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Last month, Gamervision had the opportunity to review the latest boxing game for this generation’s consoles, Don King Presents Prizefighter, and, unfortunately, it wasn’t very good.  There were some good ideas presented, but the execution of the actual boxing mechanics was just short of dreadful, and EA’s 2-year old Fight Night Round 3 maintained its spot as the best boxing game out there.  We still have little to no info about the planned fourth Fight Night installment, but at least EA is offering us a different take on the “sweet science” with Facebreaker, developed by EA Canada.  We got a chance to film a bit of the game in action at EA’s E3 exhibit.  Take a look:

The influence of Midway’s 1999 hit, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, is evident in every frame of the game.  Much like that classic title, Facebreaker eschews traditional, realistic boxing mechanics in favor of a cartoonish style, crazy punches and colorful, goofy, stereotypical characters.  Whereas Ready 2 Rumble had Boris “The Bear” Knokimov, a musclebound, hard-punching Russian fighter in red trunks, Facebreaker has Molotov, a musclebound, hard-punching Russian fighter in red trunks.  See the difference there?  Seriously though, the game has even been described by EA people as a kind of “spiritual successor” to the Ready 2 Rumble series.  This is not a bad thing, per se, as R2R was one of the best boxing titles ever released, and Facebreaker has taken the best parts of that series, beefed them up, seriously jacked up the visuals and even added som new features to deliver what looks to be a fun, fast-paced arcade boxing experience. 

In addition to the wacky characters, there are a plethora of over-the-top punches and other attacks you can use to beat the holy hell out of your opponent.  In this brief video alone, we see examples of punches called Groundbreakers, Airbreakers, Haybreakers and Bonebreakers.  Each character has their own unique versions of these punches, as well as your standard high and low punches, that fit their personalities.  There’s also, of course, the facial deformation technology at work in this video.  We can see, especially when the fighter is launched into the air toward the camera, that jaw lines and noses bend with repeated attacks, and even bruises can be made under the eyes and all around the face.  The effect is generally pretty cool looking, often resulting in hilariously misshapen faces at the end of matches.  Sadly, we didn’t get to see the facial customization mod in play, but all reports indicate that it works well.  It will be interesting to see how the deformations look with real people’s faces involved.

Facebreaker also utilizes an interesting health bar method.  Each fighter starts with a green bar of energy.  Once the green bar is gone, the red bar underneath it becomes your health bar.  The green bar doesn’t regenerate during rounds, but the red one does if you avoid punches for a few seconds.  In practice, this means that unlike in many boxing games, you won’t be able to take a bunch of punches, then deliver a single jab which puts your opponent at zero HP.  In Facebreaker, you have to pound on the guy until he finally fades.  It’s a logical, practical idea that should work its way into every fighting game on the market in some way or another.

There were some balancing issues, and skilled players will be able to take advantage of them to deliver 20 second knockouts, but hopefully these will be addressed before the game’s launch on September 5.  It may not be the boxing sim we’re all waiting for, and with all the groin kicks, flying attacks and general silliness, it may not be much of a boxing game at all, but it does look like a lot of goofy fun, especially for two players head-to-head.

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