EA Chicago has crafted a game with the same game-set as the popular Fight Night Round 3. The screen is not cluttered with health bars and weapon meters, or even a score for that matter, you get the game in all its glory filling up the screen. Damage is displayed on the characters themselves. The character models are very detailed and the motion capture is spot-on. Damage shows up as bruises, cuts, blood, even the clothes degrade with damage.
The backgrounds are very interactive and everything looks animated and alive. Gas pumps explode, fire flys and even the background buildings shake during explosions. The whole demo takes place in the gas station arena, but it more than enough to show off what it can do. Controls took a little time to get used to. Left stick moves the player and punches are mapped to the face buttons, more moves are mapped to the right stick (ala FNR3) as well as the grab. After the grab the d-pad pulls off another move such as throws and hits. Blocking is mapped to the the triggers, again like FNR3. One of the cool new features is the way that the game moves along to the music soundtrack and your control over it. Environments move and explosions blow in time with the beat. In the demo case it is to the song Kryptonite. With the use of the left trigger and the 2 sticks you can "re-mix" the song at certain times to trigger explosions and other events. Say if you throw the CPU into the gas pumps, back away quickly and pull L trigger and use the 2 sticks like turntables to change the music beat and make the explosions go off on CPU character.
The demo is very short. After a few minutes of fighting you are throw to the white info screen and the demo starts over. the only problem I saw was some clipping occurring with the characters. I am sure this will all be fixed prior to the official game release. This looks to be a very promising game for fight fans and a big jump from the Def Jam wrestling of past games in the series.
