Backbreaker Vengeance is a very successful iphone game but will it be as popular on consoles?
Backbreaker Vengeance consists of 3 pick up and play mini games with up to 20 stages in each. Tackle Alley where you have to get the ball to the end zone whilst avoiding tackles and obstacles, Vengeance Which puts you on the tackling side where you have to stop the ball carrier from scoring a touchdown and Supremacy which is a 4 player race to the end zone. Passing, kicking and catching have been brushed aside in favour of fancy foot and arcade scoring.
Your concentration goes straight to successfully completing the main objective whilst trying to rack up huge points without any real thought because of how simple the objective is.When I say simple I 'am not talking about the game in a difficulty sense.
Difficulty goes from one extreme to the other.You start off having your hand help through each wave but once you get to the halfway point of the challenges it can be near impossible to finish. On your mission to succeed you will need to avoid out of bounds areas, jump walls and run through point pads on the field whilst avoiding opposition in order to gain extra points. This gets repetitive and quite tedious after a few challenges.
The animations are brilliant and the over the top looking players look great. The lighting is nice and the colours are bright but looking into the distance is the crowd and it looks as though it was thrown in without thought.The camera view is pretty good and a nice distance from the player you are controlling but at times it can make it hard to judge obstacles that are approaching. This is only a small gripe and after a nice warm up you will get used to it and the mistakes will slow down.
The physics system is brilliant making every collision, trip and tackle really different and at times quite brutal.The collision detection can be over sensitive and frustrating especially on the harder stages. You might barely touch an obstacle but fall like you were hit by a bulldozer.
Each player has an aura of colour around them representing the way in which you deal with them, eg yellow means they are going to go high so you would slide underneath. Timing needs to be spot on unless you want to be out for the count and start the challenge from the beginning.The player is quite difficult to control at times because turning is slow, especially when running.At times you will be trying to avoid out of bounds areas but because you cannot turn tight enough you will end up right where you do not want to be and fail the challenge.
You can take the single player modes online where the opposition will be human players rather than AI but the game is exactly the same, therefore not worth talking about.
I had fun with the game especially Tackle Valley but Unless you are a hardcore American football fan and don’t stop until you have all the highest scores and medals, replay value is pretty much non existent.With a lack of depth, variety and a 1200 msp price tag I ‘am not sure if people will go for this game just yet.The game would have had more appeal at 800 msp and personally I think it would be worth waiting for the game to go down in price.
