Having already been released on the Xbox 360, EA have tweaked with the formula and given Facebreaker a bit of Wii magic, but is it enough to make it a great fighter?

Facebreaker KO Party is an arcade boxing game more in the realm of those punch-bag games you get on the pier or at the funfair rather than the classic boxing games EA have brought us in the past. The idea of Facebreaker is to knock down your opponents as quick as possible, you have three 90 second rounds to achieve three knockdowns or one brutalising Facebreaker. The controls are very simple for a fighting game with you just punching using the Wii-mote and nunchuck. To use different punches you need to press B for a low attack or tilt the controllers in your hands to charge a punch. Though the initial button set up is very easy to get to grips with, the combos really make the game more interesting, most combos are the same no matter what character you use, you have a Facebreaker Meter at the bottom of the screen with four bars, for every bar you fill you can pull off a different special, you pull off combos by using two high or two low punches, if you follow this by a strong punch you then do a Bonebreaker, a Groundbreaker, a Skybreaker or the game winning Facebreaker.

Whilst the controls and very limited combos may put people off, the skill in this game is really found in the pattern of each fighter, its not a matter of just going in and hitting the opponent and using blocks, doing that will cause you to get beaten, very quickly. The first 30 minutes I had my ass handed to me on almost every fight, even on easy. The real skill is watching your opponent to learn the attacks, dodge and parry moves. The dodge moves are pulled off by holding either high or low punch and parry at the same time but also holding down the right trigger button. When an opponent dodges it will throw you out of rhythm, allowing them to start a combo on you, what you need to do here is counter their attack with another dodge or parry and continue building up your Facebreaker meter to hopefully finish the fight as quickly as possible. Once you have mastered this you can finish fights in less than 20 seconds.

There are twelve characters to play and unlock in Facebreaker, each with their own caricature-like personalities including Steve who is an asthmatic overweight Ninja who fights in an arcade or Ice who is a bit cooler and is better suited for beginner players. Each has their own signature stun move, like a smoke bomb, which gives the attacker a chance to gain the upper hand and get a few cheeky hits in before the opponent can recover themselves.

The idea of using the Wii controllers as gloves is fun for the first 5 minutes, but once you have beaten the first few characters your arms really start to ache and you start to notice that you don’t need to use both gloves to do alternate punches, which is a real shame. The idea of tilting the gloves to power up often backfires as most of the time you will charge up when you don’t want to, sometimes you get lucky and parry but other times you are just left open and you lose your combo’s. 

There are a few modes included in this game but in reality its a bit light, there is a practice mode and simple one on one mode, Brawl For It All is the main mode where you unlock new characters, the multiplayer TKO and Punch-O-Matic can have up to four players fighting in turn to be the best over a set number of matches. The multiplayer has a good party feel to it but is clearly set up for the newcomers who can win just by flailing their arms about to get as many punches in as possible.

Facebreaker is one of those games that takes ideas from many fighting genre’s and tries to make something of its own, and it very nearly does it. The collecting of heads as you pull off a Facebreaker is a cool addition and the characters look great as you pummel them, but in the end, fans of games like Soulcalibur and even Street Fighter may be left a bit disappointed by the lack of overall moves and the cumbersome controls.