When EA Sports announced FaceBreaker, an arcade title centered on boxing, most of us didn’t spend much time thinking about the arcade bit. If you’re expecting the popular sports game developer to hand out anything in the league of the Fight Night series you’ve been thrown a curveball of a game that’s essentially a fighter polished up with all the bells, whistles and gimmicks of the world of boxing.
Not to say that it’s a bad thing as games under the fighting genre always manage to be fun with enough originality and a healthy dose of game modes thrown into the mix. A peek into what’s in store will have you know that this game has a little more to offer under its cell shaded “cartoony” image. But read on and decide whether it’ll stand a strong contender against what’s already been done.
Cheap shots (and who’s calling them)!
Not all’s fair fighting in this one. You get a break from all the rules with over the top moves, character specific to a diverse cast of loony brawlers. Take for instance, Molotov who gets a one up by using explosives in the ring or the smooth talking Iceman whose moves are served as chilled as his catch phrases.
The list goes on but they all broadly have either an offensive or defensive approach in their fighting style. Stripping it down to the basic combat system, you get to choose how you totally waste your opponent starting out with the usual quick punches, cleverly timing them, and then going ballistic with the combo system. Dealing attacks will have you use just four buttons.
Two for the high and low punches respectively, a third carries one of those infamous power strikes, while a fourth handles the throws (see what I mean by arcade fighter). Further, a quick learning curve will have you know this all comes down to dropping either one of four ‘breakers’ (as the game calls it), ground, sky, bone and face, all governed by a meter that builds up.
Where timing is essential, stringing together moves to land one of these will give you the upper hand in matters of causing some serious permanent damage, which is quite frankly what everyone’s playing for. So without further adieu let’s move onto the… Face breaking!
No prizes for guessing this is the main point in the game. As mentioned, you get to land breakers, and as soon as your opponents down you, go straight on to unleash you finisher and well, break his face. Now while some would seek cheap thrills disfiguring faces from the games character roster, another imaginative bunch think of how satisfying it would be to take out stress in all facebreaker glory on someone loathed in real life.
Think about it. Someone annoying? Your boss? That pushover from your class? The game’s answer to just that, is the customizable character feature which packs a good amount of options -60+ sliders, a full color palette and a closet full of costumes, but most importantly, allows you to upload any face onto the character from existing photo shots (just like the Photo Game Face feature introduced with last year’s Tiger Woods game).
If you’re the type to steer clear from grudges you can still have fun by creating unusual bouts by uploading pictures of celebrities and the like. The possibilities are endless.
Where and how it all goes down?
While there are only few arenas up for preview, it’s all basically confined to a ring. But you’ve been warned this ones a fighter, so expect just that with the camera angles and the ring is just thrown in to add to the pseudo boxing image along with the scantily clad women holding up the round numbers to name another.
Moving through the gameplay modes, it’s all been done. The main mode is the Brawl For it All. This is the basic arcade mode where you choose your fighter, work your way up and, stand to win belts and unlockables. The obvious multiplayer versus mode comes under the name Couch Royale and with the “straight to the fun” aspect this game strives for, expect most value to come out of quick multiplayer bouts with friends.
The way each bout is designed is also quite simple. Three is the number of rounds in a single bout as well as the number of times you need to knock out your opponent. If no ones managed a knock out then it’s onto sudden death and that means the first person to finally get the knock out wins.
The Glory!
If beating your opponent’s faces to a pulp wasn’t enough, you even get to make a big deal of it. There’s a trophy room where you get to mount heads of defeated opponents but don’t get too excited, it’s just a trophy and there’s no real head ripping involved (Mortal Kombat anyone?). If you think you’ve dealt one hell of a beat down then upload it for all to see online at EA Sports World and those custom characters you create can be uploaded too. Neat.
FaceBreaker seems more the type you’d pick up and play right away with its no-brainer controls and more focus on the fun elements. Still, let’s hope it packs a good punch and doesn’t lack depth like the “tried it once and you’ve tried everything” issue that plagues a growing list of fighters.
- By Jash Singh Reen