[dramatic music]
“Forget everything you know about football video games”
…
“because that’s the only way you’ll think this game is fun.”
PlayStation 3
Released in 2010 by 505 Games
Grade: B-
Backbreaker is an American football game that was made in friggin’ Europe. That should tell you something.
It’s unique and interesting. If you play a lot of football video games, you should give it a shot, which will cost you no more than $5 these days, even though you might not stick with it very long.
Where it falls in the series
Unless you count mobile phone games, Backbreaker is all by its lonesome.
Praises and gripes
This game makes me feel sick. Not because it’s bad. It literally makes me feel sick.
You see, this game was marketed as being the most realistic football game there is, with a “real-time physics engine” where “no two tackles are the same.”
Sounds fancy, right? Well, in striving for realism, the game places the camera a couple feet from your player’s ass. It jumps and sways and spins at high speeds, the camera that is. When you’re tackled, it swings around wildly as you tumble to the turf.
After playing this game, I tried to lie down and sleep, and I felt dizzy, like I’d been drinking tequila on a sailboat since the afternoon.
This may not happen to you, but the viewpoint will at least make it difficult for you to play football. You can’t see much of the field. And you’ll get knocked down easily … until you pick up the habit of pressing the X button as you make contact with another player, even your own teammate. It’s a strange, unnecessary control quirk.
When quarterbacking, the view is adjusted to over your shoulder. It’s more practical, but it too causes some difficulty. You can’t see much of the field and you control the QB’s head to swivel the view side to side. You also need to press extra buttons to put “focus” on a pass or to air it out. Nothing is simple. Crazy Euros.
Defending passes is easier, because the camera is farther behind and above your player … until the quarterback makes a pass or hand-off, and then you’re behind the player’s ass again. Most times you won’t get in on the action, and switching players is a roll of the dice because you don’t know where you are on the field.
Luckily, the practice mode (and some Googling) will help you grasp the controls. And then you might think you’re in for the deepest, most rewarding football gaming experience ever. You’d be wrong. The game really comes up short on strategy. Playbooks are very light. Adjustments are limited. AI defenders seem like robots that don’t go off their script. There are three difficulty settings, and that’s it when it comes to options.
The game looks impressive but is quite the visual mixed bag. There are 60 made-up teams representing U.S. metro areas (but once you realize you need a QB with a high “focus” rating to have any success passing the ball, your choice of teams is whittled down to five). Players have an odd, futuristic style, with rubber-looking jerseys and flaps coming off the shoulder pads. The players have no distinct features, and even their made-up names are bland. Other reviewers complain about the lack of players on the sideline or activity in the stands, but that doesn’t bother me much. The sound is sparse, no commentary, but I’m fine with that too.
I actually had fun with this game. In retrospect I’m surprised I was able to win a few games on the medium difficulty setting before the dizziness became too much for a stinkin’ video game.
Oh, an important note: You’ll need to download the patch before firing this game up, because the out-of-the-box experience is glitchy to say the least.