Facebreaker K.O. Party (Wii) Review

Since the inception of the Wii and its motion control scheme, many have been attempting to adapt the platform to emulating real life sports and games. While Wii Sports did a good job at exemplifying the potentials of motion controlled mini games including the popular boxing game, the latest boxing outing on Wii from EA Freestyle ignores the potentials of the Wii control system and instead plays out as an arcade style party game filled with chaotic button mashing and a control scheme with no resemblance to real life boxing.

A lack of realism in no way signifies a poor title and, while at times too frenetic for its own good, Facebreaker K.O. Party is a decent fighting game once you get to know the ropes. Featuring twelve different quirky characters, including a monkey and a robot with their own lines of dialogue, and fully destructible face structures, theres a decent bit of comedic action to find in the variety of single and multi player game modes.

Facebreaker implements a little of the technical aspects of boxing, requiring some focus on the opponents movements and advances requiring certain reversal techniques and critical timing, but the action is far too fast paced to realistically treat in a serious manner. The control scheme has some nice touches with being able to build up a combo to finish a quick fight or unleash powerful special abilities, but the way high and low attacks must be countered with a high or low defense demands a reflex time impossible between two human players leaving most attacks down to a 50% chance of hitting, dependent on your opponent blocking high or low.

The control scheme definitely has a learning curve to begin with and the in-game tutorials do little to help with ambiguous text instructions on each command. Fortunately the arcade mode can be played in practice where the CPU opponent can be controlled between defensive or offensive stances for a good chance to train. The CPU in single player is quite varied in difficulty, giving the lone gamer something to chew through, if only it werent in such sporadic spikes throughout the tournaments, the difficulty may be a little easier to grasp.

Parrying an opponents attacks is the key to controlling a game of Facebreaker, where a boxer can simply grab their enemys incoming attack and with the right timing respond with a fierce blow. Simple jab punches are done with a shake of either Wii Remote or Nun Chuck for right or left while holding either controller upwards before a jab will charge it; a technique generally used for all attacks considering it can only fail as a basic jab. The block ability is set to the Z button and like the jab option its generally used as a fall back on the superior option of the powerful parry thats performed by holding the Nun-Chuck up before the Z button. In another attempt to implement the Wii controls, a player knock out in single player mode starts a bird shooting mini game used for restoring health that is infinitely frustrating and poorly designed, simple, and just breaks the chaotic nature of the game.

With enough connecting hits and an impenetrable defence, a boxers breaker combo can be built up through 4 stages up to Facebreaker, a final attack that instantly knocks out an opponent and ends the fight. Its a tricky part of the Facebreaker formula that leaves a player gambling between continuing a potentially fatal combo or spoiling what could already be unleashed as a powerful blow.
Playing with friends is essentially the focus of this party based title with most of the hidden characters and arenas easily unlocked in one play through of the single player tournament. Single player does hold some attention with an easy and harder series of belts to win for each competitor but theyre all played out in the same order of opponents and eventually grow tiresome.

There is some fun to be had in testing the range of CPU skill in the tournament and arcade single player modes but the multiplayer only modes Team Knock Out and Punch-O-Matic add a little longevity to anyone with a few friends and an extra controller set. Punch-O-Matic is actually quite uninspired and grows old fast with its simple mini games based on special condition matches, or repeats of the dreaded bird shooting mini games. Team Knock Out is similar to arcade and follows the same game rules while allowing players to choose 3 fighters to progressively fight 1v1 matches until an entire team is knocked out.

Essentially Facebreaker K.O. Party is all about arcade styled frenetic boxing matches with overdone characters and combos, excessive finishing moves and wild button mashing. When facing an easier CPU opponent a logical structure to the gameplay is present but when playing multiplayer or against tougher opponents the action becomes far too frenetic and incoherent, leaving much of the fight down to pure chance on a parry or a hit. If youre not looking for anything too serious or technical and like the sound of combos, big hits and a lot of button mashing, then Facebreaker K.O. Party may fit alongside Wii Sports on the shelf. More serious sports fans shouldnt expect anything deeper here than found in Nintendos Wii Sports bundled with the Wii.