- Title: Facebreaker
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: EA
- Developer: EA Canada
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Fighting
- Pros: Neat visuals; slo-mo replays; create-a-boxer
- Cons: Lack of modes; cheap, frustrating A.I.; terrible button mashing gameplay
Facebreaker isn’t trying to be a realistic boxing game and is more along the lines of the over the top, arcadey Ready 2 Rumble series. The art style is distorted and unique and the characters are all larger than life. The handful of characters built into the game are okay, but the real attraction (perhaps the only attraction) is the create-a-boxer mode. You can make, literally, any character you want thanks to the games use of the Xbox Live Vision camera as well as the ability to upload your photos to the EA website and have the game build your character based on those photos. You can also, of course, build characters completely in-game thanks to the wealth of customization options. The results are very, very impressive and look pretty much perfect. You can upload your creations as well as download other players’ characters, and there are already a huge number of characters online including Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Borat, Brad Pitt, and many more. The only downside is that female characters got the short end of the straw with only a handful of body types and hairstyles, but creating male characters is surprisingly deep.
Gameplay
What makes it even worse is the cheap and brutally difficult A.I. Fighting against the CPU is an exercise in frustration as it seems to know what you are throwing even before you do, so they counter and parry pretty much everything. Even on the easiest difficulty, the CPU dodges everything and takes advantage of any mistake you make. Even when you think you have some cheap tactic of your own figured out to beat the CPU, the next fighter you face will annihilate and embarrass you all over again. They all have patterns you can figure out eventually, but you’ll get bored of the game long before then.
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, Facebreaker is a decent looking game. The art style is distinctive and fits in very well with the arcade style of the game. The animation is also surprisingly good as well. You can’t really tell when you are actually playing the game since it moves so fast and seems so random, but during slow motion replays you can see that the movement is very fluid and the boxing is halfway realistic. Too bad the normal gameplay is so fast and spastic because it sure looks beautiful when it is slowed down during the replays. The custom characters are also noteworthy as far as graphics go because they look really, really good.
The sound isn’t really anything special. Muffled punch sounds and mediocre voice work are the name of the game here.
Bottom Line
