“Fight Night Champion” may be the best unwitting ad campaign boxing gyms could hope for. With incredible attention to detail, it conveys the drama and sheer physical test of the sport as well as any movie, but vague controls leave you feeling oddly disconnected from the on-screen battle. The result is a game that, though fun, inspires you less to keep playing it than to search Google Maps for a place where you could get in the ring yourself. Gamers may have the advantage of generally having the same body type as Butterbean — playable here for the first time — but how often does a game have a serious chance of getting people to get physical outside the world of points? The last time this happened was with “Wii Sports Resort’s” Frisbee mode, which made up for middling graphics with realistic gameplay. “Champion” does just the opposite.
“Champion” boasts perhaps the best animation in games today, with flinch-inducing differences between glancing blows and solid hits. Slow-motion replays show everything you might have missed, from punches deflected on opponents’ gloves to flesh rippling upon impact. And, besides odd synchronicity in crowd movements, venues are perfect, whether a chandalier-lit London theater or an open-air ring in Mexico. It says a lot about a game’s attention to detail for you to stop and think about how right an arena’s exit signs look.
