Backbreaker Preview

• by Patrick Shaw
• March 03, 2010 12:45 PM PST

On the surface, Backbreaker might not appear to be more than just another arcade-style football video game in the vein of NFL Blitz -- sans any licensed NFL teams, logos or stadiums -- but it's actually approaching the genre from an interesting and refreshing new angle.Backbreaker's most notable feature that distinguishes it from Blitz and Madden is the fact that it doesn't rely on motion capture technology to put realistic moves and play formations into the game.

Instead, it employs the Euphoria engine, a dynamic animation engine that emulates how physical objects and people move in real life, simulating things like how muscles and the nervous system react to physical impact and force. While Euphoria was previously used in Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and will be featured in several games in Rockstar's upcoming lineup like Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption, this is the first time the proprietary technology has been used to power a sports video game.

"The aim of putting the Euphoria engine in Backbreaker is to create the first 'live' sports game on any system that captures that true-to-life feel," explained Rob Donald, Associate Producer for Backbreaker at NaturalMotion. "The reason we can make that claim is because with any physical collisions that happen in the game, Euphoria takes over. Rather than relying on canned animations -- the same tackles, hits, blocks, and play reactions over and over again -- every single thing that happens in our game involving any sort of physical collision is worked out live, on the fly, and will never be repeated again. It's the first time anyone will see live immersive gameplay like this in a sports title."

This ambitious attempt to use Euphoria to deliver an unprecedented level of realism when it comes to football was demonstrated to me in a Backbreaker exhibition game between two fictional teams. The first thing I noticed was how Backbreaker moves away from a "god like" view of the field, which is traditionally how you play most football games, in favor of a much closer third-person perspective that follows players around as if a cameraman was running around on the field directly behind the player you're controlling at any given period of time, be it the quarterback or wide receiver.

In order to avoid forcing the player to have an encyclopedic knowledge of sports game controls, NaturalMotion has made an effort to streamline much of what you do in the game. Passing, for instance, is much easier to manage than it has been in other Football titles--instead of floating buttons that correspond to your receivers' heads (something you typically see in football games) most of the quarterback controls are mapped directly to the right analog stick: you hold down the right stick to look around the field and select a primary receiver and then flick the stick up to pass the ball. The right analog stick is used for a number of other things, such as juking while running with the ball and blocking while on defense. During my demo, the ball was snapped and then thrown to a receiver who was mere inches away from the first down line before the opposing team descended upon him, slamming him into the ground with all the force of a freight train. Here the Euphoria engine took over, calculating the ball carrier's speed, momentum, and physical ability to determine the result of that specific tackle.

"Everything we're doing with Backbreaker is designed to give the player the feeling of being down on the field," said Rob Donald. "We want to keep the player involved in the action and not have them floating above the field.

Aside from Backbreaker's impressive physics engine, the game also sets itself apart from other football titles with its profusion of customization options that allow you to do everything from designing your team's logo and end zones to picking the color of your players' socks. Of course, you're not forced to spend time building your own stadiums and teams because the game comes with numerous premade options for you to jump right into the game. You will only be able to play with your custom creations online with your friends, which eliminates the possibility of public online games with giant phalluses decorating its end zones.

With its use of the Euphoria engine to put the player on the field and wealth of customization options, Backbreaker has the potential to become a football game that offers something a bit different from other games in its genre. We'll see if NaturalMotion delivers on its promises once Backbreaker hits Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on May 18th.

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