Ouch....

Most sports video games are built around letting players try to emulate the stars of the moment. Every year the big publishers vie to put all-stars on the covers of their basketball, baseball and football titles. But what boxer in contention today could possibly enjoy enough mass recognition to move games in stores?

Wisely, Electronic Arts, publisher of the new Fight Night Round 4, didn’t try to find out, instead featuring in marketing materials and on the game cover the truly famous images of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, here shown duking it out.

It is not just a pretty picture, so to speak. There have been boxing games for almost as long as there have been video games, and Fight Night Round 4 is, for now, the greatest of all time. There has never been a more visceral, precise and natural electronic simulation of hand-to-hand combat. Round 4 is the first game to convey an even halfway convincing sense of the terrifying, ferocious, relentless young Tyson and then meaningfully contrast that with the balletic precision and stamina of Ali.

Round 4 is a triumph because it is not afraid to get personal.

Here’s what that means. Modern gaming systems like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the two consoles Round 4 is available on, are extremely powerful computing machines. They can render breathtaking digital landscapes, battlefields filled with hundreds of mutants, vast reaches of outer space and entire cities of ruins. Yet perhaps nothing is more difficult to simulate than the textures and infinite movements of the human body. A top-end boxing game has to concentrate all of that silicon horsepower on the task of making human models seem realistic and convincing at close range and in real time, not only to watch but to control as well.

I don’t know enough about either biomechanics or simulation engineering to discern exactly how EA Canada, the Electronic Arts studio behind Round 4, quite did it, but I know it’s working. Previous such games have either been too jerkily responsive, like Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, to be realistic, or so slow and sluggish that the player never felt the hand speed of an elite boxer. There are myriad variables of timing and delay, measured in milliseconds, that have to be tweaked in the animation as well as in the underlying physics simulation for an intimate physical activity like boxing to feel natural. Round 4 does.

Part of its appeal stems from the control system. Most boxing games, including Round 4’s acclaimed predecessor (called, fairly obviously, Fight Night Round 3), give players the option to throw a punch by pressing a button. After all, video games are all about pressing buttons, right? That may be so, but there is nothing organic about that action. For me, pressing a button to throw a punch subtly reinforces that I am playing a video game rather than immersing myself in a boxing experience.

So in Round 4, the player throws punches by flicking and rotating one of the small free-moving control sticks (often referred to as an analog stick) on the controller. To throw a left jab to the head, flick the stick to the upper left. To throw a right to the body, down and to the right. For an uppercut, move the stick down and then spin it up to the top like an uppercut. It is not a perfect system, but it is fast and responsive and, with just a little practice, feels much more natural than mashing buttons all the time.

Given that, why isn’t the game on Nintendo’s Wii, with its motion-sensitive controllers? First, unlike the 360 or PS3, the Wii simply isn’t powerful enough to deliver a high-definition, physics-based simulation. Second, people who like throwing hundreds of faux punches in the air are already playing the Wii’s less realistic boxing game (or going to the gym).

There is controversy raging online about whether Round 4 players should have the option of using button controls. My concern is that it would almost surely be unbalanced to let players using two different control schemes compete with one another via the Web.

Outside the ring, Round 4 provides most of the expected options. There are dozens of historical boxers included, and you can create your own, even importing your own picture if you want to see what you look like after a few rounds in the ring. There is a serviceable career mode that allows you to track your progress from nobody to world champion. Online play is a huge part of the game and works well.

And a special shout-out should go to Round 4’s audio crew. Sound is often an underappreciated element in games, particularly sports titles, and both the thuds of combat and the blow-by-blow commentary in Round 4 are excellent.

But it is the hip-hop-heavy soundtrack that really shines. Games have become an important marketing vehicle for pop music. I have a friend — a 25-year-old woman who almost never plays video games — who came over to play specifically to scour the Round 4 soundtrack for new music to buy online. She particularly liked “You Can’t Stop Me Now, Featuring Inspectah Deck” by RZA as Bobby Digital and “Ready For the Fight” by the Young Punx featuring Count Bass D.

She also throws a mean right hook.

- AP