FaceBreaker

October 19,2008 - Ah, cartoony boxing. It’s always a joy. One can have a lot of fun taking over-exaggerated characters and making them beat up on each other. The simplicity about it makes a game that much more enjoyable. Remember Ready 2 Rumble Boxing? Great game. EA’s Facebreaker? A fully loaded pile of garbage.

But with a simplistic style and a lack of seriousness, what could have gone wrong with Facebreaker? Well, for starters, as simplistic as it is, the mechanics make it incredibly horrifying to play through. Starting off with medium difficulty is a big mistake.

Unlike Ready 2 Rumble and the even older Punch Out series, there is no sense of balance. The opposing boxers move at irritatingly faster speeds despite their weight or other physical traits. It would be acceptable to see a small, lightweight boxer speeding around your larger, bulbous character. But a fat boxer prancing around your lightweight boxer? Suspension of disbelief can only go so far. Everybody has their own special attacks too which seem to work far better for your opponent than it ever will for you.

Even using the same character as you will be facing doesn’t even up the matching. Knocking down the difficulty won’t gain you too much leeway either. If you manage to make it past one of the opening boxers in tournament rounds, it seems the computer realizes that it’s losing and beefs up its defense, if only to make you feel like a fool for thinking wishfully.

The boxers themselves also lack any sort of creativity. Perhaps we have just seen it all before. You have a giant nerd of a boxer, the Hawaiian, the cool black guy, and so on. To make them feel that much less uninspired, they have alternative costumes. In an attempt to cover up the garbage, the developers threw in a scantily clad ring girl to show off during rounds. They even went to so far as to through in some boob-zooms. How titillating. You can, however, throw yourself into the game with the use of Xbox Live Vision or the PlayStation Eye. Or you could throw in a celebrity if you scan a picture.

Getting back to the mechanics, the button-mashing mentality of the game is horrendous. Rarely can you mash fast enough to make it effective. And if you are wondering, “then why don’t you strategize?” Well, that doesn’t work too much either. You have a couple basic attacks and once you through in the triggers, you can activate heavier attacks. Stringing together lands will let you land groundbreakers and aerial-based breaks, but getting the actual facebreaker is much harder. The facebreaker guarantees you a win with one hit.

Hitting the buttons becomes a painful chore in both a metaphorical and literal sense. Saying your hand will definitely cramp up is an understatement. After no more than 10 minutes of gameplay you will question why you are even bothering. Hand cramps from a game like Rock Band or Guitar Hero are heavenly compared to what you will feel here.

The chore extends throughout the rest of the game. Whether you are playing solo or multiplayer, nothing in the game leads to any sort of joy. Speaking of multiplayer, don’t bother. There won’t be anything but more depression when you realize basically nobody else is enjoying this either. But misery loves company so take a gander if you fancy. It goes get a little better playing a real person but it doesn’t improve beyond that.

Facebreaker’s graphics are pretty solid for a cartoony game. The cartoon aspect actually helps that out a lot. But it also gives some room to slack off a bit. The game’s soundtrack is completely forgettable, though.

So as you can tell, we really enjoyed this game. All it lacks is a major amount of quality and inspiration. We beg you, for the love of gaming, do what you can to spend your time on something more worthwhile.

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