Played some fighting games on the PS2.
Fight Night Round 3: the Fight Night series is probably the biggest boxing game series that exists and save for a couple of other stragglers they're pretty much the only boxing games around. It's a shame though because the game doesn't offer much depth and does a poor job at mimicking actual boxing. No footwork, no in-and-out type of distance management -just planted feet and haymakers. Basically rock 'em sock 'em robots with fancy graphics. Damage is also poorly modeled and is just an unrealistic video game style health bar system which is absolutely dreadful in a boxing game. Forget about knocking your opponent out with a well timed hook, instead just whittle down his health bar until you score a TKO. Game technically doesn't have an ending, but during career mode your stats deteriorate to the point the game becomes unplayable and you have to retire, so I consider it finished.
Victorious Boxers: based on the Hajime no Ippo manga. Both movement around the ring and head-movement are tied to the left stick. Big movements move your characters, small movements more your head -at least in theory, in reality it's way too finicky and not having ultimate control in a fighting game is a no-go for me so I quickly dropped it. Good thing I only bought it for $1.99. Didn't finish it, but might as well include it in this post.
Kengo: a samurai sword fighting game. Nice atmosphere, really feels like you're a samurai dedicating his life to learning swordsmanship. The game has these little mini-games like meditation and slicing bamboo to improve your stats. Kind of fun in terms of immersion, but get repetitive after a while though. Combat is pretty simplistic with only a single attack button which goes through various combos you can assemble yourself in a menu. You learn new moves by fighting other guys at various dojo's. Most moves are kind of useless though and there's a couple moves you unlock pretty much at the beginning of the game that are basically the best combo in the game, so there's no incentive to use anything else which is a shame.
You also have a parry which is mostly useless high-risk low-reward and block button which blocks everything and requires no timing. Game was fun at first, but the simplistic combat became frustrating after a while. There's no way to get an attack in through angles or switch-ups and the enemy AI has a tendency to just block everything which makes it feel like luc
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