FaceBreaker for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

It's rare that I immediately realize that a game is fundamentally flawed and effectively broken, but Facebreaker unfortunately meets those criteria. To me, a difficult game can be extremely satisfying - you slowly get better as the game punishes you for playing poorly and rewards you for playing well. Ninja Gaiden Black is a perfect example of this - always hard and seldom cheap.

Facebreaker, however, is a game where improvement in the basic gaming mechanics are punished - the AI simply ramps up the difficulty if you are doing too well. The only way of beating the AI opponents seems to be finding an attack combination that the fighter is weak against and spamming it. This way of gaming worked and was enjoyable for Punch-Out, but you cannot recapture the greatness of that game simply by updating the art style and aping a now-trite gameplay gimmick.
Balance and game play issues that should have been ironed out ruin what might should have been an enjoyable single-player game and shoddy online connectivity made it impossible for me to complete a single online match.

EA is a company that is known for rushing "products" out before they are ready, and it really shows how damaging it can be when you play a game like this. The company is capable of putting out quality titles (Skate being a stellar example), but most fail to live up to their potential - and that is something that you will always face when dealing with a company that would rather release a game on-time and broken than late and polished.