I somehow had this game on my Gameaccess game queue…. not sure why… So I received it and decided I might as well try it out before sending it back.

I generally don’t play new sports games, since I’ve played them 10 years ago, so there’s little need to play newer ones since they never change. The only time I’ll actually pay any kind of attention to sport games is if they present something unique and different from the big mainstream sport simulators. Which doesn’t happen often anymore.

Backbreaker caught my attention because it seemed to really change the gameplay style from the usual tired Madden style, going for a unique third-person action perspective of the sport.

So read on and see if I liked that.

Developer: NaturalMotion
Publisher: 505 Games
Date of Release: June 1st 2010
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360

Genre: American Football
Rated E for Everyone

What’s good about the game

Unique take on the American Football gameplay
Ever since EA got the exclusive rights to the NFL license, other companies have been hesitant to make any football games at all. The blitz series sadly died, the 2k series died, and very few new football games (if at all) dared to try competing against the “almighty” EA Sports.  Backbreaker comes in to try and shake up the genre a bit, and introduces very unique gameplay ideas. It places you right behind a player in a third-person perspective, and basically seeing the game from his perspective. You have more direct control on your player, and it feels more like an action game.

It’s nice to see a football game that plays differently from what has been available for 10+ years now.

Tackle Alley
If there’s one thing that’s great in this game, it’s the Tackle Alley mode.You’re given the ball, a certain amount of opposing players who are given different areas they must protect (and sometimes pre-programmed movement patterns), and you have to get to the touchdown zone.  You have to use various moves at your disposal like spins and jukes to avoid the enemies. You get points as you do moves to avoid enemies, and some “enemy waves” have small areas you can pass through to get extra points. Doing moves and getting into point zones give you a point multiplier to boost your score moreso, and you get extra points for the time it took to finish the wave and various other bonuses.

It’s by far the highlight of the game, and the funnest use of the football gameplay style I’ve ever seen.

What sucks about the game

While the game has a fairly unique take on American Football gameplay, it falls short on many aspects.

The actual football
While the new perspective and gameplay style is fairly cool, the actual football playing is pretty bad. You have a limited amount of plays which basically just boil down to “run” and “pass” without very much variation. The passing is horrible and a third of the time you’ll get the ball intercepted even if there’s no one near the receiver you’re aiming at, and the actual aiming is a pain in the ass, you can’t actually complete a pass without using the “focus” button. But it turns out passing plays are the only thing you can do in games because the running plays are completely worthless. No matter how awesome you are in the Tackle Alley, there’s no way you’ll ever get more than 5 yards in a running play, the opponents’ defense is always too solid to get through, no matter how hard I tried.

Another annoying thing is that, no matter what, if you get to the fourth down, you’re forced to use a punt, which sucks because there’s definitely occasions where I wanted to just do a passing play, or even a running play to get at least a final yard for a first down, but I couldn’t. There might be a way to bypass that, but I haven’t found it, and the lack of an instruction manual with Gameaccess rentals doesn’t help.

Another problem is the AI. Most of the time it’s not too bad. Teammates sack the opposing quarterback all the time which isn’t too bad. But there’s other times where the AI glitches or something… In a single quarter I got around 6 penalties when the opponent was punting because my AI-controlled teammates tackled the kicker after the kick, and they kept doing that, I don’t get it. I want to catch the ball, run a bit and get my turn on the offense, but around half the time I got penalties and the opposing team got the ball back.

Speaking of catching the ball, it’s really annoying. You’re given the general area where the ball will land, but my player never catches it, even if I’m dead center, right where the ball comes down. I manage to catch it like once out of 5, I really don’t get how it works. Your player is supposed to catch it automatically, but he frequently doesn’t.

There’s a few elements I don’t mind in the actual football, but overall it’s a bit of a mess.

Controls
The controls are really weird. My big problem is the spins you can do when you’re holding the ball. You have to do half-circles with the right joystick, but half the time you’ll just do a juke instead.That’s what I don’t understand: why not use buttons?That would make everything including the passing much easier. When you have the ball, the right stick to juke works, but why not put one button to spin right and one button to spin left. Much easier and it wouldn’t fail half of the time. As for passing, just keeping the X button for a normal pass would work, and another button for lob passes, and another to change receiver. Much easier and less chances of screwing up.

As for the movement, it seems fine, as long as you’re not holding R2 for the “agressive” mode which makes you run faster. In that case, pressing any direction other than forward makes you go all over the place like crazy, almost reminds me of the crappy controls in GTAIV or RDR. Another minor problem is the camera. If you have the ball, you have no camera control whatsoever, which can be annoying, making it hard to see opponents coming in from behind or from the side. The rest of the time controlling the camera is okay, but not great.

Overall

I’m not a huge football fan, the most I ever do with the sport is watch the Superbowl one year out of 2-3, and I always get the last few minutes of the Grey Cup. As for football video games, I don’t play them much. My favorite is the Tecmo Bowl series, and I actually like Madden… Madden ’94 on the Sega Genesis that is. It was great. The Mutant League Football game was pretty fun too. So yeah, I’m not too big on football video games other than the more original/unique ones, so maybe I might have enjoyed Backbreaker more if I was more into the genre.

I have tremendous respect for the game though, and that’s for a very simple reason: It took tired and boring gameplay and did something original with it. It might have mostly failed, but they get points for trying. And hey, there’s actually something FUN in there, I loved playing through the Tackle Alley. Heck, they should re-release Backbreaker on the PSN/XBLA, but just the Tackle Alley mode. “Backbreaker’s Tackle Alley” for 10$, I’d buy that.

So while this is very far from being a good game, there is one redeeming factor, and the fact that they went for something different is cool. More companies should take chances like this.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Original idea
- Tackle Alley is really fun

Cons
- Graphics are meh (obviously, didn’t need to mention that in the review)
- The actual football playing needs a lot of work
- AI might need fixing
- The controls need work (there’s buttons on the controller guys!)
- There’s no music… other than “Boom” by P.O.D (if there’s anything else, I haven’t heard it)

The Save Factor

As of the writing of this post, the game costs 30$ new. Definitely not worth it. The Save Factor for this is 10$, and that’s only for the Tackle Alley mode.

jobocan Console, Games, ps3, xbox 360