Easily the best looking Xbox 360 game yet, Fight Night Round 3 isn't just another pretty face. Nor a pretty battered one, for that matter. Nor one that deforms with gracious grotesqueness when an "Impact Punch" connects with a cheek bone. Though the term "lifelike" is used too liberally in the videogame parlance, it's actually true here. Plus, it's all that and a genuine sport simulator, too, all the more remarkable with you consider that the sport of boxing is much more nuanced than, say, kicking a ball or slapping a puck, and otherwise hard to convey though a control pad and virtual visuals. Yet it manages most adroitly.

To control a boxer in Fight Night Round 3 is a delicately intelligent affair thanks to superb and intuitive use of the analog thumsticks (think quick flit or semi circle round-house on the right) to control the power behind the punches, the fades, the counters... (You can just use the face buttons if you like, but you'd be missing the point. Nobody drives a Ferrari for its great second gear.)

Guys that come out swinging, looking to land a haymaker for a KO in the first round, don't usually last long while players that can pull off a convincing rope-a-dope usually do. Tekken this is not.

Too, this iteration of the always-solid Fight Night franchise does away with the heads-up display (HUD) in entirety, so you can only gauge the damage and remaining stamina of your chosen pugilist by, well, paying attention. A tired boxer moves more slowly; a damaged one has a lilt in his stride, that sort of thing. Patching up your battered boy between rounds is a frightfully effective indicator too, of course. Who knew you'd ever be able to say "cut me, Mick, cut me" in context?

Like that's not enough, you can also take FNR3 online through Xbox Live, complete with stats tracking plus button-masher only rooms and other match-up features that lets rookies have fun and ranked pros go nuts on other pros.

Throw in a batch of greats from yesteryear and yestermonth, rewrite "classic" bout history or just on take on the Bronx Bull in his prime with a custom-made Belligerent Bovine of your own, it's all good.

• TIP: Fighting boxers in ESPN Classic mode is not just cool, beating them will unlock their fight styles. Beating Frazier with Ali, for example, will make the Hook Master Style available to you, beating Ali with Frazier nets you the Judge Jab Style, beating Roy Jones Jr. with Bernard Hopkins unlocks the Sinister Cross Style, and so on.