When it comes to American-rules football games, I’ve enjoyed a wide range of them from arcade-style titles like NFL Blitz, detailed sims like Front Page Sports Football, ’in-between’ games like Tecmo Super Bowl, and even the insane but awesome Mutant League Football. Backbreaker: Vengeance opened my eyes to another possibility however, that a football game could instead just be a collection of mini-games themed around the sport. $15 will net you three such mini-games offering a score attack experience for one player, or local split-screen play for up to two players and borderline unplayable online functionality. There is little specifically wrong with any one event, but they’re all extremely simple and become boring if played for more than a few minutes at a time.
The three mini-games share many common controls, making them easy to learn. They’re all played from a third-person view, with regular movement controlled by the left analog stick, special dodging by the right stick, and the buttons control other moves such as diving, sliding, and so on; you’ll use all of these to stop or get past your opponents depending on the mode. The first mini-game is Tackle Alley, which requires you to run along the football field and avoid tacklers to reach the end zone. It’s not enough to just avoid being tackled, you also have to stay out of certain paths which may require tricky navigation while also getting in some show-off poses as you near the end of your run... but you have to avoid too much bragging so that a tackler doesn’t turn you into the next Leon Lett.
Vengeance, apparently this product’s titular mode, reverses the idea of Tackle Alley. This time, you’re the one chasing the ball-carrier in an attempt to smash him into the ground! That’s said as an exclamation, because one thing Backbreaker: Vengeance does very well is the tackling animations; they’re incredibly detailed and it really does look like the carrier’s day just got ruined when you plow him into the turf. Various little additions come up between successive waves in this mode, much like they do in the others, but on the whole it’s pretty simple.
The most involved mode is Supremacy, which expands significantly on the ideas in both of the previous modes. Normally it is played as a mix of obstacle course and race, with up to four carriers making their way along narrow paths (it’s entirely legal to push your opponents out of bounds to end their run, too) and avoid obstacles on your way to the end zone. The lowest-scoring player at any given time becomes the tackler for the next event, letting him serve as a spoiler against (presumably) the highest scoring player. Supremacy requires very precise play, and it can be difficult to get a good score in some of its stages if you make more than a single mistake.
While each mode features additional stages that add new challenges and wrinkles to the formula, they’re not enough on their own to hold your interest for more than a few minutes at a time. Split-screen local play could help for a little while, but it might be fair to pin higher hopes on the online play. Unfortunately, playing Backbreaker: Vengeance over Xbox Live requires a truly excellent connection and anything else will have lag measured in full seconds rather than ’frames of animation’ or milliseconds of ping time. This usually makes Backbreaker: Vengeance just short of unplayable online, and generally not fun in any case. As a result, you’re left with a trio of mini-games that are decent on their own but fail to engage the player for very long.
Backbreaker: Vengeance doesn’t do anything particularly wrong in its component games; all of its modes except online play work reasonably well and they are fun in short bursts. The problem lies in its nature as a product, compiling three American-rules football mini-games that would normally sell for about $1 or $2 USD apiece on an app store. If they were priced as the ’easy time killers’ they clearly are, I would have no problem and could give them a nod. Unfortunately, Backbreaker: Vengeance isn’t $3 or even $6. It is 1200 Microsoft Points/$15 USD, which puts a trio of mini-games up against some of the best titles on XBLA. Since the cost would have to come down by roughly seventy to eighty percent in order for this to be worthwhile, I have trouble recommending it for purchase and even the most enthusiastic fans of this sport should spend their money elsewhere.
