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Review
The EA Sports team know what they're doing when it comes to making boxing games - you need only spend a few minutes playing Fight Night Round 3 to realise that. So, what in the name of all that is good were they thinking with FaceBreaker? No doubt you've probably seen the game lining the bargain buckets and clearance sales across the nation lately, and thought, "surely it can't be that bad for sub-£15?" It is. Trust me, it really is.
As you can probably tell from the cartoon-like graphics, this is far from a serious boxing game, and much more an "arcade" style title. The lack of an in-ring referee and the fact that there are no 10 counts for knock-downs further confirms this. It's marketed under the EA Sports Freestyle range (formerly known as EA Sports BIG), which recently added the downloadable title 3-on-3 NHL Arcade to its catalogue. Looking back, perhaps they should have taken the same non-disc route for this one.
The aim of the game is to knock your opponent down three times within the course of a 3-round fight. To do that, you must unleash a flurry of High and Low shots to your opponent, and then top it off with a Throw or Breaker shot. As you successfully land with punches, a bar will fill up in the corner. The higher it goes, the more powerful your Breaker shot will be. A good Breaker strike should send your opponent flying up into the air, with the opportunity to get in another couple of hits when they come down. Did I mention that this isn't a serious simulation?
While you shouldn't have any trouble filling a couple of blocks on your Breaker bar, it does lower of its own accord, and all it takes is one punch from your opponent to drop it down to zero. Trouble is, these guys don't exactly hold back, even on the easiest difficulty setting. What's more, they're most likely to hit you just as you're going for the Breaker punch, thus rendering your set-up shots virtually useless. It gets even worse when some of the larger-than-life fighters can actually teleport around the ring to avoid your shots.
With dodging mapped to the same buttons as your punches, and blocking barely effective, fights soon boil down to frantic button mashing, with the hope that you'll get your Breaker shot in before they do. Both fighters have a health bar, which starts off green, turns red and then empties, with a knock-down coming when it's completely clear. The bars will slowly refill when you're not being hurt, but a red bar won't turn green again unless a knock-down occurs, or you reach the end of the round.
If, at the end of 3 rounds, a fighter hasn't achieved 3 knock-downs, it goes into sudden death, where the first player to get any kind of knock-down is declared the winner. This can be extremely unfair if you've dominated the fight, just missing out on your final score, and wind up getting beat by a lucky combo. Then, I suppose that's no different to a pummelled fighter getting a lucky punch in a real boxing match.
