Can Backbreaker Tackle Madden?

When I first heard that UK based developer NaturalMotion had a football game on the way, my first thought was: "football as in soccer or as they call it, 'The Beautiful Game,'" since well, it's the UK after all. When I found out that this game, Backbreaker, was actually an American pro football game, I was thrown for bit of a loop since, to me, football is not only about the rules and the game itself, but about the culture and pageantry surrounding it all - something I wasn't sure a UK studio would be able to capture.

NaturalMotion is mostly known in videogames for its Euphoria physics engine, which was heavily utilized in Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That engine, put simply, refined the rag-doll motions of character models by basing movements on various factors present in the model, and how it was put into motion to begin with.

Given that background, the developers have put this engine to good use in Backbreaker -- doing away with the short list of repeated animations that appear during impact (namely tackles) in other football games; every tackle in the game is unique. I've honestly never seen more realistic looking tackles than I did in Backbreaker. In a real professional football game, tackles are rarely the huge hits that other football videogames have made commonplace; instead they are mostly comprised of players wrapping around their target and dragging them down and that is precisely what NaturalMotion has brought to Backbreaker. Of course, there are crazy "flatten the opposition" hits too, but they happen naturally.

The game uses a third-person-shooter/behind-the-back style camera angle during play, and focuses on one player as opposed to the entire team. On offense you, logically, take the perspective of the ball carrier -- be it the quarterback, running back, or receiver; while on defense, you are given control of the player most suitable for handling what's happening on the field. What I saw of the defensive player choices made sense, but I have to admit that I didn't have a very long time on that side of the ball. Taking the risk of choosing which player you are for you leaves a lot of room for error, so hopefully NaturalMotion covers all of its bases when the game is released. There wouldn't be anything worse than watching your opponent run right past a player 20 feet from the one you are controlling and then scoring a touchdown.

Since Backbreaker doesn't have the NFL license to rely on, it is going to live and die by its customization options; with a number of uniform color and design choices and a Forza-esque logo creator with at least 500 possible layers to use, the foundations are there for it to succeed. While the game comes with more than 60 developer-created teams right out of the box, the potential is there to go ahead and make the entire NFL. Since users can share their created team recipes, this is almost guaranteed to happen once the gaming community gets ahold of it.

As for the actual look of the game, well, it isn't what football looks like right now. Player uniforms all look like they could still exist in about 10 or 15 years, but they also have a body armor quality to them that seemed a little off. Stadiums, while impressive looking, all have a "best of" feel to them depending on where it is; New York City's stadium is a towering art deco coliseum in the style of the Empire State Building, while San Francisco has a not-so-miniature version of the Golden Gate Bridge in it. The stadiums, which appear to be many times the size of any American football dome or stadium I've ever seen, also seem a bit out-of-this-world for a game that centers on realism. Then again, all that is cosmetic, and doesn't affect the gameplay in any way.

Come May 18 when Backbreaker is scheduled to ship, I will definitely be grabbing this, as my football appetite is always looking to be whet.


Originally posted on 1UP.