Backbreaker breaks new gridiron ground in 2008 @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on August 24, 2007

News: Euphoria-powered football game will challenge Madden next year.

The crowd of non-NFL licensed games is going to get a lot more crowded next year as NaturalMotion, the company behind the Euphoria engine, has announced they are developing Backbreaker for release on next-generation consoles.

Euphoria is currently being used as middleware to create the realistic animations seen in LucasArts' upcoming Indiana Jones game and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed along with Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. In Backbreaker, NaturalMotion plans to use their engine to create the most realistic football tackles ever captured in a video game. The game will not use canned tackle animations and will instead calculate each on-the-field hit on the fly.

"Backbreaker is the first football game with truly interactive tackles. By utilizing our motion synthesis engine, euphoria, players will never make the same tackle twice, giving them an intensely unique experience every time they play the game," said NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. "Backbreaker puts players in the middle of the gridiron by providing a pure, realistic football experience only possible on next-generation consoles."

NaturalMotion is keeping quiet on all other details of the project, but we'll have more soon.