Backbreaker

I personally love the game. After my first game, I was starting to question whether I made the right decision in buying it, but I let the game grow on me and now I love it.

Playing this game is very rewarding - you actually to work to become good, but once you get the hang of things, it's a ton of fun. I went from throwing 5 or 6 INTs per game, to now throwing 1 or 2. The physics are awesome and throwing the ball is a ton of fun (once you get the hang of it).
Anyhow, biggest complaints would be the lack of playbook depth and lack of more game options (snow, wind-speed, stadiums).

Overall, I love this game, and if patched, it could be mighty great!

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Originally Posted by JeffHCross

Agreed JB. Anybody trashing the IGN review is a fanboy. You might not agree with the IGN review, but he explains the reasons for his score. You can't fault the reasoning.

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I haven't played the game yet so my opinion means little but perhaps the IGN backlash is because it's IGN??? Over the years I haven't found IGN score ratings to be all that useful (Madden 08... cough, cough...). Regardless of ratings only positives can come from quasi football competition.

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

I haven't played the game yet so my opinion means little but perhaps the IGN backlash is because it's IGN??? Over the years I haven't found IGN score ratings to be all that useful (Madden 08... cough, cough...). Regardless of ratings only positives can come from quasi football competition.

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There's the spirit!

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

I haven't played the game yet so my opinion means little but perhaps the IGN backlash is because it's IGN?

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Well, I'm sure it's half because its IGN and half because no fanbase wants to see a game they are passionate about to receive a low score.

This is the same fan base that has decided PastaPadre is an EA fanboy because they've decided he doesn't like Backbreaker. :: shrug ::

On another note, I borrowed The Force Unleashed from a buddy over the holiday. After playing some of it and reading the reviews of Backbreaker, I'm even more convinced that euphoria (the animation system that powered both) is incredibly good, technically, but takes a massive effort to actually turn out a quality product. Otherwise it just looks really pretty but plays like ... well ... yeah.

Well, if they didn't like IGN's review, they sure as hell wouldn't like mine. I'd give it a 3 at the very most.

I think its a pretty solid game head to head. So far the biggest complaints I have overall is the playbook and my RB going down pretty easily when he runs into his own man. Once I got the hang of how the player moves with the camera I really started to enjoy the game, especially on defense. Its very satisfying to read the guard and then make the play as a linebacker meeting the RB in the hole. The physics is awesome when making contact.

Playing offline in RTBB mode is pretty tuff at first because your team is rated very low, in the 20's. It is almost impossible to pass at this point, but once you sign a higher rated QB you can really tell the difference, quicker realease and more accurate. You can really tell the difference between lower rated players versus higher rated ones. The MLB I started off with was very strong and even though I was making the tackle, most of the time I would end up on my back. Once I purchased a guy with more strength, I started punishing RB's in the hole with some vicious hits.

I am enjoying my time with it.

FINALLY beat Tackle Alley. It took hours and hours of cussing, swearing, and tons and tons of frustration, but I was finally able to do it. Made it to level 100 2 different times before I was finally able to do it. I'm one of only 3 on PSN to beat it, so it's definitely a very difficult thing to do.

On another note, they may brag about the physics in this game, but Tackle Alley shows a bunch of issues with it. I can't count the number of times I put someone on their face, and they were able to get back up and catch me within 3 or 4 seconds. Complete bullshit. Good luck to anyone trying to accomplish the same, you'll need it.

Let the path to the bargain bin begin! GameStop's deal of the day....

http://www.ebgames.com/gs/thedeal/?loc=homedeal

Fuck this game. I'm only 3 trophies off the platinum and they're all time consuming. I'm trying desperately to get them finished off by Sunday when the 50% extra trade in value ends, but I don't know if I'll make it.

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

Fuck this game. I'm only 3 trophies off the platinum and they're all time consuming. I'm trying desperately to get them finished off by Sunday when the 50% extra trade in value ends, but I don't know if I'll make it.

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http://ihasahotdog.files.wordpress.c...e-with-you.jpg

:D I'll definitely need it.

Oh. My. God. I just saw the dumbest shit I have ever seen on a video game and I'm actually pissed I didn't have my video capture equipment hooked up so I could have recorded it. I was playing the CPU in season mode(damn trophy) and the CPU QB was sitting in the pocket. He does a complete 180 and throws the ball backwards straight towards his endzone. My defender picks it up and scores with it. :D

Probably won't try to platinum this but whenever I decide to get it, I'll at least get the first down trophy :D

There's only one hard trophy and that would be beating wave 100 of Tackle Alley. That shit is on the same level as hitting 29 home runs in a single round in The Show 10. Everything else is as easy as pie.

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

There's only one hard trophy and that would be beating wave 100 of Tackle Alley. That shit is on the same level as hitting 29 home runs in a single round in The Show 10. Everything else is as easy as pie.

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I'll get it to pad the trophy stats whenever I can get it for $10. August probably.

First sales figures for Backbreaker top out at a WHOPPING 30k copies - http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/game/42980/backbreaker/

That's about 29,999 too high.

Ouch. I was hoping it would do better than that.

For comparison's sake, here's some other first week sales numbers of semi-recent football titles:


They don't have a license and are a small team, so expenses should be relatively low but I'm not sure it can survive those kind of numbers.

Those numbers are terrible. No wonder they aren't working on a patch. I think they are lying about BB2. APF probably cost a lot more to make because they paid the HOF guys a ton of money but they will struggle to sell 50,000 copies at regular price.

:D This game just wont end. You have to complete Road to Backbreaker which consists of (I think)3 seasons. The first season is 8 games. I get through that quickly. The 2nd is 16. Little longer but not too overbearing. I get to the 3rd season and I have to play 31 freakin' more games. Good Lord. Combine that with the 19 I have to win online and I wanna punch a baby.

PS3 demo should be available today.

It's not even worth the download. No, I'm not kidding.

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Originally Posted by cdj

PS3 demo should be available today.

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

It's not even worth the download. No, I'm not kidding.

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Wow I had high hopes for this game. However, everywhere I go people bash this game to death. EA has to be smiling though.

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Originally Posted by CLW

Wow I had high hopes for this game. However, everywhere I go people bash this game to death. EA has to be smiling though.

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Man it's terrible...I even gave the demo a good hour+

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

It's not even worth the download. No, I'm not kidding.

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Eh, it was at least worth the download. Funny thing is that I'm sucking at it worse than I am at NCAA. And I'm doing pretty bad at NCAA.

Got my Road to Backbreaker trophy tonight, which unlocked the platinum, and I did so in dramatic fashion. Road to Backbreaker is simple. You start out in an 8 team league. Your goal is to win that league and advance to the next season which is 16 teams. Your goal there is to win that and advance to the 32 season where your goal is to obviously win the league, beat the all star team, which beats Road to Backbreaker. They dumb down your team at the very beginning of the 8 team league and you use credits you get from winning to buy better free agents. It also increases in difficulty with each league. So, I go undefeated in my first league, advance to the 2nd. I go undefeated in that and advance to the 3rd and final league.

That's where the trouble starts. I'm playing with 1 minute quarters and the hardest difficulty, so it's kind of hard to get into rhythm offensively. I start out 6-7 with the 25th best record in the league. The top team is 10-1-1. I look on the internet and realize that I HAVE to finish first for the stupid trophy to unlock, so here I am, basically halfway through and no way to turn back. Probably should have looked before, but oh well. I start running the ball instead of throwing all the time and eventually work my way to 16-10 with 5 games remaining and I'm tied with another team. I pull the 5 remaining games out of my ass and finish with a record of 21-10, which is tied for the best record in the league. Supposedly, that was good enough, as they gave me the game against the All Stars. If I win, I get my trophy. It's tied 0-0 at the half. I blew a fairly decent opportunity to get a score at the end of the half, which was my own fault. They drive down and waste the entire 3rd quarter. They're inside my 20 and I look over to my buddy and say, "I REALLY need a pick here." Sure enough, next play, CPU throws a bullet right to my user controlled defender. :D

I work my way to midfield with 12 seconds left and overthrow a pass on a wide open receiver. There's 6 seconds left, it's 4th down, and I'm at midfield with the scored tied at 0. I run a go route, pump fake, and throw a bomb for the hell of it. While the ball is in the air, the DB covering me slips and falls flat on his face(it was raining) and my wide out catches the ball and starts running. I get tackled at the 1, but my wide out sticks out the ball and crosses the goal line as time expires. Ding. End of the Road. Ding. Platinum Trophy. Gorgeous.

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

Got my Road to Backbreaker trophy tonight, which unlocked the platinum, and I did so in dramatic fashion. Road to Backbreaker is simple. You start out in an 8 team league. Your goal is to win that league and advance to the next season which is 16 teams. Your goal there is to win that and advance to the 32 season where your goal is to obviously win the league, beat the all star team, which beats Road to Backbreaker. They dumb down your team at the very beginning of the 8 team league and you use credits you get from winning to buy better free agents. It also increases in difficulty with each league. So, I go undefeated in my first league, advance to the 2nd. I go undefeated in that and advance to the 3rd and final league.

That's where the trouble starts. I'm playing with 1 minute quarters and the hardest difficulty, so it's kind of hard to get into rhythm offensively. I start out 6-7 with the 25th best record in the league. The top team is 10-1-1. I look on the internet and realize that I HAVE to finish first for the stupid trophy to unlock, so here I am, basically halfway through and no way to turn back. Probably should have looked before, but oh well. I start running the ball instead of throwing all the time and eventually work my way to 16-10 with 5 games remaining and I'm tied with another team. I pull the 5 remaining games out of my ass and finish with a record of 21-10, which is tied for the best record in the league. Supposedly, that was good enough, as they gave me the game against the All Stars. If I win, I get my trophy. It's tied 0-0 at the half. I blew a fairly decent opportunity to get a score at the end of the half, which was my own fault. They drive down and waste the entire 3rd quarter. They're inside my 20 and I look over to my buddy and say, "I REALLY need a pick here." Sure enough, next play, CPU throws a bullet right to my user controlled defender. :D

I work my way to midfield with 12 seconds left and overthrow a pass on a wide open receiver. There's 6 seconds left, it's 4th down, and I'm at midfield with the scored tied at 0. I run a go route, pump fake, and throw a bomb for the hell of it. While the ball is in the air, the DB covering me slips and falls flat on his face(it was raining) and my wide out catches the ball and starts running. I get tackled at the 1, but my wide out sticks out the ball and crosses the goal line as time expires. Ding. End of the Road. Ding. Platinum Trophy. Gorgeous.

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Did the cpu play better in that 32 game season? Sounds like you had a bit of a challenge.

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Originally Posted by lilheavy

Did the cpu play better in that 32 game season? Sounds like you had a bit of a challenge.

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Not really. With one minute quarters, it's kind of hard to put distance between yourself. It comes down to whether or not they put together a bullshit scoring drive or not. If they drive down and score a TD and waste a half, then I only have 2 minutes to score the tying touchdown. If I had played with 5 minute quarters, it wouldn't have been nearly as challenging.

Gotcha

I downloaded the demo. Tackle alley was fun. My son thought it was hilarious and liked playing it too. The demo just goes up to Wave 5 so I was disappointed when it wouldn't let me continue. The tackles are pretty cool. I tried a brief exhibition game and I do like the defensive camera better than the player lock option in NCAA because I like how the camera doesn't rotate automatically and it's a bit more zoomed out. I'd love it if NCAA offered a true defensive camera (just rotate it 180 degrees). The offensive camera angle is horrible. I'll never try playing it again. I'm just going to leave the demo on to play tackle alley. My son liked it so if that gets him more interested in football I'll take it!

I do not try to convert people to like this game - they either are willing to put in the time and learn to play a different style of football game or they are not...but to write it off so completely is a mistake.

There are many, many things missing - most of which have been cataloged in this thread, but the one thing it does do spot on is handle player interactions - collisions, blocking, hits, gang tackles, etc. The things that Backbreaker is missing are all the things that the EA games have on them in spades. Presentation, player models, playbooks, stadiums, etc. But the one thing utterly missing in EA's renditions remains convincing gang tackles and a dearth of tackle and blocking animations in general.

Backbreaker is a mediocre title with some incredible elements to it. I will never be convinced otherwise...it was an elaborate effort to get EA to license the technology for their sports games. With the announcements of real time physics in NHL and NBA 11 titles, I can see that EA decided to go on the cheap and reverse engineer their own version for their games. Make no doubt, THE addition to NCAA 12 and Madden 12 will be EA's homegrown version of real time physics.

Backbreaker is a commercial failure, but it is also a landmark turning point in sports gaming. After spending time with it, I can say that the total lack of multiple impacts (or any real impacts at all for that matter) makes the NCAA demo feel incredibly robotic and sterile and the videos of Madden 11 fair even worse. It will be a geat day for all gamers when EA finally either gets their own real-time physics into the game or just breaks down and licenses Euphoria for the task. PRO-TAK is a hideous failure when viewed side-by-side with the real gang tackles of Euphoria. I just hope the same is not true for EA's homebrewed real-time physics...

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Originally Posted by JeffHCross

Finally, one more point to make. In 2004, the late Randy Pausch (he of "The Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon ... look it up if you've never seen it) spent some time at EA (not EA Sports, but EA Corporate) and wrote up an academic paper about his observations.

A few major takeaways:
(Note when I was recently talking about the lack of code sharing between EA titles, I didn't even remember this quote. I had come up with it independently after looking at Online Franchise and Online Dynasty.)


I thought there was something about legacy code and maintenance, but I can't find the quote now.

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That's interesting about the sharing of the technology and such. Around 2006 I think we split off a lot of disciplines that shared between different games into their own departments that supported multiple titles. I wonder if that decision was based off this guy's analysis?

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Originally Posted by IOUaBeatn

It's not even worth the download. No, I'm not kidding.

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So I went and bought a used copy....and........its already back at the store, it was just terrible and I'm fairly easy to please.

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Originally Posted by oweb26

So I went and bought a used copy....and........its already back at the store, it was just terrible and I'm fairly easy to please.

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Wow! LOL!

How much did the one-hour rental end up costing you?

A couple of hours out of my life, I got a full refund baby, pros of buying used.

I still have mine. I'm waiting for GS to have a good deal on trade ins and then I'll definitely get rid of it. If anyone wants it on here, $20 and it's yours! It's the best game I've played this generation! :D:D

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Originally Posted by I OU a Beatn

I still have mine. I'm waiting for GS to have a good deal on trade ins and then I'll definitely get rid of it. If anyone wants it on here, $20 and it's yours! It's the best game I've played this generation! :D:D

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$20 with minus $10 shipping and I'll buy it. $10 is about all I'll pay to try to whore the trophies.

That's probably about all it's worth. If I can't get rid of it within the next week or so, I'll just let you have it. Every time I plan on taking it to Gamestop, something happens that makes it impossible to do so, and I know for a fact the trade in value for something like this drops every day. I doubt if it's even worth $15 now.

It's already down to $45 on Amazon, and it hasn't even been a month since release. :D

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Originally Posted by I OU a Beatn

That's probably about all it's worth. If I can't get rid of it within the next week or so, I'll just let you have it. Every time I plan on taking it to Gamestop, something happens that makes it impossible to do so, and I know for a fact the trade in value for something like this drops every day. I doubt if it's even worth $15 now.

It's already down to $45 on Amazon, and it hasn't even been a month since release. :D

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It actually started at $45 at release LOL

Oh, wow. I should have bought it from them instead. I had gotten a $50 GS card as a gift a long ass time ago, and figured this was the perfect opportunity to spend it. It probably would have been better spent on Hannah Montana.