A well-built fighting game can be a thing of beauty, but all too often it seems that good fighting games are more the result of luck than careful planning and execution. I've played and enjoyed dozens of fighting games over the years, but my enjoyment has always been limited to the visceral fast-paced thrill provided by the game, as opposed to the more enduring appreciation I develop for strategy games like Civilization IV or well-told stories like Indigo Prophecy. Face breaker, however, has turned that convention on its ear, by giving me a thrilling, fast-paced fighting experience which is grounded in rock-solid game principles that can be easily articulated. For that accomplishment, it's quite possibly my favorite fighting game of all time.
Unfortunately Facebreaker does fall prey to a few conventional pitfalls, and at least one shocking instance of poor taste, but overall its strengths make up for any weaknesses.
Gameplay
Although Facebreaker has a boxing motif, it is 100% fighting game. Damage your opponent's healthbar down to zero to score a knockdown. Earn three knockdowns to win the match. The game resets your positions at the start of each of three 90 second rounds, and if nobody has won the game by the end of the third round you go into a "sudden death" mode where the next knockdown wins the fight. Players regenerate health after each knockdown, between rounds, and regenerate health at a modest clip whenever their health is in the red zone.
This structure to the matches means that both players are in a potential winning position for the entire match. One player or another can pull ahead, but things generally stay relatively even. You score a knockdown against me, I come back with full health and you're already in the red. If you pull ahead two knockdowns to zero I can play defense until sudden death and try to take you out all at once. Since health regenerates when you are in the red (and between rounds) stalling for time is very much to the advantage of the player who is behind. You need to be aggressive to win rounds, but you don't need to be consistently aggressive.
Now that we understand the structure of the match, let's look at the mechanics of dealing (and avoiding) damage. Facebreaker is played with the four face buttons. A button throws low punches, while X throws high punches. These punches are incredibly quick and responsive, and you can throw them all day without interruption. So your basic attacks feel great. Holding either button pulls your arm back high or low, and charges up a "hook" - which is just a more damaging high or low attack.
But here is the first glimpse of genius - charging a high hook also leans your torso back, such that you'll dodge any incoming high attacks. Charging a low hook lets you dodge low attacks. So offense and defense combine on the same button, which is also the button you use for your basic attacks. These two buttons account for about 80% of the things you'll do in the game, so it's important to appreciate how rich the fighting experience is with just two inputs. I said that the basic punches are quick and responsive, and that they can be thrown in quick succession. In most games, throwing multiple quick attacks is a sure method to success, because you prevent your opponent from responding. This is the root of "combos" in fighting games - you prevent your opponent from responding. But in Facebreaker you always have an option available - you can dodge. This means that throwing quick attacks is sort of like playing a two-state Rock Paper Scissors - it's pretty hard to hit your opponent more that just a couple of times before they successfully dodge.
This basic flow gives the fights a very rhythmic, momentum-based feeling. Players tend to just trade blows one-for-one, but every few seconds someone will get on a roll and land 4-5 punches without getting dodged. This is pleasing, but would tend to mean that nobody ever wins a match. The two remaining buttons correct that, but it is important to realize that this essential back-and-forth trading of jabs, hooks, and dodges makes up the meat of the experience. Because you can't really get "good" at Rock Paper Scissors, even new players will be relatively competitive at the basic two-button game.
The last two buttons are throw (B button) and Heavy Attack (Y button). These are both a bit under whelming by themselves, but they are magnificent additions to the core game experience. Throws deal no damage, but they are undodgeable, hit fast, and radically change the pacing of the match. When you are not feeling the rhythm, a quick throw gives you a chance to reset. It also reverses your position with your opponent, which is disorienting for them and often gives you the initiative for the next engagement. The Y button throws a heavy attack which cannot be blocked or dodged, but deals only slightly more damage than a jab. Heavy attacks are slower to execute (though longer range) than jabs, which means that an aggressive opponent can jab you out of your heavy attack before it lands.
More importantly though is the fact that your heavy attack powers up as you land consecutive jabs on your opponent. Specifically, every two jabs you gain a "bar" of heavy attack energy. Each bar roughly doubles the damage of your heavy attack, and a four-bar Heavy attack is a "Facebreaker" which is an instant-win. So when you find yourself in a streak of jabs, the temptation grows very quickly to start throwing heavy attacks for massive damage. Of course this just gives your opponent more opportunity to reverse things on you, but that's where the excitement and tension of the match comes in.
So now instead of a two-state RPS game, we have 4 states, with one becoming more powerful in some situations. This turns out to be just the perfect amount of options to juggle. Instead of a combinatorial explosion of attacks and responses, both players have a specific, balanced suite of options to employ. The matches are fast, the victories are always exciting, and there's no such thing as a cheap move or unbalanced combo to exploit.
Having said that, let's talk about the cheap moves. Each fighter has exactly one special attack, which is just one of the basic attacks amped up to be more useful than it normally is. Steve is the clearest example of this - because his throw makes him vanish, then reappear and often stun his opponent. Steve's throw is simply better than the throws other players have.
Is this a huge problem? Well it's a bit surprising at first, and might cause you to lose a match. But there is a simple counter - just learn to punch him out of his throw. Also, he can only stun you if he throws you into the ropes, so keeping the fight closer to the middle means that even if he does throw you, you don't take any damage or lose the initiative. Once you know what to expect, this is no different from the Heavy Attacks growing in power. In a similar vein, the AI can seem quite punishing, but in reality each fighter (when controlled by the AI) has specific strengths and weaknesses that you need to adapt to. It makes the single player mode a bit more challenging than one might expect, but it's by no means unfair. Romeo and Kiriko, for example, will block or parry 100% of your initial attacks, but then always respond in a predictable pattern which you can yourself reverse and then lay down the pain.
I've spent lots of time praising the fight mechanics, because I honestly think that they deserve recognition for their amazing accomplishments. But now I need to switch gears and mention other aspects of the game.
Facebreaker falls into a few standard ruts, the biggest of which is unlockable characters. Nearly half of your roster needs to be unlocked, and the way to do it is by playing through the single player modes. The problem with this system is that it tends to lead to one person practicing the game for hours and hours, and then trying to play it with his friends after his experience level far exceeds theirs. The ability to unlock characters in multiplayer is sorely needed here. Facebreaker is hardly alone in this shortcoming, but it's worth noting. (I have heard reports that multiplayer can unlock characters, but my specific experience was that only single-player games unlocked characters. If there is an alternate multiplayer method for unlocking characters, it's demonstrably slower than the single player method by at least an order of magnitude.)
Secondly, the characters you play as still fall into the "I'm a stereotype based on a country of origin" style established in Street Fighter 2. I didn't find the characters especially offensive, but it's clear that they were based more on well-established stereotypes than on original designs.
Following the trend EA has been establishing, you can import photos and design your own custom fighter to play as. Or so I hear, because I didn't try out this feature at all. Several other reviews out there make a big deal about this feature, but honestly it means nothing to me.
Finally, there is my major gripe with the game - the hyper sexualized girl who brings out the round identifying cards. Not only are her breasts falling out of her loose top, but the camera actually ignores her face entirely and zooms in on her ass, just to point out that she is a sex object. This character's inclusion in the game (she's not a fighter - she just carries the cards) really weakens the overall presentation dramatically. The fighting characters are a bit goofy in a nice way, but the quick tight mechanics keep the game grounded in very serious territory. The female fighters are attractive, but not overtly sexualized. But then they throw away all that goodwill with a juvenile round card girl. She's not funny, or a satirical commentary on boxing standards, or anything else redeeming. You can skip her by pressing a button once she shows up, but that also generally means skipping the entertaining intro poses of your fighter.
This single negative probably reduced my overall score of the game by a full point. It really does not fit with the rest of the game, and I'm frankly surprised that she wasn't cut before the game shipped. Her inclusion gives the impression that the developers are trying to draw attention away from the rest of the game, which makes everything seem worse. I'd like to believe that the talented team which made such a great game would have had better sense.
Graphics
The graphics, especially the characters, are simply beautiful. The art direction of the entire project does a fantastic job of realizing a next-gen (or current-gen - these names confuse me) vision of hyper stylized fighting. The colors are bold and beautiful, the lighting and specular effects are clean, and the texture work is top-notch. The environments are fairly pedestrian, especially compared to the fighters, but that could almost be intentional as a device to keep the focus where it belongs. I was once distracted by the brief appearance of an alien in the audience, so maybe I've misapprehended their goals.
Of course, the real test for visual quality in a fighting game is not the models - it's the animations. And Facebreaker has some of the best fighting animations I've ever seen. Characters have very distinct personality that comes out through their movements - their attack styles are unique, and it is immediately clear whether an attack is High, Low, or Heavy. Some of this is probably more properly attributed to the team who designed the fight mechanics, but I couldn't help but marvel at the virtuoso presentation of the combat moves.
I did once encounter some great ugliness, though it was more a physics glitch than an art problem - I once threw an opponent into the ropes, and the ropes responded by stretching off to infinity over my head - leaving me with a boxing ring that Escher would have been proud of. The game crashed shortly after that. Some people find any visual or game-breaking glitches to be a deal breaker when consider a purchase, but I think one crash in more than 200 games played is well within the realm of reasonability.
Audio
The audio experience of Facebreaker is perfect. Attacks and grunts have real grit behind them, music underscores the action very well, and the voice work for the characters is distinct and funny. I especially like the gaps in the audio which help to highlight openings which you should take advantage of - when you dodge an attack there is a distinct audio clue which focuses your attention in a wonderful way.
As I've discussed already, the game is all about rhythm, momentum, and anticipation. The audio designers at Team Fusion were clearly working from the same design page and did a stellar job of reinforcing those major themes. Audio is also a major component of striking the right balance between humor and earnest focus, and the excellent all-around sound helps to bring that delicate balance out with panache. Although I've taken some issue with the stereotypes characterizations of some of the fighters, their voice work within those constraints is top-notch.
Overall
Facebreaker is, quite simply, one of the best ever examples of a well-designed game. Everything in it is deliberate, cohesive, and professionally executed. It is unfortunate that Facebreaker fell into a few of the classic ruts for fighting games, but that's unkind, because the reality is that Facebreaker, more than any other fighting game, has succeeded in breaking out of most of the ruts that have held fighting games back for so long.
Many reviews have been harsh because of a perceived failure of the game to deliver on expectations. But the simple truth is that most fighting games deliver on familiarity, but fail to provide compelling gameplay. Facebreaker reverses this trend, and it deserves nothing but praise for doing so.
Just give me a sequel without that atrocious girl.
