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.

Many of the Facebreaker characters profiled

A recent TeamXbox preview of Facebreaker included profiles of many of the characters that will be included in the game. There are still some that they weren’t shown to them, however they are able to vaguely describe several that haven’t been seen in any of the screenshots or videos yet.

Personally I’m looking forward to the monkey, though I think overall I’m more interested in the potential of Photo Face than these characters. In total they were able to talk about 11 of them. You can read the full preview here.

Facebreaker preview and new screens

IGN has posted up a first look preview for Facebreaker to go along with some new screenshots which includes a previously never before seen British character. This is by far the most in-depth preview of the game and contains a lot of good information. You can read the full article here.

The gameplay, at its roots, is actually no more complicated than a game of rock-paper-scissors. There are light and heavy attacks that can be launched either high or low and then there’s the defense of parrying and dodging incoming strikes. Defensive moves beat light attacks, light attacks beat heavy because they’re quicker, and heavy attacks can penetrate someone’s defense. The real big shots come when you string together a series of light and heavy attacks to build the four levels of your breaker meter.

To me the most exciting news out of this is the ability to download created fighters as well as the uploading clips to EA Sports World. We already knew about the photo face feature which is sure to be fun to play around with, but the downloading of fighters and uploading of gameplay clips makes my anticipation of the game go up even more.

On top of that there are also a fighter creation tools that implement the Photo GameFace that we saw for the first time in last year’s Tiger Woods game. We were shown a model that was designed after Peter Moore and actually fit the part pretty well. You’ll also be able to download fighters that other players have made on their systems. You can download and save up to 30 at one time…You can also record clips from your fights and upload them for others to view online.

Facebreaker character video: Ice

EA Sports has released yet another character profile video for Facebreaker. This one features Ice, who had previously been seen in the general trailer and some of the earliest screenshots. Ice joins Romeo, Molotov, Steve, and Voodoo as the characters that have been revealed thus far. Continue on to view the video.

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Full website for Facebreaker launches

The full website for Facebreaker went live yesterday, replacing the blog-like structured site that had been in place since the game’s announcement in late January. A new character is going to debut every other week and while I have discussed it previously the site does confirm that the game will be releasing on September 3rd and for $50.

Though there isn’t really anything new right now it’ll be a place to check in on a regular basis as they’ve shown an active interest in the community and have frequently added new content. Character profiles with screenshots and videos along with producer blogs are currently the focus. The marketing push is only going to get stronger as this is the first title that will fall under the Freestyle label and EA seems to have high hopes for the successful launch of a new franchise.

Prizefighter gets hands-on and new videos

IGN has released six new video clips to go along with their updated hands-on of Don King Presents: Prizefighter. The full write-up can be found here.

The six videos cover different aspects of the game such as gameplay, arenas, training, and story mode. After its poor initial showing last week do these videos change your current opinion of the game? Continue on to view all six of them and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Prizefighter takes a slightly different approach to its mechanics by abandoning the tried and true right stick approach to punching, replacing it with a more traditional face button style. X defaults as your jab, Y is your straight punch, A is your left hook, B is your right hook with a combination of two buttons required to pull off an uppercut. In our few hours with Prizefighter the punching system was responsive and relatively fast-moving. Animations follow along accordingly and look as you’d expect, though things weren’t quite as responsive in our early build as we’d like to see.

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Facebreaker shows off two new characters

EA Sports has released some new screenshots from Facebreaker featuring a character going by the name Voodoo along with a new trailer which puts the spotlight on Steve. While there has been an inordinate amount of screenshots and trailers released for the game thus far they have generally centered around Romeo and to a lesser extent Molotov. The original trailer gave glances at a few more characters to come but this is the first time they’ve really shifted the focus to others.

You can check out all 10 of the new screens at the official Facebreaker website. Continue on to watch the trailer.

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