Okay. I will preface this with a little bit of a back story. I'm not a reviewer or aspiring to become one but I just feel I should speak my opinions on this game since most people seem to just be taking a look at Metacritic as to whether or not it's a worthy purchase.
I will say that I was fairly curious about The Fight : Lights Out way back when I first heard it announced. I was curious before I even had a motion controller about the game. I was curious but it didn't look like a AAA game to me but it looked like it would work well with the controls.
Although before I had purchased the Move, I just was kind of hesitant towards this type of game. I've played them before on the Wii, etc. So I kind of filed it away for another day. As I was still on the fence even about the Move.
A few months later, Move is released and I was eager to see if Sony had actually improved on the Wii-mote (Which I always had issues with the Wii that bothered me(Lag,precision,game genre,etc) ). I read several great in-depth reviews and really came to the conclusion that the Move was an awesome piece of hardware. I went out and got it. I bought with the bundle and got Sports Champions. I bought an extra controller for the full Gladiator experience.
It was accurate, it was responsive, it tracked me like nothing I've really played before could track me. It registered my moves better with more accuracy and to my eyes even less delay. I could jump, dive, reach off screen move back into the screen and it seemed that by and large the game reacted exactly how I wanted. This was a far cry from the Nintendo Wii motion controls.
Any game that I know won't be (AAA) I will read the reviews and take a look at the game assuming I had / have an interest in it. I put it under a microscope a little bit more. After all, I can't trust the reviewers entirely and I can't trust the developers of the game entirely. The first batch of reviews come out for The Fight. IGN - 3.0 / Videogamer 5.0 .
This really discouraged me at first. I read these reviews, and I was just discouraged. It seemed like this game was just an absolute disaster with no direction, no fun, no anything really. The biggest thing that stuck out to me in these reviews is the 'unresponsive' or 'bad controls'. Which I must say surprised me probably the most.
I had just played Sports Champions not that long ago and Planet Mini Golf and Heavy Rain and Resident Evil 5, and I can honestly say the Move worked almost flawlessly in these games. Accurate, precise and just really great. How could these controls just be so poorly implemented in The Fight ? A game Sony has put a relative amount of hype into nonetheless.
I read the SixthAxis Review and watched the Iwaggle video review (Which someone linked here, thanks by the way). And I was given a completely different impression. They said the controls were smooth and responsive. They were very close to true 1:1. The game wasn't terrible, it just wasn't easy. Now I was conflicted. Major publications giving decent games 3.0 scores just seems unlikely to me. But the SixthAxis / Iwaggle reviews / experiences really seemed to mimic experiences I had while playing Sports Champions (Accuracte, Smooth, Precise, True 1:1 type of controls).
I decided that what the hell. It's only $40 . I've been wrong before but if The Fight controls anything close to how Gladiators or Ping Pong or Bocce Ball or any of those other games controlled, I'm sure I will have a good time with this game.
I purchase the game at GameStop, proceed to get told by the cashier that this game apparently sucks really bad and do I still want it? I said yeah, I've done my homework and I feel that it will be what I'm expecting, He says "Okay, Don't say I didn't warn ya!". I drive home, set it up in my bedroom.
After booting it up, It starts the installation process. This takes about the typical amount of time to install. I get to the start menu and I'm somewhat surprised to see a decent amount of options. It's not as barebones of a Menu as you might expect from a game that costs $40 and has been critically panned everywhere.
You start up and you jump into a whole array of basic tutorials. Dodging, Movement, Punching, etc. Very early on you'll realize that this is going to be a complete workout for your body. This isn't going to be a sitting on the couch type of game. This will get your heart rate up and keep it up. Even in the training sessions.
You'll clear through tutorials and start into the ladder mode. The Ladder mode has a ton of depth to it with literally days and days (Especially depending on your level of fitness) of fights to go through. The long calibration process is done once when you start up the game and start Fighting. Then the shorter calibration process is the one that takes you from Fight to Fight). It's not really anything to make an issue of. It literally takes 4 seconds to go through the Calibration process. You'll get to the Head-Tracking portion of the calibration which is spotty at best but I've gotten it to work with relative ease. Just another note the load times are fine in this game as well. Once you've cleared the Tutorials / Calibration process you'll be ready for your first fight.
The first fight was simple. I mean pretty straight-forward and easy. Punch him in the head, the body, etc. The tracking is really good and it surprises me with some of the comments I read. It bobs and weaves with me, it ducks with me. The body shots can occassionally seem spotty but not too much so. One thing immediately jumps out at me while fighting though. Punch placement is very important. As well as fundamental boxing principles (Like using Reach to your advantage, jabs at the proper time, hooks at the proper time, etc).
I fight another boxer and I realize he was much harder than the last one. I head into my third fight and sure enough I get pummeled badly. My punches don't seem to be connecting, I seem like Im missing but Im punching straight-ahead. This just doesn't make sense to me. I head into the training your fighter mode.
The purpose of training is to build up your statistics of your character. (These are absolutely critical and vital to success in the game). This is the reason IGN gave the game low scores. They probably only played a few bouts into the game and didn't flesh out their character more. From what I can tell, your stats can get built up to 99. You earn stat points by training your fighter either options like Speed Bag, Heavy Bag, Sparring, Etc. Mind you, almost all of these are intense as you want them to be and you can really get the sweat pouring on many of them.
My stats initially when I created my fighter were something like 15 strength 10 stamina 10 speed 5 heart 5 chin and like 2 technique. It's explained which each of these stats importance are for you and everything. Now, I knew I was missing punches that I was even throwing on the screen. So I bumped my technique up to a 10, my strength to an 18 and speed to 12 and headed into my third fight again (A rematch).
I go into my third fight and I beat the guy quicker than I have beaten any other opponent in the game. My punches were landing a lot now. And when they were connecting my improved strength was doing more damage.
The hitch in this game that many reviews glossed over is that when you are just starting out, they aren't going to allow you to throw your hardest, biggest haymaker at opponents until you build your characters Strength up. Without this, there would not be any challenge in fighting opponents. On a similar note, this applies to Speed as well as Technique. While it really is as close to 1:1 tracking as I could hope for, the lower your speed the less your rapid flurry of punches will register on screen. Essentially, how I view it, the closer to 99 you get your statistics the closer you get to your actual punch strength / speed / accuracy / etc.
The multi-player online matches work well and the match making system is easy to use (Although it does take time to find some opponents probably because of how critically panned this game was). I was pleasantly surprised to notice no serious lag or anything that prevented my enjoyment.
I've rambled for quite awhile here but I will just say that I have played through several of the single-player brackets and have done multi-player in this game. This game absolutely does not deserve a 3/10 a 4/10 or even a 5/10. This game is firmly a solid 7/10 upwards to 8/10. There isn't a story to speak of. There isn't really any memorable characters. The graphics are solid but not spectacular. The punching / motion controlled aspects in the game work very well and there is more than enough content to be found in this game. If you enjoyed Gladiator duels in Sports Champions? If you enjoy boxing or fighting. You will have a lot of fun in this. You will get a workout playing this game but overall you will enjoy it.
Do not be scared away because of reviews for this game. A vast majority have shown how inaccurate and how incomplete these major reviewers have become. This game is very fun (if you are willing to be physical) and the only thing that will keep you from playing it is the soreness the next day.
I'd give it a solid 7 / 10.
