers and the hit-and-miss commentary. Fight Night Round 3 is of a higher standard than most other sports offerings and, most importantly, the commentary is usually in sync with the action. What this means is that when you throw a jab to the body, the announcer won't still be going on about the haymaker to the head you delivered last round. Names are also handled relatively well, only occasionally sounding awkward and jerky, pronounced with relatively convincing vocal tones. Unfortunately, repetition is a huge problem; I appreciate that it's only possible for a certain number of phrases to be included in one game, but hearing the same line of commentary three times in a single round severely detracts from the realism that the graphics try so valiantly to create. As with most high profile, high quality sports titles, it's a shame, because otherwise, the game's presentation is relatively spot-on.

Naturally, none of this would mean anything if the mechanics at the heart of the game didn't function properly. Thankfully, Fight Night Round 3 delivers a competent performance in this respect. Basic gameplay consists of your chosen boxer and your opponent taking up a relatively sizeable chunk of the screen, shown from a waist-height view. Here the camera functions well, keeping the focus where it needs to be and, crucially, never obscuring your view. You're often required to react quickly and instinctively (especially if you wish to become proficient at countering), so the competence of the camera is vital and pleasing to see, since so many games lack this important aspect and fail where they should succeed.

There are many possible controller configurations for you to choose from, although the default config favoured by the game puts the various types of punches (jabs, hooks, haymakers and even 'illegal' moves like head butts) on the right analogue stick, with the full 3D movement of your character assigned to the left. A message on one of the loading screens proclaims 'button bashers not allowed' and they're certainly not wrong. Although a relatively thorough tutorial guides you through the basics of movement, attack, blocking and parrying, it takes a considerable amount of effort on your part to get good enough to progress deep into career mode. You'll eventually learn that dodging and weaving and fighting back with counter-punches is significantly more effective (in most cases) than blind offensives.

Wear your opponent down enough, signified by two health bars at the bottom of the screen, and things will, yet again, slow down, signifying that one or two more hits will send him crashing to the mat. Against a computer-controlled opponent, the AI can become nigh on unbeatable in this state, suddenly blocking and countering everything you throw at them. This feels a little cheap and unrealistic, considering an AI fighter can go two rounds without blocking a punch before suddenly gaining the eye of the tiger, despite the barrage of haymakers you've just pummelled their head with. Still, land a successful hit during this time and you'll be treated to a brutally realistic zoomed view of the blow, in some cases giving you the luxury of watching your fist crashing into your opponent's jaw, although often a previous problem occurs here too, with your glove actually passing straight through the guy's head.

At times, the learning curve in career mode, where you'll spend most of your time, can take a drastic leap, taking you from an easy win in your previous match to an invincible behemoth in your next, with no explanation. Personally, I found this unfathomable, unnecessary and incredibly frustrating. Coming back to the start of career and you begin by picking a fighter from a rather impressive roster of famous faces. Then, by virtue of your own determination and skill, you plough through one opponent after another until you've won every title, trophy, belt, fortune and ounce of respect and popularity going. I'd like to tell you more, but that's really is all there is to it. It sounds simplistic, and it is, but when you look at it objectively, you realise that a boxing career mode doesn't need to be any deeper than that; it is basically just a venue for you to fight an increasingly difficult string of enemies and put the well polished mechanics of the game on display.

Between each fight you must train under the wing of one of four trainers. You do this by playing a mini game, ranging from lifting weights in rhythm with the analogue sticks to beating the hell out of a dummy in a designated order. You then get a boost to your stats (basic things like Strength, Speed, Agility and so on) based on your performance, which govern how well you perform in a fight. Without this, progression through career mode would become incredibly difficult, perhaps even impossible, as later opponents would be capable of beating you by simply hitting you much harder than you could physically stand. It's worth noting, however, that ploughing all your effort into the Strength attribute will see off most opponents pretty efficiently. This is a little disappointing, since going down this path eliminates strategy against all but the toughest fighters.

Remember when I mentioned Burger King's influence on the game? It's here where it gets scary. Progress through the career mode enough and you'll unlock the fourth trainer... the King himself. That's right, the scary, plastic-faced King of Burgers mascot trains you in the fine art of clubbing someone else in the face. That's just a little bit freaky.

The lifespan of the game is mainly governed by how long it takes you to get through the lengthy career mode and how much you want to unlock things like new shorts for your fighter (but even this can be cut short by a particular fight granting you a million dollars to spend in the Unlock Shop on victory). The only other thing to stick around for is the ESPN Classics, a series of fights where you can re-enact famous boxing rivalries with timeless legends such as Muhammad Ali. These are fairly taxing and add some extra challenge, but feel somewhat tacked on as a last-ditch effort to push out the game's longevity, and while the versus mode is great if you've got friends available, the lack of support for online play in Europe is quite frankly disgraceful, and really damages the lifespan of this otherwise excellent game.

Fight Night Round 3 delivers in all the areas that are important in a boxing sim; it brings the big names to life with luscious graphics and gives them form and ability, with a well-made control system and decent game mechanics. A few technical glitches aside, it's a pretty great turn out from EA, and were Fight Night Round 3 to be a boxer itself, it wouldn't win by total knockout, but would definitely go the twelve rounds and come out on top.

Reviewed by Zayne Finch for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).