Second Opinion: Fight Night Round 3

My original gripe with this game was what I felt to be really bad controls, even if there was a strategy element involved in picking your fight style. I still stand by this as despite how strong I make my character, the game still doesn't feel balanced when my opponent can wail away on me with haymakers and heavy punches at lightning speed where as my big punches come off really slow and aren't as damaging, add to that the fact that even with high heart and stamina, my fighter's health tends to drop really quickly and even after 10 rounds the CPU controlled fighter will have almost a full bar of health left.
I don't mind a challenge, but this is still unfair in my opinion.
And lets not forget the ridiculous referee stopping the fight because I'm bleeding too much even when I'm in control of the fight. I can understand if I'm getting pummeled to a bloody pulp, but when I'm pressing the action and the referee suddenly calls for the bell and gives the fight to my opponent, it really pisses me off to the point I reset my PS2 and play the fight over again.
Other than that there are the small bugs and glitches in the game that make it feel incomplete compared to Fight Night Round 2. For example, the replays are total crap. You have the announcer saying how much you dominated the match, but all you see are the two guys just standing there barely doing anything. And even these get cut off halfway at times. And the replays for the knockdown punches can be really bad at times as the punches don't even look like they hurt when they connect on the replay shots.
Another thing I didn't like about the gameplay is that the game will actually bribe you to take a dive in a fight! That's right! You get rewarded for losing a fight at a certain round. I don't know what the developers were thinking, but I play games to WIN and earn rewards, not lose.
The shop is also really confusing. They should have kept a proper order of the items, like keeping all the items from one sponsor in it's own bracket instead of having to scroll through a really LONG list just to check what's new, and it's hard to tell if you've already purchased something at times.
Overall, even with all the flaws, I have to admit that I'm a sucker for punishment and keep coming back to this game to open a can of whoop ass, so I'm adding to the lifespan and overall score of this game:

Graphics – 9
Sound – 7
Gameplay – 8
Lifespan – 8
Overall – 7

My original review of the game can be found HERE