Backbreaker Preview - Natural Motion based football title

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:20 pm

All I see is a really big flash animation on the home page. Timer is at 0

Is this it?

EDIT: Apparently these guys can't even do a timer to a website launch correctly, typically for this company LOL. Even there most hard core fans are making fun of them on their own forums.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:34 pm

Danimal wrote:All I see is a really big flash animation on the home page. Timer is at 0

Is this it?

EDIT: Apparently these guys can't even do a timer to a website launch correctly, typically for this company LOL. Even there most hard core fans are making fun of them on their own forums.

I agree, Dan...what a let down. I already got rick-rolled by someone in the forums over there, so I'm done checking and will just wait to hear when any information becomes available.

pigpen81 · Post by **pigpen81** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:55 pm

My timer still says 1 hour and 5 minutes here on the west coast.

So maybe it will go up at Noon PST?

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:07 pm

pigpen81 wrote:My timer still says 1 hour and 5 minutes here on the west coast.

So maybe it will go up at Noon PST?

Even if that's the case you don't set other time zones to expire, you look like a joke, at best like you have incompetent web developers.

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:11 pm

Well there are menu items now, none of them do anything for me.

What's even funnier is the menu graphics are scaled, you can see the menu images are different sizes and the roll over are jumping around, I should add all those coming soon rollovers.

So i guess my statement of having poor web developers is correct.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:18 pm

Danimal wrote:Well there are menu items now, none of them do anything for me.

What's even funnier is the menu graphics are scaled, you can see the menu images are different sizes and the roll over are jumping around, I should add all those coming soon rollovers.

So i guess my statement of having poor web developers is correct.

Poor web developers is definitely correct. I can only view at 1024x768 at work but still is it too much to ask for to be able to view all of the information on the website? The information doesn't fit on the screen so the right side of the text is cut off. The site is not scaleable nor is there a l/r (big no-no to begin with) scroll bar so it's essentially useless unless viewed at a higher resolution. What a joke.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:43 pm

Danimal wrote:Well there are menu items now, none of them do anything for me.

What's even funnier is the menu graphics are scaled, you can see the menu images are different sizes and the roll over are jumping around, I should add all those coming soon rollovers.

So i guess my statement of having poor web developers is correct.

They do have some new screens up, but you have to use IE instead of Mozilla to be able to see anything. It's hard to tell too much from pictures, but I'm encouraged by what I can see of the pursuit angles and OL/DL interaction (one screenshot appears to show double-team blocking). Again, it's really hard to tell much from these though.

EDIT: It also says fully customizable with a powerful logo creator, so who knows.

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:56 pm

You can tell a pursuit angle from a still screen?

I'll check it out in IE

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:59 pm

I'll have to take your word for it because when I go their in IE8 it redirects me to a /mobile version which shows nothing.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:10 pm

Danimal wrote:You can tell a pursuit angle from a still screen?

Only in the sense that all of the guys who are chasing the ball carrier are not running single file one behind the other. It could just be false hope on my part.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:20 pm

Dan, see if this link works for ya...someone has posted the screens in the BB forums. These really do look pretty good to me. Glad to have confirmation on the full customization/logo creator as well. In this day and age of downloadable rosters -- who knows, maybe they won't need the NFL license afterall.

http://forum.backbreakergame.com/showthread.php?t=3773

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 8:27 pm

wco81 wrote:How are they still in business, unless they sold their tools to a bunch of other developers?

Seems like a case of too little, too late.

Who knows, if the NFLPA and the owners go to war over CBA, they will blow up all the deals they have, including the license.

Unfortunately, no other developer is in a position to come back into the NFL market. 2K Sports is if anything retrenching from everything but NBA2K.

There iphone app seems to be doing well.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:20 pm

Developer Diary # 2 is out and I'm really liking the little bit of footage that's shown:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/sports/ ... eo/6251527

Also, anyone interested in pre-ordering can receive $5 off by doing so through Wal-Mart.

http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng ... ackbreaker

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:37 pm

That a much more, shall we say well edited diary then the first one.

There is no denying the way the models move and interact on tackles is out standing. But if you look at the last diary which showed much more game play footage you will see a lot of issues.

First of all the models are horrible, that's going to be the biggest thing to get over for me.

The AI in the first video looked really bad, DB's were running right past guys, not moving on the ball etc. This video is edited in a way that all you're seeing our the tackles.

I'll still get this game just for that, but I saw a lot of the problem that plague other football games looking a lot worse in the first diary. How come no link to that one?

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:41 pm

First diary

http://www.operationsports.com/videoview.php?id=583

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:30 pm

Heard that they are aiming at 11 vs. 11 online games and full editing of uniforms and rosters?

Still not going to dent Madden without a license but with the upheaval at EA and possibly the NFL, maybe the licensing situation could change.

If that happens, you hope there are other football engines around which could be used to try to build other NFL games.

Something like this could be used to get something up and running immediately and then build on it. A developer like the ones for The Show might have enough goodwill that gamers might be willing to wait 2 or 3 iterations to see what they could put together.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:06 am

Some UK magazine has a rather flowery preview of the game in its new monthly issue, which can be found here:

http://forum.backbreakergame.com/showpo ... stcount=65

The preview suggests you can't take your created teams, logos, endzones, etc. online, but that's been debunked by a developer over on the Backbreaker forums:

"Wow this has really spiralled out of control again! Let me clarify... though I'm not going into complete details since a lot of this will be covered in the upcoming previews.

1) You can take your custom team online
2) Your friends will see your full team design including logos and endzones
3) Strangers online will see a default logo and endzone replace your created logos but your team will otherwise remain the same statistically. And YOU will still see your logo creations and endzones.

Bottom line... the title of this thread is incorrect. You 100% can take custom teams online and play anyone you want.

Further information about custom teams will be revealed in due course."

He later added:

""Friends", as an online concept, exist outside of the boundries of our game. If you want to see the uniforms of your league... add them as friends."

http://forum.backbreakergame.com/showth ... post202005

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:45 pm

Gamespot and IGN both have previews and movies respectively.

Look to have a season mode of sorts. And a Master League season mode where you start in the 3rd divisions with master league scrubs and work your way up.

Passing looks similar to Fever's Read n React.

And it says it's going to be released in May. That's an odd time but oh well. It certainly looks more of a game than first feared.

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:51 pm

Here is what i have seen by viewing all the previews

No Injuries

Can't control touch on your passes.

Great tackles and collisions

Stiff player movement

Just god awful player models

One camera angle that I really don't like from the videos

All these previews and videos took this from a buy to a rent for me. If i want a good non NFL game that i can pick up and play I still have APF.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:27 pm

Even with Ian the savior on board, I'm still getting little to no enjoyment out of EA's football games. So I'll gladly support these guys and give their game a good shot. Hopefully with it coming out in May, people will have NFL rosters ready to go by July training camp. I'm sure there will be quirks and whatnot with it being their first game. But if even just the tackles turn out great, it's going to be awfully hard to go back and look at the same stale canned tackle animations offered by the competition. Probably like looking at polygon based players (nfl2k1) vs sprite-based ones (madden 2000).

Plus, I was one of the guys who liked FPF in espn2k5 and gave credit to NCAA last year for trying the new camera angle. Playing as a MLB or safety using the new backbreaker camera should be a lot of fun.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:39 pm

Danimal wrote:Here is what i have seen by viewing all the previews

No Injuries

Can't control touch on your passes.

Great tackles and collisions

Stiff player movement

Just god awful player models

One camera angle that I really don't like from the videos

All these previews and videos took this from a buy to a rent for me. If i want a good non NFL game that i can pick up and play I still have APF.

I am the opposite, I went from not even going to try it to rental.

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:25 pm

GTHobbes wrote:Even with Ian the savior on board, I'm still getting little to no enjoyment out of EA's football games. So I'll gladly support these guys and give their game a good shot. Hopefully with it coming out in May, people will have NFL rosters ready to go by July training camp. I'm sure there will be quirks and whatnot with it being their first game. But if even just the tackles turn out great, it's going to be awfully hard to go back and look at the same stale canned tackle animations offered by the competition. Probably like looking at polygon based players (nfl2k1) vs sprite-based ones (madden 2000).

Plus, I was one of the guys who liked FPF in espn2k5 and gave credit to NCAA last year for trying the new camera angle. Playing as a MLB or safety using the new backbreaker camera should be a lot of fun.

What does EA have to do with it? When a person points out something they don't like about backbreaker I really see no reason to bring up madden.

If your reason for getting a game is to support anything not made by EA then that's your issue, not mine. I'm commenting on the game that is being produced, not Madden and there are a lot of things I don't like about it.

I've always said when it comes to sports games it is what you can live with because none of them are perfect. No injuries, no fatigue and the cpu not only throwing an accurate pass on every play but also determining what type of pass it is for me do not equal selling points for me. YMMV

Rodster · Post by **Rodster** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:51 pm

double post

Rodster · Post by **Rodster** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:52 pm

GTHobbes wrote:Even with Ian the savior on board, I'm still getting little to no enjoyment out of EA's football games. So I'll gladly support these guys and give their game a good shot. Hopefully with it coming out in May, people will have NFL rosters ready to go by July training camp. I'm sure there will be quirks and whatnot with it being their first game. But if even just the tackles turn out great, it's going to be awfully hard to go back and look at the same stale canned tackle animations offered by the competition. Probably like looking at polygon based players (nfl2k1) vs sprite-based ones (madden 2000).

Plus, I was one of the guys who liked FPF in espn2k5 and gave credit to NCAA last year for trying the new camera angle. Playing as a MLB or safety using the new backbreaker camera should be a lot of fun.

I'm not the biggest Madden fan on DSP and even I admit it Madden 10 was a fun game last year and probably one of the better versions in quite some years. I even traded in my copy of Madden 10 and pre-ordered Madden 11.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 1:49 pm

New video from an alpha build of the game:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-1 ... aker/63051