FaceBreaker K.O. Party review

Wii Sports Boxing let you punch your dad in the face. And get away with it. It was little more than a minigame, and a pretty imprecise one at that, but the inspired controls and glorious dad-punching made for a perfect family moment. FaceBreaker KO Party, despite offering a more substantial, solid experience than Wii Sports Boxing, hasn’t quite captured its style.

This is largely the fault of its characters – a bunch of hideously stereotypical misfits who are nowhere near as funny as the game thinks they are. Take Steve, the flabby nerd, whose weight is listed as ‘Inventory slots are all full’. Haha. Hum. Or Voodoo, the witch doctor. Or Molotov, the – you guessed it – dunderheaded explodey-fisted Russian. All FaceBreaker needs is a goose-stepping Nazi.

Building on the foundations of what you learned in Wii Sports, you use the Nunchuk and remote as your fists, thrusting each forward to jab. But you can also charge punches by lifting either up for a second, and pull off special moves by landing hits in quick succession. It’s hardly deep, but it works. The actual ‘party’ element is slight, limited to a couple of uninspired multiplayer modes. Facebreaker’s cheap – but that’s money you could be saving towards Punch-Out!!

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Dec 11, 2008