Wed 05 Oct 2011
Playstation
Backbreaker Review
If you’re like me and most people who play sports games, you’ve likely come to terms with the reality that EA is and always will be the king of football games and has been for the last fifteen years, not just because let’s face EA is the king of sports game period, but also because EA sports is the only game that has been granted an NFL licence, that means that there’s the only company that can feature the players, teams, reams, logos etc. from the NFL, leaving all the other developers attempts to compete with EA for football gaming supremacy severely handicapped.
Nevertheless, it’s been a while since Madden has been met with any competition. The last was Midways arcade football game Blitz, this time the developers natural motion have Backbreaker to bring to the table. As mentioned Backbreaker doesn’t have licensed teams, but has excellent new technology and 3D animation which is its main selling point and what the developers hope can level it out with the nearly 2 decade old Madden. And to be fair the physics are really solid, the animations are very smooth and everything looks and feels realistic, however unfortunately the game is fatally flawed in a number of areas. First of all arm tackles seem to be a prevalent attribute of the game, every tackle seems to be the same, there’s very little variation regarding the kind of tackles you perform. Also, your running back falls before even being touched which ends up making him look like a soccer player....you know faking for the sake of getting a foul called. Unfortunately this takes away from the realism and the overall polished look of the game.
Another flawed aspect of this game is the camera angles. Unlike Madden and most sports games in general, in Backbreaker the camera is permanently situated behind a single player, by this I mean locked, there are no other camera options, and if you don’t like it you can’t switch it. The developers want the player to be more immersed into the action. While it’s nice to see the developers are trying something new, for one this isn’t exactly new, but more importantly the camera just makes the game feel very confusing because you can’t see what’s going on around you, you’re not managing just one player like you would be in real life, you need to manage your whole team, so it doesn’t really make sense to only be able to one player. Also Madden, also allows you to play with the same camera only you don’t have to if you don’t want to and it doesn’t force you to. This didn’t appear innovative to me so much as it just felt lazy. Also as you can imagine the teams are really weird and unfamiliar, you get 56 made up teams, no that this isn’t there biggest flaw, some of the stadiums are cool however and as you can imagine there’s very flexible customization options to make up for the lack of authentic NFL teams, however for some reason you can’t share your teams with other players which I felt might have made up for the lack of authentic NFL teams.
The atmosphere of the game is robust and very basic. The audience is either happy or mad, and although cool at first, the same “Boom” song by POD which comes on at every kick off gets extremely annoying after a while, the rest of the music consists merely of generic guitar riffs that blend into the background very quickly. The entire game just becomes redundant and tired very quickly.
Backbreaker could have been a good game, the developers had a lot of good ideas, unfortunately the controls weren’t that well implemented, the design overall was very poor, there weren’t enough elements thrown into the melting pot and ultimately the developers just failed to figure out whether they were making an arcade or a simulation and the games eclectic and hectic feel reflects that. If they had settled on one or the other, this game could have been much better.
Rating: 70% “Breathe Madden, you’re ok.”
Pros:
The physics and animations for the most part look and feel really good
Some of the stadiums look really cool
Cons:
Not a lot of flexibility or variety concerning just about every aspect of this game
Redundancy regarding all the aspects of sound in this game
The controls just feel jarred.
Nevertheless, it’s been a while since Madden has been met with any competition. The last was Midways arcade football game Blitz, this time the developers natural motion have Backbreaker to bring to the table. As mentioned Backbreaker doesn’t have licensed teams, but has excellent new technology and 3D animation which is its main selling point and what the developers hope can level it out with the nearly 2 decade old Madden. And to be fair the physics are really solid, the animations are very smooth and everything looks and feels realistic, however unfortunately the game is fatally flawed in a number of areas. First of all arm tackles seem to be a prevalent attribute of the game, every tackle seems to be the same, there’s very little variation regarding the kind of tackles you perform. Also, your running back falls before even being touched which ends up making him look like a soccer player....you know faking for the sake of getting a foul called. Unfortunately this takes away from the realism and the overall polished look of the game.
Another flawed aspect of this game is the camera angles. Unlike Madden and most sports games in general, in Backbreaker the camera is permanently situated behind a single player, by this I mean locked, there are no other camera options, and if you don’t like it you can’t switch it. The developers want the player to be more immersed into the action. While it’s nice to see the developers are trying something new, for one this isn’t exactly new, but more importantly the camera just makes the game feel very confusing because you can’t see what’s going on around you, you’re not managing just one player like you would be in real life, you need to manage your whole team, so it doesn’t really make sense to only be able to one player. Also Madden, also allows you to play with the same camera only you don’t have to if you don’t want to and it doesn’t force you to. This didn’t appear innovative to me so much as it just felt lazy. Also as you can imagine the teams are really weird and unfamiliar, you get 56 made up teams, no that this isn’t there biggest flaw, some of the stadiums are cool however and as you can imagine there’s very flexible customization options to make up for the lack of authentic NFL teams, however for some reason you can’t share your teams with other players which I felt might have made up for the lack of authentic NFL teams.
The atmosphere of the game is robust and very basic. The audience is either happy or mad, and although cool at first, the same “Boom” song by POD which comes on at every kick off gets extremely annoying after a while, the rest of the music consists merely of generic guitar riffs that blend into the background very quickly. The entire game just becomes redundant and tired very quickly.
Backbreaker could have been a good game, the developers had a lot of good ideas, unfortunately the controls weren’t that well implemented, the design overall was very poor, there weren’t enough elements thrown into the melting pot and ultimately the developers just failed to figure out whether they were making an arcade or a simulation and the games eclectic and hectic feel reflects that. If they had settled on one or the other, this game could have been much better.
Rating: 70% “Breathe Madden, you’re ok.”
Pros:
The physics and animations for the most part look and feel really good
Some of the stadiums look really cool
Cons:
Not a lot of flexibility or variety concerning just about every aspect of this game
Redundancy regarding all the aspects of sound in this game
The controls just feel jarred.
