The latest installment of the best boxing video game ever is settling in to life at my house nicely. There has been some jealousy and resentment towards our new arrival – mainly from ‘UFC Undisputed’ – who feels like he’s being replaced but he moaned about me playing favourites with Pro Evo so it’s to be expected. All the hype beforehand centred around the addition of Iron Mike to the franchise, meaning that for the first time in console history the legendary Tyson can take on Ali for the G.O.A.T acronym.
To be honest, just having the unique skills of Tyson in a game for the first time since ‘Punch Out’ (that’s if you don’t count Balrog or those crappy SNES Tyson games) gives the heavyweight division more variety. Ali has been featured on EA games for a while now since they released ‘Foes of Ali’, a concept game where you battled with Ali’s contemporaries.
For me the best part of any game is the career mode – it’s fun bashing the snot out of your mates but it grows tiresome quickly, especially if its one sided. Now that Evo has 2 career modes, ‘Master League’ and ‘Become a Legend’, the stakes have been raised to new heights. Fight Night has its own offering with the usual training scenarios, customisable fighters and control over your rise up the ranks. The difference this time is that you can put your own face on your fighter thanks to a new innovation: ‘Game Face’. There’s nothing that makes a computer game more addictive than realism, and a boxing game where you see your own mug get pounded is the biggest incentive to up your skills.
Game Face is a fairly simple process of uploading your photos to your EA Sportsworld account (you gots to have one of these to play online), editing the image via the online instructions/templates, then saving your snaps to download to your PS3 or Xbox later. After having a go with my own lovely mug I began to explore the true potential of this advance – basically, you can manually create any gladiator you feel the gamemakers have overlooked. As I entered the realms of fantasy and wondered which legendary fighters I could reanimate with this nifty tool my mind wandered over the great names of boxing past. Prince Nas, Steve Collins, Benn, Eubank all raised a patriotic nod of approval but I wanted someone more topical, an epic battle between two titans in their prime in 2009.
So I set about creating the fight of summer 2009. The trash talking had started months ago and it was time to put these two in the ring. Of course I’m talking of a rematch between Perez Hilton and Will.I.am, the most talked about fight of the year. After picking out a couple of Perez pics, including a perfect one of him complete with bruises from the first bout, I downloaded them to my PS3. The next stage involved setting markers on the pictures so the face could be accurately mapped and stretched out in 3D. Then it was onto editing his hair, weight and fighting style, as well as customising his shorts and robes in Perez’s trademark pink.
Suitably satisfied with the results of my virtual Perez Hilton, I was ready to take on the Black Eyed Peas beatmaker and general Cheryl Cole aficionado Will.I.am. This did not go as well as project Perez but so satisfied was I with my ‘Sweet Pea’ Hilton (as he is now known in my house) I ploughed on. Once complete I was ready to stage my rematch but also delighted to know I can upload Perez for others to use on their game. This gives me a sense of optimism in that someone might be able to do a better job of digitizing old Will and that we could have an epic winner-takes-Fergie battle online. The gauntlet has been dropped. See y’all online…
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Edited: July 27th, 2009
