American football is one of those sports that you either understand or you don’t. The principle is fairly simple; it’s like rugby, but you can pass forward and a defender’s objective is to tackle his opponent as hard as possible.
505 Games’ recently released Backbreaker takes the relative pain out of the sport, in the process making it easier to understand. After firing up the game, it is advised to run through the short tutorial. Well, it isn’t exactly short, but it concisely explains the basic moves in tackling, running, passing and evading a marauding band of puffed up athletes. The game isn’t licensed by any NFL teams (Electronic Arts have the exclusive rights to those), so all the team that the player can choose from are fictional, which is also ok, since the sport isn’t that huge in South Africa anyways.
Having learned the basics and picking a random team with a nice ring (like New England Militia), the game play is rather straight forward. If the opposing team is kicking off, the game engine will automatically swap to the athlete who is best in line to catch the ball. A ring will appear on the field as to where the ball will land, and running into the vicinity will catch it.
Then it’s a matter of running, ducking and spinning to gain the most ground before being thumped to the grass.
This motion is usually short lived, as gaining first ground is a bit of an art. The camera angle is also slightly weird, and there is no talk of peripheral vision.
So it’s onto the first down and time to snap.
In between snaps, gamers will have to choose what type of play they will be running. As far as tactics go, there isn’t much, as it’s virtually impossible to tell what the opponent will be doing. But by selecting any random play under the Pass menu will at least result in some running.
The player can automatically swap between athletes at any time with the press of a button, but the game will change to the quarterback by default before a snap. Once the ball is in play, passing to another athlete takes some quick finger work. The game will slow down, allowing you to select who to pass to. It can sometimes become a bit confusing or overwhelming, as the speed in which a decision needs to be made is rather tough.
If the pass is successful, the view will change to the runner and then it’s up to the player to bob-and-weave his way through until the touchdown. If he is tackled, it’s back to square one and the whole process starts over again. Without getting into too much detail, the process is generally repeated four times before possession is changed over.
Defence works on the same principle, but instead of passing the ball, the player will have to do anything in their power to stop the opposing team from gaining any ground.
Plays are once again selectable, but the best strategy seemed to pick a random play, position the given player slightly to the side of the pack and go straight for the quarterback after the snap.
But if they manage to get the snap out, it’s where things become a bit jumbled. If the player’s character missed a bone-crunching tackle opportunity, he will stop running, although the action is right behind him. Swapping to a different player (and random) is the best way to stay active in the game, otherwise the AI will take over.
Speaking of hard tackles, the game’s mechanics employ the Euphoria engine; a dynamic physics engine that calculates physical interactions (including tackles) on the fly, rather than depending on canned animations. What this means is that no two tackles will ever be the same.
Although the game doesn’t feature the NFL teams, it’s still highly enjoyable, and with multiplayer it can become a heated contest. The graphics are superb, with some highly-detailed stadiums and insightful commentary.
As far as unlicensed NFL games go, this is probably as good as it will get. The controls are easy, the graphics are good and there is an extensive team and logo creator. It’s well worth a buy if you have even the slightest interest in American football.
At A Glance
Backbreaker is hugely enjoyable and puts a new twist on the genre.
Developer: NaturalMotion
Publisher: 505 Games
Distributor: Apex Interactive
Platform:
Xbox 360
PS3
