Facebreaker
XBox 360
M
EA



If you're in the market for a boxing game, it's a given that you go for 'Fight Night Round 3'. The fully analogue punching method provides unrivalled control, the mechanics are tight and intelligent and graphically, even two years later, it's mind-blowing. 'Round 4' was recently unveiled too, and looks to once again raise the bar for the boxing genre. So what have the team been up to between rounds? For some reason, the team has seen fit to craft 'Facebreaker', an alarmingly inept take on the sport they so masterfully portrayed in 'Fight Night'.

The first game to release under the EA Freestyle banner, 'Facebreaker' plays more like a fighting game than a boxing game. A woeful, lazy fighting game, more 'Shaq Fu' than 'Street Fighter'. Most of the controls come down to the X and A buttons, with the X handling all high attacks and the A all low attacks, power varying depending on how long you hold them down. Both buttons are also used for dodging and parrying, in conjunction with the right trigger as a block button, whilst the Y button unleashes special "Facebreaker" moves, that are built up through combos and hard to time properly. It's a ridiculous oversimplification that means you'll end up mashing the X button most of the time, whether you're attacking or defending.

There's no sense of fluidity to 'Facebreaker's brawls, and the over the top animation takes out the genuine aggression synonymous with real boxing. The enemy AI, even on the lowest difficulty, has a disturbing, almost psychic knowledge of what you're about to do sometimes, and character balance is all over the place. Stun moves, which leave your enemy completely open to attack, are much easier to with some characters than others, giving you no real reason to use anyone else against your poorly-programmed opponents. The first unlockable character, for instance, has a grab move that involves them teleporting across the ring, grabbing the opponent and hurling them into the corner, stunning them. It's almost impossible to block and is as simple as tapping 'B' for the player. About the only area where this game makes any headway is in presentation. The graphics are well done, especially the face deformation that the game gets its name from and the soundtrack raises a few smiles, although it should also be noted that character dialogue between matches is fairly painful and poorly written. Multiplayer fares slightly better too, but good luck finding an active game online.

Hopefully this isn't the kind of awful side-project we can expect from EA's Freestyle division in the future.

James O'Connor