Backbreaker Demo Impressions

Backbreaker is the new game from the people over at 505 Games working with the Euphoria physics engine by Natural Motion it strives to redefine the American football genre which for many years has had only one real contender in the mix which has been the long running Madden series.

I was interested in the demo as I have had an interest in some of the previous Madden games and the NFL in general, and with the touted new gameplay on offer and Euphoria it was worth trying out and from the short time playing the game i am shockingly
surprised at what they have produced the core gameplay is terrific.

The demo includes the standard exhibition which allows you to play one half of a game, a training mode which is essential to get the most out of the game without it the game can feel a little overwhelming on a first impression.
A nice little feature they added is a tackle alley mode which has you running from one end of the field to the other dodging your way through an ever increasing variety of defenders, it plays like an arcade game in principal with a set number of lives and a scoring system which rewards you for dodging consecutive tackles and also taunting, the mode includes a massive 100 different challenges though the demo is limited to i believe 5 in total.

For me the best way to describe the game is that this is the Skate of the American Football genre because it uses a similar control mechanics to interact with the game this coming from the unique use of the analog controls.
The controls essentially work as follows, for passing pushing back on the right stick then pushing forward will vary the strength of the pass another option is a quick pass which is simply flicking on the right stick forwards. With the running game the right stick can be flicked left and right to make quick dodge or a half circle motion to perform a spin, both of these are very intuitive and certainly beats pressing a button it makes you feel more involved in the game and when you succeed in a certain situations be a it a first down or a late touchdown it is because of your skill you pulled it off and less down to chance, it feels very rewarding.

The game has a fresh feeling much like what Skate was to the long running Tony Hawk series, it has sort of an anything can happen vibe, and well just feels more alive and intuitive when your making a crunching tackle or a long pass when your the quarter back, overall it feels and looks amazing. Making a long run from a pass running down the wing with defenders trying to take you down left and right and finally making a dive to get the touchdown its very much down to you and your skill if you succeed. If you mess up it does not feel cheap in anyway and makes you change up your game and the way you may approach the same situation a second time overall the more you play you will learn to play better to overcome obstacles.

Simply put its just a fun game to play, i can see this being a great game to play with a few mates or online the only downside is the lack of licensed teams but seeing as I'm not a loyal NFL fan which wont effect me too much but some NFL fans may be iffy about picking it up given the option of Madden later in the year.
I would recommend this to any sports fan who likes gaming its a fun rewarding game and personally i cant wait for the full release later this month.

The demo is currently up on Xbox Live and i believe should be on PSN now so go and check it out.

Bioshock Pitch Document

This was posted up by Irrational Games late last week and gives an interesting insight in the development and the ideas behind Bioshock. Things like this rarely see the light of day to the public so to be able to read certain sections and generally see how these vets within the industry put together a quality pitch document is a real treat, and myself as a Game Designer it really helps me think what i can do with my current concepts and designs to put them over into a quality pitch that can be used on a project or part of a portfolio.

Aside from that I'm a big fan of Bioshock so its intriguing to see just how much the game changed since first starting out and finally evolving in to what was released in 2007.  A nice little find is the story linked multi player that is mentioned which sounds allot like what was featured in the 2010 sequel.

If you want to check out the doc for yourself it can be found here Bioshock Pitch Document

Adventure Game

Recently been talking to a friend and he mentioned his interest on working on an adventure game but was lacking a concept so i offered to create a concept/design for him, i enjoy this genre and how its evolved over the years so its a nice challenge to work on this.

Ant was open to any theme which for creating a concept is nice and also hard because you have so many options open to you but the more i thought about it i figured out some of the contents that would be the framework of the game. At first i looked at a more mature theme but that direction kind of seemed more generic and also would open up some problems with actually creating it.

What I've come around to is creating something in the vein of a Pixar film in which it has a strong storyline and characters, a colourful presentation and a comedy element that is multi level which appeals to both to a young and older audience but on different levels as well as that it can be appreciated in a variety ways of depending on the audience so a younger audience can enjoy the vibrant action and characters and game play with and older audience appreciating the characters and storyline.

To round it off the phrase I'm using for this is simple and assessable

Deviant Art

Just a shout out you can find some of my art Deviant Art which you can find here http://sk-deadstar.deviantart.com/

At the moment ive got some digital art and some hand drawn art though ill be putting up a fair amount of hand drawn art in the coming weeks.

Clearing things up

Been spending a fair bit of time working on the slasher concept which has been fun writing though I've come to a creative point when I'm 3/4 of the way in finishing the concept and the story progression its just the last quarter that I've been having some trouble with so I'm taking a break from this and also this writing feeling a bit burnt out with it.

Saying that I've started back on with building up some drawings for a portfolio this has just been refreshing going back to it after leaving it to one side for most of the year its just nice being able to draw without an assignment and such over head.

Another thing i am currently working on is some game play concepts which has had some influence from the art I've been producing its kind of thinking of what will be happening or what could be possible with future tec and how it can help games, i wont go into too much detail about it that's for another post but its taking some of the fundamentals of current games and improving on that to make the experience more immersing from a control and visual standpoint.

Blogs will be running more frequent now with this new stuff the bit of a block halted the blogs to also will be posting some opinions of some new films and maybe Alan Wake when that is released so look out for those.

Back with some updates and new stuff

Ive taken a little time away from this for a little while allot was going on that was just a distraction which meant i couldn't work on my current project in the way i wanted so i left it till things turned around but its back on now. Its important to work on something you enjoy when your focused on that otherwise its not going to turn out the way you want it to be well that's my case.

Bit of a bonus about this break was the fact i can start to look on what I've written with fresh eyes so i can weigh up whats working i wont go to much into that at the moment ill do something regarding that in the future.

As far as this project goes just been going over some of the setting and more so some of the ingredients that will give the place its unique flavour weighing up a few locations in America once i have something the fictional town will have more of a soul i might cover some of that in the the next post I'm not sure yet.

New Stuff
A new thing that I'm going to start covering in this blog is some of my thoughts and reactions to new announcements in the film and games industry and anything that i think i have a worthwhile opinion about which is related to the theme of this blog, this will be handy when it comes to E3 and just generally will help keep me up to date and thinking about new things that are going on.

So keep a lookout for a new blog post soon should be up fairly soon.