O M G.

I never thought I’d say this, but I love this sports game. And, it’s a football game. I’ve reached a milestone here. Of course, let’s be reasonable here: it’s not a true football game, in the sense that a true football game would actually require you to play football. BackBreaker Football by Natural Motion does not do this. It’s just the backbreaking part, which I think, is my main attraction to football. This game effectively skips all the positioning, the strategy, the score keeping, the fumbling, and fuming by just having you play as one football player, carrying a ball, sprinting down field toward the goal while avoiding, with a hop, skip and jump, the opposing forces that sprint toward you. Like I said, it’s fun, if a little simple.

The game immediately sucked me in with its hip, rock music fairly typical of any football movie or game (*starts thinking of those gritty, grainy film textures with yellow filters for adding dimension and grungy personality to sports flicks*). It’s too bad the music gave way to lame emo music of the kind where a man yells in some unflattering and mundanely generic tune, for you and me to ignore. It’s not a big deal – the music goes away once you’re in the game. When starting the game, a nice 360 view is given of the entire stadium, with all the fans standing and cheering you on. The graphics are definitely good enough to keep me playing this game – I have no qualms about admitting my addiction and high expectations for aesthetic quality. The objective? Make your way to the endzone without being tackled. Well, that’s simple enough, only for each level of difficulty there are 60 waves of increasingly tough defenses to beat. Thankfully, there are a few ways you can really amp up your scores, whether it be through juking, spinning, or showboating (150, 250, and 100/sec points, respectively), or, if you’re really daring, you can do combos of any of the above. These really help if you’ve been tackled a few times in a row and see your scores plummet. I particularly like showboating – it’s practically a rite of passage for football players – but I try to save it for when I’m a few yards from the endzone. I think the fans might think you a wee bit too cocky if you strutted a silly dance in the middle of the football field. At least optimism is on your side.

The controls are incredibly easy to use – I wouldn’t change a thing. Tilt the iPhone forward to start your player running, and then turn the phone to the left and right to move him in those direction; otherwise, hold up the iPhone to slow his speed, or even come to a standstill. The two buttons immediately to your left and right, the ones with arrows, let you juke in the corresponding direction, and the buttons adjacent to these are your spinning buttons, once again, corresponding to the direction they’re in. To make your player sprint, hold down the sprint button mid-screen on the right. Watch out, though, he you turn slower when sprinting, making you more vulnerable to tackles, and you can’t double up points by simultaneously juking or spinning. On the opposite spectrum, the showboating button in mid-screen on the left, for you to slow down, open your arms, and show the fans just how much of a pompous ham you are. Oh, it’s all in good fun.

Now, it’s on to play the game. Should the regular game mode ever get tired, there are two additional modes of play, Challenge and Endurance, that challenge you in different ways, with different scores and bonuses (things like gold helmets and the like). When playing, your character runs so smoothly it’s just a pleasure to behold, and the game has no discernible choppiness when being tackled heavily by opposing forces. When you do get tackled, a loud grunt and clanging of plastic is heard – very well done, I might add. For your added delight, BackBreaker includes instant replays from various angles that go on interminably until you hit the “skip” button. I rather like this. It adds to the enjoyment factor.

Running, spinning, showboating and the rough tackle or two really make these game enjoyable to play. It becomes more and more challenging, and there are plenty of levels, so despite the exceedingly basic premise, BackBreaker somehow turned out to be a quality game, with much more life than I anticipated. I’ll be playing this one for awhile to come.

Touchdown!