Facebreaker Audition Videos

EA Sports has released some new videos promoting Facebreaker through character “audition” videos. Molotov, Voodoo, Steve, Socks, Spin, and Brick are featured. As of yet there is no footage of the monkey, which I amuse myself by thinking up the possibilities of combining with Photo Face.

Also some more “celebrity” additions to Facebreaker are now known. Spencer and Heidi of The Hills fame and the members of From First to Last join Kim Kardashian and Peter Moore. Considering the significance of them it’s better to think of these characters as a bonus rather than how EA is building an entire game around so-called celebs with Celebrity Sports Showdown on the Wii.

Continue on to view the videos.

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Facebreaker Discussion in the Forum

While the demo for Facebreaker offered a unique opportunity to try out the Photo Face feature, ultimately it was only a snippet of what to expect from the full game. While I started to see the strategical nature emerge after multiple play throughs, being limited to 90 seconds of intense gameplay wasn’t the ideal way settle into the full experience.

Todd Batty, who previously headed up the highly acclaimed NBA Street: Homecourt, is the lead designer for Facebreaker. He has expressed a desire to interact directly with the community and has now started posting in the forum. There you can leave any questions, talk strategy, or discuss anything else with him as it relates to Facebreaker!

Head into the forum or to this thread directly to take part in the discussion.

Facebreaker Demo Impressions and Videos

With the arrival of the Facebreaker demo comes the first opportunity to try out the fast paced action title that EA is banking on to be a hit. While the game looked to have potential as a throwback to the arcade boxing games of the past there really was no way to judge whether the game would truly until being able to play first hand. Make no mistake about it though this is more a fighting game than a boxing game and is not meant to be a replacement for Fight Night as Round 4 will be out next year.

Continue on for my thoughts on the demo as well as a handful of videos including two as “The Rock” who I created through Photo Face.

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Fun with Facebreaker Photo Face

While the Facebreaker demo gives you the chance to experience the fast-paced fighting in addition to that it provides the ability to try out the Photo Game Face feature. Here is what you need to do after downloading the demo.

• Upload images to your EA Sports World account. You can also take pictures using the Xbox Live Vision camera.

• In the Facebreaker demo go to Create Boxer and select to download front picture. It will pull the front picture from EASW.

• Set the markers to the corresponding places on the face.

• If you have a side picture also download that and set the markers.

• Generate the face (this takes about 20 minutes)

• Then you can mess around with the editing options. For the demo you can only choose a body from the three fighters included. But you can select the hair, costume, and so on. There are a TON of sliders for adjusting the look of the face also.

• Save your creation and then upload it to EA Sports World to show off! When the game releases you’ll be able to download them!

It’ll be real interesting to see what people come up with. Given that some of the different categories that can be uploaded to include robots and aliens it’s fair to expect there will be some very unique entries. Already the most bizarre one seems to be a “fish” creation and the best ones may be of The Joker or Obama.

I ran through a few different creations but with the number of options given to adjust how the face looks there will be people out there who can come up with some great representations…surely better than I did this evening. Continue on to see the first four that I created: Pasta Padre, HHH (really like how this one turned out), Christian Bale, and Mike Holmgren (my personal favorite so far).

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Madden 09 and Facebreaker Demos Now Available

The demos for EA Sports Madden NFL 09 and Facebreaker are now available for download for the 360 and should both be coming this afternoon for the PS3. Generally the PSN is updated around 3pm PT. It turns out Madden came one day earlier than expected as it had been advertised for August 1st.

The Madden 09 demo features a run through of the virtual trainer and then the “Madden Moment” controlling the Giants on a last minute drive in the Super Bowl. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments or in this forum thread.

The Facebreaker demo offers a minute of action with the choice of three different characters as well as the ability to upload your face into the game for placement on them. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments or in this forum thread.

Check back this evening for videos and impressions on the two demos. I’ll be doing a breakdown of the old demo vs the new demo vs the community event build from late May for Madden.

Facebreaker Demo Coming Soon

The demo for Facebreaker is expected to hit XBL and PSN on Thursday July 31st. Considering the arcade style fighting game doesn’t release until the first week of September that is unexpectedly early.

One round of action (90 seconds) will be featured in the demo, with three playable characters and two arenas to choose from. The best part though is that they’ve included the ability to upload a face. While you’ll be limited to placing a face on one of the included characters, with the full game that will expand to allow full character creation.

Facebreaker in action

Facebreaker has seemingly gone from an intriguing concept to uncertainty as of late. The interest in an arcade style boxing game is out there, but the character profile videos have been somewhat offputting. In this video Peter Moore goes up against Geoff Keighley as themselves, in the process displaying the first realtime gameplay footage.

From this video I definitely feel more encouraged about the game in general. The photo face feature is going to be especially fun to use along with the ability to download created fighters that have been made by other people. This video seems to demonstrate how that will enhance the enjoyment of the game compared to just using the characters that have been supplied.

Continue on to watch the video.

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Prizefighter X-Play preview

A new video preview of Don King Presents: Prizefighter has been posted as it was featured on G4’s X-Play. I’m going to withhold my personal thoughts on the gameplay footage, so go ahead and watch it and leave your thoughts in the comments. I’ve also added a quote from the Prizefighter producer below which came out of a preview today and was pretty interesting to see.

At this point if the game is going to make its release it is at least in the certification process, if not already having gone gold. Continue on to view the video.

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Facebreaker character video: Kiriko

EA Sports has released another trailer featuring a character from Facebreaker. This one puts the spotlight on the first female character who previously was only seen in the background of some of the other videos. Kirkio joins Ice, Molotov, Romeo, Voodoo, and Steve as the ones that have been featured to date. It appears that every Monday will bring a new character video.

So far I’m not really caring much for these characters. Luckily the photo face feature should fill in nicely if that remains to be the case as more are shown. Continue on to view the video.

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Random topics and poll for today

• Gametap has an early look at Fight Night Round 4 through interviews with producer Dean Richards as well as Lennox Lewis and Sugar Ray Leonard. You can check that out here. Among the topics discussed is the new physics engine, inside fighting and glancing blows.

• An astute poster over at Operation Sports has uncovered that Ben Brinkman, lead producer of the last two years of the MLB 2K series, has moved on to a new job and is no longer with 2K Sports. After the news their NHL series has moved from 2K LA/Kush to the Visual Concepts studio it seems that the MLB series may be following the same path of much needed reinvention.

• The list of achievements for NCAA Football 09 is out and can be found here. Some tie into new features such as the online dynasty, custom sounds, and mascot celebrations though the majority are gameplay based.

• EA Sports has come out and stated that “hardcore fans should not fear our new casual sports approach” in a new article here. Initial concern over this from the community seems to have dwindled as the upcoming releases are providing accessibility by adding options and personalizing difficulty levels based on how each individual’s skills stack up. They’ve also branched out with the “Freestyle” label to keep a clear distinction between types of games.

• The community asked for an option in Madden 09 to turn off the celebration light squares in the end zone after a TD and it has since been added. You’ll still be able to activate the celebrations by going to the different areas, they just won’t be displayed with the light squares.

• Some info on SCEA’s NBA 09 came out. The game will be adding in both a franchise mode and “The Life” mode. There will also be “team progression”, expanded commentary, and the return of “NBA Replay” mode which is a really cool idea if only there was reason to play the game over 2K or Live. Hopefully this year SCEA’s series steps up significantly in quality and depth.

• Continue leaving suggestions for things to look for at the community event coming up. For anything related to Madden/Head Coach/NCAA leave them here, and for uniform specific issues in Madden those can be left here.

The poll asks whether you feel a rewrite from the ground up and/or studio move would be an encouraging development for MLB 2K9.