The Clinic- XBLA's Live Chat (Instant chat with other online members)

[Mush xx]

One fist away from a facelift!

Created by the same team as Fight Night Round 3, EA Sport's Facebreaker has a cartoony feel to it and the object is to to knock several rounds out of your opponent's face. With the face generation feature and arcade style fighting it certainly is a far cry from the more serious Fight Night Round 3.

You want to fight? you are going to need a boxer, create a boxer gives you several options, you can download a photo from EA's servers, use your Xbox Live Vision camera to put your own face on the boxer or start from one of their preset existing boxers.

Using the vision camera is a little tricky to align your face, but you need to do the front side and sides of your face. Once you are happy with the position of your face in the square you then mark out your features and click generate face. The generation process takes a while but EA Sports have provided you with some funny mixed up slogans to read whilst you wait or you can go make yourself a drink, search the internet, whatever you want to do while you are waiting. After it has generated you can now begin to build your boxer, choosing body type, name, costume, muscle, hair and a ton of advanced options, including skin tone, chin, eyes, cheeks, jaw, mouth etc. So you could create The Incredible Hulk if you like, as the skin tone sliders enable you to choose any colour. Once you are happy with your creation it's time to fight! or you could go upload your newly created boxer to EA's servers or download someone else's.

You can jump straight into a fight using the characters that are unlocked or your custom boxer or start a career to unlock more boxers, items and to collect the loser's heads in your trophy room. You do this by unlocking belts, which are made up in a series of fights, usually two, each with three rounds and a sudden death, eventually fighting the belt holder for the belt. Going through each character will unlock different things.

The boxer's moves are straight forward enough, with X and A being both high and low punches and also dodges, depending on whether you are hitting or being hit, Y to do Haymakers etc and right trigger to block. There are a large amount of moves, strong and light attacks, high and low dodges, high and low parrys. Hitting them again with a strong punch will go into moves like Skybreaker, Groundbreaker or Bone breaker. You can create combos will increase the strength of the punch. Whilst you can just go in and button bash, you won't last long, each boxer has its own unique style and will pummle you if you don't use block or parry against their hits, simulary they will break your combos with their parrys and dodges, causing you to start all over again building up your Facebreaker meter. The object is to build up your Facebreaker meter to pull off special moves and eventually land a Facebreaker on them. A Facebreaker will completely destroy your opponent's face, which ends the fight and provides you with a trophy of their head to place in your trophy room. The game is very fast paced and there is no room for just standing around taunting them, stun them and you can get punches in.

Facebreaker provides you with twelve characters to unlock. The characters each have their own unique style, stun move and look, Steve is an overweight Ninja and perhaps the funniest of them. The character's faces are amusing and at the end of the fight they look battered and bruised, with funny expressions.

Multiplayer wise, Facebreaker has an Xbox Live option, so you can challenge a friend to a match or find a random person to fight. There is also a place to keep the loser's heads as trophies. It also provides a survival mode for two - six players, where the winner stays on.

Facebreaker receives top marks for presentation, the boxers have been cleverly designed to look amusing, the menu screens are very clear, uncluttered and it has an in-built tutorial. In fact the whole game looks very good.

Facebreaker is a comical arcade boxing game, it is fast, furious and will make you laugh (or cry), but it's defiantly not a serious boxing game and perhaps hasn't got that lasting appeal that Fight Night Round 3 has. However, if you like a fast packed action fighting game you would probably enjoy this one.

6

[Fiery Beast]

i think that considerin this was done by the fnr3 team this game is a huge disapointment...

[Bank of Dank]

I second that, and I think Mush was overly generous with her score

[Mechanical R]

i think that considerin this was done by the fnr3 team this game is a huge disapointment...

I second that, and I think Mush was overly generous with her score

You guys have to remember, this is the Fifa Street of EA's boxing franchise (Fight Night).

Its not ment to be a serious fighting game, just a comical and casual game you can just get right into and play without having to get too technical or tactical. Its just one of those funner takes on sport games.

[Bank of Dank]

Yeah I know exactly what you mean I have or have owned all the Street franchise games, the unfortunate part about this one is that is no fun, they completely missed the target.