Backbreaker Football for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

This game is the football game I've been waiting for. I played football a ton for school teams and I was good. Backbreaker encompasses what a football game is really like, and makes it really crazy awesome.
Good things:
+ The physics are great, each tackle is unique and they look awesome. Also, avoiding tackles is much more encouraged than breaking them, if you think about it its generally pretty hard to break the tackle of a professional football player.
+ The team creator and logo creator are like the Forza of sports games, you won't find better.
+ The controls are easy to learn if you have a brain.
+ The graphics are the best in a sports game I've seen, they don't try too hard to be picture perfect, but they are still great. The fans in the stands look great as well, when compared to any other football or sports game.
+ The up close and personal camera makes it intense!
+ When you do awesome things you really feel awesome!
+ The AI rocks and forces you to actually work to win.
+ Difficulty-wise, medium will have most of you working up a sweat until you develop new strategies for Backbreaker.
+ Road to Backbreaker mode is extremely fun and quite difficult.
+ Online content is free.
+ You will waste many hours on tackle alley, especially if you have a friend to do it with.
+ No NFL license, I like the change of scenery, I'm tired of the same 32 teams playing over, and over, and over... and over... zzzzzzz.

Not so good things:
- Player creation is minimal, after the in depth team creator its not a big deal but all you can really do is change the player's name, skin color, and body type.
- Online modes are few, just tackle alley and regular games.
- Passing will take some time to get down.

For me this game was perfect, it completely shut down madden, don't think I'll ever get madden again.

Its fun, cheap, and you won't have to shell out a large amount of money every year just to stay entertained with the few new features they add that you have to pay more for...

Backbreaker, where do I start, you amazed me. I don't understand why the critics gave it such bad reviews, the reason the camera is so close is because of the realistic tackles. It wouldn't make sense to have the camera way up in the air because then you wouldn't be able to see the amazing tackles.

The running is very fun, good control, passing is very easy. I suggest playing the training mode because yes, this game is one of a kind, it's very different from other sports titles. I used to play Madden all the time, it lacked many qualities that I've always wanted in a football game. Backbreaker makes up for those losses.

Ok first you gotta think Madden has 20+ years with football games. Backbreaker is the first. The tackles are really great besides a few glitches, but oh well. The camera makes you feel as if you are the runner in the action. I played football all through high school and this is the closest thing to it. Madden just has no appeal to it anymore. Give this game a try and remember 20+ years vs. 1 year. Natualmotion and 505 did a heck of a job to step up to Madden (sigh)! So happy to get rid of "canned animations" in football games. This game is worth renting and if you aren't a whiner I say buy it. ;)

Amazing how a first year game can be more fun than Madden. There are bugs and glitches, but there is in EVERY sports game ever made. The only 'downside' is that it is not that deep with features or menu options. The point here, which is quite clear, is to play football games. The basic 'season' and 'road to BackBreaker' are both there for a little mix up to 'exhibition' but they do give it some life, even good ideas that Madden still doesn't have (like how RTBB has you bringing up a scrub team while slowly adding in higher quality talent to compete in the 'higher up' leagues).
Also the "mini" game (not so mini really) of 'tackle alley' is nearly worth have the entry fee for this game. People get mad because the 'moves' don't act like they think they should. Well tackle alley can help show that there is a time and place for every move, you just have to find it, just like in real football, you can't juke forever, or expect to stiff arms guys who your hand doesn't even touch. This game will take a little adjusting to, with camera angle and understanding that you can't just use ONE type of move for everything, but once you understand it you can really relish in your accomplishments because there really isn't a 'fluke' anything, you earn it.
There's plenty of people who simply do not play it enough to understand the subtle differences in strengths of teams, how some are geared to pass/cover while other run/blitz. This really plays a factor and you cannot simply use the same strategy for every match-up. Also the difficulty is a bit too low, once you really get the hang, to upping it to Hard is preferred. Once I realized this and understood just how to play final scores became much more realistic and games were more fun with the threat of being scored on and needing to find the right plays to score with.
Every football fan owes it to themselves to pick this up. Maybe not to buy (although I do recommend it!), but especially to rent!

Completely blew me away! Ill admit i jumped straight into a game as soon as i got it and had no idea what to do, so i highly suggest going through the training its short and kinda cheezy but it will teach you everything very quick, once you do that and play a couple exhibition games youll be ready to play a season or road to backbreaker! The game in itself is nothing like madden and that is my favorite thing, try it out if you like football games, you wont be disappointed!

Backbreaker comes out with its euphoria engine to give football a new meaning. Everything makes you feel like your a player on the field. Every tackle, every moment, every play feels like a unique moment. Team customization makes your possibilities endless. If you head over to the Backbreaker Forums there are people making NFL Teams with NFL rosters to make this game every bit better. As the price for this game was 50$ I believe it was a bit expensive as I believe this as more a Tech demo to show euphoria rather than providing a simulation football game. All in all, the game is really fun to play and expect NFL teams on the Backbreaker forums if all you need is the NFL teams on BB. All in all the game lacks simulation football and game types but provides a more realistic experience than Madden. If your looking for a completely different experience of football to immerse yourself in or your just getting tired of Madden then this game is for you. Remember, this is Backbreaker, NOT MADDEN. If your looking for a experience like Madden, or looking to compare this to Madden then look elsewhere. Review the game for what its worth, not based off what another football game has and this doesnt.

this game offers a new football experince using an advanced physics engine

pros

-solid gameplay
-realistic takles
-good controls
-reasonable diffuculty on harder difficulties
-solid online mp

cons

-dumb qb AI on low difficulty settings
-not alot of depth game mode wise but still a good offering

other

the camera is incredibly different but once adjusted it is a perfiect translation of what a qb has to do to go through his reads you have to make the presnap read of who you think is open and then go through your progerssion if the reciever isn't

some people have complained about the line not giving enough time it gives about 3 seconds on averge which is actually what most qbs get in the nfl minus the Patriots who get an averege of 7 seconds in the pocket so very realistic

this game is one of the best football games ever and its only the first installment cant wait to see what the have in store for the second and what they add depth wise

one more thought this game was intially intended for an arcade release and whenever you switch from one type of release to another it can cause problems but this so far doesn't have to many

this game has an unbelievable physics system in it. the tackles are so realistic and the way the game runs is also. absolute rental/buy!!

Couple people seem to be mad its not madden. It's not madden its football done right. Sorry if its too hard for you or you don't get the cheap madden presentation and visuals, play football in real life then play this game which is actually a more realistic game. Sorry but some of you need to lower the difficulty or research more before you assume things about a game, some people are just not made to play realistic games like this instead they play madden where scores are always 63+ and passing on every down works.

This game is very much worth getting, it is the best football game made, its definently kills madden.

I love being the outside linebacker on a blitz and nailing the QB

Its a Good game

Pass this game up

This game was very sought after by me. With technology giving tackle a new-look every single time. While that promise was delivered the rest of the package was lackluster and left things to be desired.

Visuals
A sleaker version than madden, but the players do not look realistic at all. Also the camera angle is detrimental to this game. It was supposed to be a more on the field look, and it is, but it does nto work. On pitch plays you can't see where you are going. Looking at plays on the field is impossible.

Sound
The game has a technology wear everyhtign creates sound and you can hear it.

Controls
The controls will be said to be stealed off of madden by most people, well at least part of them, but Madden actually theived these guys. The right stick controls of jukes and spins. But pretty much every thing is from the right stick, types of passes, running moves and many other things

Gameplay
The gameplay is annoying and at a certain poitn I said F this game.

Modes
The league game is lackluster and is nothing liek actual football which leaves the game lacking. It is more of a online game for a console in the way the player signign works. There is also tackle alley which is kickoff returnign and it highlights the game features, but as i said the camera takes away from it.

Overall
Pass his game up, while this games attempt to give madden a challenger is valiant. It also proves that game creators can actully show passion. I'm lookign at you EA Sports, you lazy pieces of you know what

The game is really fun, but it takes awhile to adjust to the camera and to the controls. Its really fun if you want something different from madden.

okay, so you never want to copy another games style and label it as your own but well.....Back Breaker football needs to go back and change absolutely everything about itself and maybe take some tips from games like Madden or even more novelty football games like Blitz The League. I'll advise you not to waste your time and just avoid this game completely. the controls would take hours and hours of horrible training to understand and the game play is nothing more than every game in the past but with neat tackles! yah!!! thats sarcasm. I'll just go ahead and end it with this. Stay away from this games. I beg you.

this game was really disappointing i expect a lot from this game by playing the demo. Then it arrived when i played it, it totally sucked the controls were laggy, the whole game made me dizzy, most of the time i dont know where im facing i palyed a lot of football games in my life and this one was the worst. it made blitz the league look freaking awesome. the only upside to this is tackle alley thats it

First the training camp, which was helpful, but dizzying, literally. The running back makes you dizzy.
I noted some controls, especially the spin move were both awkward, and at best hit and miss.

Onto a game.
It lasted about 30 minutes, before I put decided I had enough.
I'm all for a few changes, but, really, does every control need to be completely unfamiliar?
Better than Madden? You guys must be dreaming!

No audible system, no hot routes, blitz packages, playbooks, line blocking schemes, defensive line, linebacker, or Safety audibles, playoff system, draft, the list goes on.

The camera angle makes it almost impossible to know which way you're running after you catch a pass, (If you can get one off before you're crushed).
The running game sucks, and instead of being able to see your receivers running their routes, you must manually switch between them. Than might cool, but not when you have 1.5 seconds to get rid of the ball before you're sacked!

The controls are so un-necessarily un-intuitive, it makes gameplay more like flying an airplane, than playing football.

It's not like they had to rush this game to market. I personally don't care about an NFL license. Madden drafted players are not recognizable NFL-ers, so why not have a draft, Frachise, Road to Glory, or something creative.

I REALLY wanted to love this, especially after Madden 11 came out, but man, did they really need to re-create the wheel? 2k, Madden, and every football franchise has similar controls. Why make this virtually un-playable for folks who have played these games for 20 years? If they make it more familiar, and vastly improve gameplay, we will come!

At best this is an arcade game, but it's not fun, at all familiar, creative, or fun to play. It could have been cool, but this installment was Horribly executed. Maybe next year.

The game is feature limited, let's just get that out there. You can create a team, but you cannot create a player for your team (If you can I failed to figure it out), of course, the teams are all fake so I figured that the "Backbreaker" name implied real hard hitting over the top football fun. If only it were so. No, the hits are... more realistic then say, Madden but that's it. The models are all the same, the same odd "neck to waist" pads... When I TRIED to play a game, after completing the tutorial stuff I found that you get 4 plays. Yes, 4 run plays, 4 pass plays, 4 special teams plays... 4

I think what happened was, some people created a realistic physics engine for football tackling, and someone thought that would be a great thing to make a football game around it. And to do it on a shoestring budget.

Running is horrible, the controls feel... like driving in GTA. Marshmallow. Don't get me started on passing. To change targets, you push left or right with the right stick. So let's say you want to lob the football out there, you have to do a U with the stick. Yeah, 9 times out of ten you just change targets.

I would advise avoiding this title, it's not worth the time.

The euphoria engine belongs in a football game....but not this one.

Its not the physics or game mechanics that suck in this game, but it's absolutely everything else that does. Creating a franchise sucks. The graphics outside the engine suck. The sound sucks. The playbooks suck. The teams suck. All 3 stars I give this game go to the euphoria engine.

Now, let me first preface this by saying I play Madden every year it comes out. I have bought it every year since 2001 when switched over from the NFL 2k series to Madden. I have been playing football games since Tecmo bowl on Nintendo and I love sports games. That being said, Backbreaker has the best physics engine I have ever seen in a football videogame. They are far from perfect but the engine is solid. Now that I have said the good thing about the game. Let's move on to the bad. You have zero control over where you quaterback throws the football. It in order for your quarterback to be the most efficient, you must focus on your target and even when you do that, you still do not know where the ball will go. Also, if you are a gamer that likes to be able to change your receivers patterns or defencsive assignements, you cannot in this game. No hot routes, no individual blitzes and you can't even tell your linmean which direction to block! The desginers decided to take all of that out of your hands.

The playbook is small and you only get to pick a category with no control over what plays pop up. Let's say you like a certain play and would like to run it a few plays later, you have to hope that when you select the category i.e. pass, run, specail, ask coach, your play is one of the options your given. It gets even smaller on defensive, you can't even pick whether you want to run a 4-3, 3-4, nickel or dime. You are given a list of plays and you get one play each in different defensive schemes. If they had just some of these features, the game would be a lot better.

By far, the best game mode is Tackle Alley. You have 100 waves to beat of various defenders. You are a running back, you start on one side of the field and try to score a touchdown. It is fun but it gets old around the 60th level. If you create a team for the Road to Backbreaker mode, the game automatically lowers your overall team score and your individual player's stats. Rental, at best.

I eagerly awaited the release of Backbreaker football since it was announced quite some time ago. However do to technical shortcomings this game is a letdown. Backbreaker was noted for it's impressive physics based on the Euphoria engine yet this is where many of it's problems arise.

The bulk of Backbreakers problems are due to bad camera angles, and wonky physics which make players fall when they weren't even touched by another player. However other issues arise from control problems and a lack of modes aside from the basic season, rtbb(season) and exhibition.

Overall I'd say fan's of football should try Backbreaker out but shouldn't expect to be blown away.

I didn't invest too much time into the game because I didn't find there was too much to explore.

The game is really just a showcase of the euphoria engine and their team customization tools. Both the tools are fairly impressive, but I found the game built around them to be fairly lacking.

One of the big problems for me was the camera angle. I understand that idea of the camera angle giving you a more immersive experience but I found it to be more frustrating than anything. Once you get the hang of how the angle affects the movement and how it rotates in response to your movement it is serviceable. I think almost 20 years of the overhead madden camera may have ruined this experience for me. I'm just so used to being able to see the field in it's entirety that I couldn't wrap myself around the highly restricted view used in this game.

I did see a few bugs in the (buz-phrase incoming) "real-time physics based" euphoria engine. There were many scenes on my TV that looked more like real football than Madden ever has, especially the line play, but there were some bugs that got a little frustrating. There are many times where the slightest clip will send the ball carrier into a barrel roll or flailing like Sidney Crosby getting a light tap to the back of his leg (A hockey joke in a football game review, haha). There were other times where a player joining the pile would just bounce off and fly 10 feet away through the air flailing.

My biggest problem was that the gameplay breaks down to who has the best right thumb. Deking and spin moves are far too effective and the power moves were essentially useless in my experience. If you just spam juke at the line of scrimmage eventually you will find a hole and launch a big run.

I think when companies like EA and 2k buy licenses to utilize Euphoria we will see some fantastic sports games. Backbreaker does a decent job showcasing some pretty cool technologies. But as a video game it just isn't all that great.

Overall nothing too amazing. The game play itself is fun for a while, but sooner rather than later I kept getting overly frustrated at the passing mechanics, I have never really been much of a Madden fan and I don't think it is very fair to compare it to Madden since EA has the licenses to almost every sport out there, but you can't argue with the fact that this is still a fun game.

It has it's moments when you're tackling the QB and the camera focuses solely on your line backer/whatever position you are playing. That does get quite old very quick though. I found my eyes to hurt after a short while playing the game because of the camera. I enjoy it but it hurts my eyes.

The music in there was another thing that bothered me, they literally had a guitar solo for a kickoff and then no other songs, or music of any kind. It is just that annoying announcer you had to listen to.

The Euphoria Engine truly does shine in this though with the mechanics of tackling down to what looks like a science when you play, but if 505 games gives a football game another shot they should probably try and make their game have far more depth than this one did.

6/10

I tried the demo of this, there really is nothing to the control, very basic, spin moves are unnecessary yet included. To spin you press the right stick down, then swing it around to up, rarely actually works. Sidesteps are move the right stick across, these work though not for any practical reason are they included.

There is no real way to avoid a tackle, once they get hold of you you are tackled. The camera swivels to follow the ball so for tosses you find yourself running straight across the field because the movement control is centered on the camera. They claim that it is hard to do lob passes, they are easy it only takes half a second to do a lob pass, not as fast as a regular though the defence can not reach you fast enough anyway. As has been pointed out in the professional reviews there is no running it is simply pass. The reason for this is because running is pointless, they touch you down you go, the secondary may as well not be there.

Graphically it is bad, the players do not look different, they all move the same. The grass looks more like green with black spots painted on the ground. It barely qualifies as football because of the bad control, if you want to go out there and play highest score wins because there is no actual way to stop passes this game is for you, anyone else avoid like the pague. Not worth renting, not worth buying unless they pay you.

this is by far the worst football game i have ever played in my life the gameplay is so bad