For those of you who are sick of the Madden monopoly on football games, here’s something that may pique your interest. Backbreaker is a football videogame under development by NaturalMotion. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because they’re the creators of Euphoria. It’s the “next-gen” physics engine that does away with canned animations in favor of simulating real bodies, and it will make an appearance in GTA IV and two upcoming LucasArts games: the still-untitled Indiana Jones game, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
We don’t have many details on the game yet — there’s only a general release window of “2008”, and the fact sheet only says “next-gen console(s)” as the platforms it’s being developed for — but from these six 1280×720-res images, I think it’s safe to assume that the game will be coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The trailer above is called “Tackle Alley”, and it showcases a single player trying to get from one end of the field to the opposite end zone (check the press release for more info).
The video is a fantastic demonstration of what the Euphoria engine can do — I’ve never seen players move so realistically in a sports videogame, and the sounds also really bring the game to life. Unfortunately, the screenshots aren’t as praiseworthy. Motion blur aside, NaturalMotion is going to need to put a lot more detail into these player models; their clothing just looks ridiculously smooth. Texture mapping, anyone?
IGN has been following this game for a while in the form of developer diaries that they’ve put up. The most recent one discusses this Tackle Alley trailer, and there are five others that precede it. A cool tidbit from the developer is that Tackle Alley may actually make it into the retail release as a mini-game. NaturalMotion is touting this game as “a fast-paced, on-the-field gameplay experience that’s more Burnout than Madden,” so we’ll have to see how it turns out. Are you guys impressed so far?
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