Backbreaker Retrospective - Tackle Alley Was Fun

[ChaseB]

Brian recently scoped out the partially genius, but terribly flawed Backbreaker football game for a retrospective....

Written By: Chase Becotte

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[Hilldog39]

Backbreaker was too ahead of it's time. Just sucked how it was always a zoomed in camera and not having a "Madden" camera option. The tackles will always be better than Madden will ever have 

[Blzer]

Re: Backbreaker Retrospective - Tackle Alley Was Fun

Backbreaker was too ahead of it's time. Just sucked how it was always a zoomed in camera and not having a "Madden" camera option. The tackles will always be better than Madden will ever have*

I wouldn't have enjoyed this particular game as much if they always just had a "Madden" camera option, personally. I mean if they decided to sell their tech to someone like 2K at the time, I would've been all for it. For this game though, the novelty is all about the very first trailer for this that we saw, and I'm so glad we always had that camera as the one to live with. It was different and may have turned others away, but that and the Euphoria physics engine were what sold me on it personally.

I really wanted a proper Backbreaker sequel. What I'd take now is for a good PS3 emulator to be able to run this game in full on PC, though. The PS3 version had low resolution and framerate, and felt somewhat unresponsive. These wouldn't fix inherent problems with the game (and perhaps couldn't even provide us the Greathouse #3 update), but that would be a sweet alternative.

[tril]

Re: Backbreaker Retrospective - Tackle Alley Was Fun

Backbreaker was too ahead of it's time. Just sucked how it was always a zoomed in camera and not having a "Madden" camera option. The tackles will always be better than Madden will ever have*

agreed.
I also feel that when Backbreaker was released it was more of an experimental game.
I liked everything about the game except for the camera angle, which is why I hardly played it.

The passing mechanics- should be implemented in other football games. In my opinion, this is what true analog/manual passing should feel like.

[ESPOMAN]

Re: Backbreaker Retrospective - Tackle Alley Was Fun

Backbreaker, IMO, had the best potential out of the non-NFL licensed games post 2k8. There really should have been another patch to fix the running game and the create a team roster glitch after the Greathouse patch, however.



Backbreaker vengeance would have been really good to replace tackle alley in a Backbreaker 2. I am not too sure if Backbreaker should have gone with a Madden cam, adding in the option would not have hurt the game of course, as that was one of the reasons the game did not get too popular. They should have gave a deeper franchise mode and improved the gameplay more and maybe zoom at the camera a bit.





It is a shame that Natural Motion gave up with this game series, and console games in general. They had a really good base for a football game, and without the pressure of the NFL license, Backbreaker 2 could have came out in like 2012, instead of being released yearly. I really think with a few tweaks here and there in a sequel they really could have been on to something.

[misterkrabz2]

A great foundation of a game ruined by a locked camera angle that made the game unplayable.  It had more potential and had more innovation than Madden has displayed in 30+ years.

[The EVHL]

Re: Backbreaker Retrospective - Tackle Alley Was Fun

I really despised the passing. Always seemed so clunky to change intended receivers and lead to a lot of accidental throws/non-throws. I think if they could've cleaned up how you picked your receiver and had better options for leading receivers, I would've liked the game so much more.

Also, they gave us an amazing create a team suite yet when playing season modes, they wouldn't let us change teams during the game. I would've loved only playing one-side of the ball and playing out my custom league the way I wanted. I hate when video games limit how you can play the game like that. So unnecessary, doesn't add anything to the game.