Facebreaker: Fight Night, Punchout, and Peter Moore

Tag : casual socks

The death of the Fight Night series was something that truly disappointed me. EA Chicago hadreally come into its own with Fight Night 3 , offering a daring mix of fast-paced but sim-minded action with agreat fisticuff engine. Hoping to carry the torch into the futureis EA Freestyle's Facebreaker , a game that the developers on site at EA's E3 booth described asa mix between Punch-out and Fight Night that manages to satisfy casual and hardcore gaming fanssimultaneously.
On the surface, Facebreaker is an over-the-top button-masher. The heavily stylized charactersare dripping with personality and attitude, each a unique beastunto itself. Whether you take to the ring as hard-and-fastmuscleman Ice or the clinically insane sock-puppet-wielding Socks,you'll find a huge array of character-specific moves and animationsthat truly distinguish the characters. But it's in the combatsystem that the game really comes into its own, as, like so manygreat fighters, the game is easy to learn but hard to master.


Basically, you've got a high punch, low punch, power attack, andthrow. You combine these different moves to string together basiccombos. A four-piece combo meter builds as you land successive,unanswered blows. When you reach a plateau on the combo meter,you're able to unleash a strong "breaker move" completewith a special animation and, in many cases, a chance to juggle theenemy for one powerful hit. Should you string together ten punchesunanswered, you can unleash a character-specific"Facebreaker" which is essentially a one-hit kill. It'sentirely possible just to button mash and enjoy yourself onoffense.
The defense is where the more interesting mechanics lie. By holdingdown the R1 button, the character stands and blocks. You'll stilltake damage while you're blocking, but you can mitigate flurrieseffectively. The real way to play defense, though, is to dodge andparry, as in Fight Night .
You can dodge a given attack by charging up an attack of the sameheight: holding high will allow you to dodge high. When you'reblocking, if you press either the high or low attack you'll do ahigh or low parry. The timing here takes practice, but two talentedplayers will find themselves engaged in a battle of wits anddexterity befitting some hardcore tournament fighter.
My opening match with the developer proved frantic. I'd beenwatching other people play to get a feel for the combat and so Iwent in hoping to win. We ended up getting into a super parry warthat created so much tension, the eventual victor drew audienceapplause. The combat feels amazingly responsive: this isn't justsome Ready to Rumble clone.


The game features a lot of other cool content beyond the coreengine of Facebreaker : a comprehensive belt-based single player experience, a hugecharacter creation engine which allows you to bring your face intothe game and tweak it with over 60 sliders before uploading it,sharing it, and downloading others' creations online (pictured isthe devs' take on Peter Moore), and a bunch of party modes forquick controller-passing play. I went in wanting to hate the flashyarcade boxer, but I came out floored. This is one to watch.