A great advancement on the previous games with a dramatic and well acted story mode to boot!
While Fight Night Champion may look very similar to their previous games in the series it is a very different proposition all together. There is, of course, the addition of the new Champion Mode which brings some additional drama to the proceedings by way of a narrative. The career mode, or Legacy mode as it's known, has been revamped to give a much finer level of control over the type of fighter you become through the expansion of the training aspect of the game. The graphics have been improved giving the boxer models a fantastic look and thanks to the new M rating (18 cert) the new damage modeling system is truly spectacular, superbly illustrating the brutal nature of the sport.
First, let's have a look at Legacy mode as this, along with online play, is the part of the game that gives it real long term appeal. If you've played FNR4 you will already be familiar with the mechanics of arranging a fight and this remains largely unchanged. You use your calendar to schedule your next bout and are given a number of weeks to get yourself ready for the fight by training and hopefully improving your boxers ratings in physical areas like strength, speed, stamina, chin etc... This is still the case and while the training games are very similar to the last installment, the application of skill improvements is very different. In previous games of the series each training game was directly linked to a physical characteristic, for example, if you wanted to improve your power you would work the heavy bag, to improve you chin you would spar and so on. This mechanic was OK, but if you were not particularly good at some of the training mini games it could make it very difficult to give your boxer a rounded skill set and would leave him lacking in one or more important areas. Thankfully this is no longer an issue with the introduction of training Gyms. Each Gym specialises in the improvement of certain attributes, so one Gym may give improvements to Strength, Speed and Endurance and another Gym might offer improvements to Stamina, Toughness and Reflexes. Each Gym offers a very familiar set of training mini games like heavy bag push, sparring or heavy bag combos, but the good news is that the improvements you receive are related to the Gym you choose to train in and not the game you choose to play. So, if you are very good at sparring for example, you can just play the sparring mini games at the various different Gyms and still give your boxer a well rounded physical profile. All this training however takes it's toll on your fighter and EA have introduced a stamina system whereby your boxer has a limited pool of stamina from which he can draw to train and fight. This means you will need to balance your training regime in order to be fit for the fight, so as well as training we are also given the option of resting for a week during the pre-fight training in order to regain stamina. This means you have to balance your training requirements with your energy levels unless you want to start a fight with less than 100% stamina. The most significant change to your boxers progression however, comes from the all new experience system, which gives your fighter the opportunity to "level up" his skills in various areas of his physical ability. As you train in the mini games and fight your way through the ranks you earn experience points. These can be spent to improve your fighters punches, his head movement and blocking and his chin and heart. There is a progress ladder for pretty much every punch in your arsenal, both head and body, and as you progress up the ladder you can unlock various "perks" along the way. For example, a level 6 left hook has a slight chance of stunning your opponent if it connects cleanly and a level 20 (the maximum level) left hook has a chance of putting your opponent on the mat for good with one clean shot. This very flexible system offers the opportunity to shape a fighter to suit your play style so you can create a tank like inside fighter with a solid chin and deadly hooks/uppercuts or an outside fighter with lightning speed and devastating straight punches. During your career you won't be able to earn enough experience to max out all of your abilities so some hard choices will have to be made to balance your fighter to suit your style. Overall, the improvements to legacy mode are excellent and in my opinion, this is by far the strongest part of the game in offline play and doubtless the gameplay mode that will eat up most of your time on the game once the story mode has been completed.
So, on to the mode of play after which the game is named. Champion mode is a driven narrative which takes you through a series of bouts in your quest to become the heavyweight champion of the world, but as you would expect, the story is not without it's twists and turns. I won't go into detail regarding the content of the story, as I don't want to spoil it for anybody. Suffice to say that the story is a replete with boxing cliches and perhaps a tad predictable, but nevertheless is very well put together and superbly voice acted by the cast. The story unfolds in between bouts and offers a series of challenges to overcome in the ring by way of some fairly old school gameplay mechanics. An example of this is one bout in which your opponent opens a cut over your eye very early on in the fight and over the course of the next 10 rounds you have to win the bout while protecting the cut over your eye. As fans of the series will already know, there is already a perfectly satisfactory mechanic in the game to deal with damage but for the purposes of the narrative, EA have chosen to go for the arbitrary limit on the number of times you can get hit on the cut. You're allowed to take 14 punches to the damaged area before the ref stops the fight. At the end of each round the "hit count" is reduced by 5 due to the efforts of your corner, so you have to be very careful not to take too much punishment during the bout. Personally I was a little bit disappointed with this linear approach used in the story mode of the game, although I can see how it would be difficult to drive the narrative without it. Overall I would say champion mode was a fairly solid effort to introduce some drama and meaning to the action in the ring. The characters we meet (and beat) in story mode are all very well realised and all can be used outside the story mode, although you'll have to part with some microsoft points to unlock them, which I thought was a little disappointing.
The official roster of fighters is well populated and for the first time ever we now have access to all the weight classes available between bantam weight and heavyweight and all the usual suspects are present and correct. Of course there is also the option to create your own boxer in the image of whoever you like and once this is done you can upload your created fighter through the games boxer-share option for other players to download and use. This is a truly fantastic feature and really has been taken to heart by the fans of the game, which is good news for you as it means you'll have a plethora of created fighters to choose from, some real and some fantastic but they are, for the most part, very well put together.
In conclusion I would say the game is a must buy for fans of the genre/series but I would also suggest a rental for anybody who enjoys a good beat 'em up. The linear story mode may disappoint some, but the fantastically realised legacy mode makes this by far the best boxing game yet.