Backbreaker releases on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, May 28th, 2010.

Much hullaballoo was made up over the Euphoria Engine during the build up to games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Grand Theft Auto IV. The idea of such a dynamic physics engine propelled gamers dreams of frenetic gameplay into the stratosphere. Now, with the upcoming American football Backbreaker project from 505 Games and NaturalMotion, the imagination is aflame with the idea of a truer-to-life experience of one of the world’s most violent real-life games.

To explain the efforts of the development team further, NaturalMotion Assistant Producer Rob Donald discusses how Backbreaker will attempt to be the “first live action video game sports title” and excite fans across the world, even sans an NFL license.

Another year and another Madden game is set to launch itself into the clutches of sports lovers and haters the world over. Whether you think Madden is nothing more than a rehashed version of its year-old self or you believe that it’s the truest representation of your favorite Sunday pastime; EA Sports has one job to do when they set out to create the world’s only NFL-branded title: to make the best damn football game people have ever seen.

For Madden NFL 11, the team at EA Sports’ Orland-based Tiburon studio is starting the massive roll-out of improvements, tweaks and new additions by giving us a look into the re-designed catching intelligence that you’ll feel and see when you get your hands on your copy in August.

As any diehard Madden fan knows, receiver artificial intelligence has been lacking for some time. Whether you’re running an out route or a fade to the corner, problems popped up at every turn. For an out route, your receiver had little to no idea where the sideline was, so he’d consistently forget to get two feet inbounds or, if he did remember, he’d immediately go darting out of bounds instead of knowing to fight for extra yardage when a first down was close. As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, making a pass to the deep-part of the end zone was often hit or miss. A real NFL player knows to get both feet down. Beyond that, they know the more finite rules of the game and they use those rules to make big plays. EA Sports is hoping that a new creation called the Catch Debugging Tool will help them address these issues and more.

The Catch Debugging Tool essentially allows developers to analyze and break down catch animations and the behaviors that lead to certain actions on the field. Aside from the miscues that I mentioned above, players in past Madden games seemed to have an incredible propensity for catching the ball and running the wrong way. Almost as though they were caught using turbo when running towards their own endzone. With the Catch Debugging Tool, EA Sports’ Ian Cummings (creative director on Madden) told IGN that they’ve been able to get “frame-by-frame results of what catches best match the situation for all players involved as the ball is in the air.” Cummings says that the end result for users is “a much larger variety of animations than ever before.”

Not only will players recognize the boundaries of the field, but Cummings also said that they’d be fully aware of the location of first down markers. “We have specifically tuned and added support to make it so receivers wait for the ball on a curl and have awareness for the first down. Also, receivers will now be working to catch the ball in stride on crossing routes so they don’t end up slowing down or losing yardage,” said Cummings. He later conceded that receivers will occasionally lose yardage if it means coming back to the ball and avoiding an interception. I, for one, can live with that.

But what about defense? It seems with all this newfound firepower for the offense, the defensive guys might have fallen by the wayside. Cummings assured us that wasn’t the case, saying, “We never want to make it so the offense is too powerful, so we have really focused on giving the defenders the ability to go up and also knock the ball out in mid-air. We’ve added all new animations for mid-air collisions so defenders have an even better ability to get up with a receiver and fight for the ball. With recent changes, players will definitely play the ball more aggressively, but the elite guys are the ones who are going to be able to hang on to it.” So while you’ll see wide receivers like Larry Fitzgerald going up in traffic and coming down with an astounding grab, there’s certainly the opportunity for defenders like Ed Reed to make you sorry you ever tried working the ball into the middle of the field.

It’s always exciting when we first start hearing about new features and improvements to the classic Madden formula, and while better catching is something that we’ve heard before from EA Sports, it sounds as though they’re finally putting an adequate amount of development resources behind one of finer points of football. We’ll have much more on Madden NFL 11 as soon as EA Sports further removes the veil of secrecy. Until then, be sure to check out Ian Cummings’ post on the Madden NFL 11 blog, scheduled to hit tomorrow.

Backbreaker’s official Facebook page has announced that Backbreaker will be sold in the UK and gamers can now pre order their copy with a £10 discount leaving the total at Only £29.99!

Great news for Backbreaker fans in the UK today! 505 Games have announced that Backbreaker will be available to buy at GAME stores and online on May 28th, 2010 at www.game.co.uk. Pre-Order the game now and receive a £10 discount!

Everyone at NaturalMotion Games is especially delighted that our friends in the UK will be able to get their hands on what the games press are already describing as a “revolutionary” experience.

So Pre-Order now everyone!!

While Major League Baseball 2K10 is the only game available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation users have the lovable MLB 10: The Show. But don’t get me wrong, there is just as much wrong if not more wrong with The Show, then there is 2k10 this year.

It seems as if every major sports gaming release since the inception of online gaming, has relied on the release of a patch to fix some of the (major) problems the game has had. Last year 2K9 was flooded with release day reports of a franchise mode bug that prevented big name players from being re-signed in the off season. Well those bugs are just what us gamers have to deal with now days in regards to sporting titles.

Major League Baseball 2K10’s main focus this year was on the pitchers vs. the hitters, the new feature that 2K implemented this year is Total Pitch Control (TPC), which makes for an entirely new way of how the pitcher selects their pitch of choice and delivers that pitch into the catchers glove. Now the success of that 95mph fastball is completely in your control, the movement of the right analog stick dictates how much movement and how on target the pitch is at the plate. Pitching is a very enjoyable part of this game.

MLB Today

The new MLB Today feature is very similar to the recently introduced NBA Today on NBA 2K10, but it contains an upgrade that also displays the teams streaks as I explain below. With daily downloads during game boot up the home screen displays today’s games, who’s pitching, team leaders and what teams played last night as well as that game score. You can even compare teams that are slated to face off in an upcoming series, MLB Today shows the ups and downs of the teams recent performance.

My Player

This is the game mode that I have religiously played over the past few days, which the exception of a “rare” bug that I came across, my player mode could be the glue that holds this years’ game together. In My Player mode you start off by creating your player and choosing your position. I found that being a pitcher is most fun because it allows you to have the most control over the game. But after selecting your position and what your player looks like, you are then given the option to choose what team you would like to play for. What ever team you choose to play for you immediately start off at the Single A level and your first action is a clutch moment in the bottom of the 9th.

Although some fans may not feel the same way I do because there is one flaw in My Player mode, and that is unless you are a pitcher, you do not get to watch any of the game except for the parts that you’re involved in, and the rest of the game is simulated.

For those that may be interested, the bug that I came across in My Player mode was that after season three, which would be my second full season in the majors, I cannot advance to the post season without the game freezing every time. I have even been able to advance fast enough to play the first game of the series, but as soon as the game was over and the black loading screen appeared, the game froze. Now before this all occurred I simulated and did not make the playoffs but WAS able to advance to the next season. I hope this gets fixed with a patch, otherwise I just threw away 100 games played  in my player.

Outside of running into the issue of a bug that 2k deemed “rare”, my experience with this mode has been a great one. I would suggest trying out a couple different positions to see which one you like best and will have the most fun with. I tried out Left-Field first and didn’t find it very enjoyable compared to when I tried being a pitcher.

Franchise Mode

Most of what was franchise mode last season remains the same with this years version, not much has changed except for some bug fixes and performance issues. The removal of these bugs and performance issues have brought new life to the mode giving it good replay value. On top of franchise mode having a good replay value, many of the achievements for this game revolve around season performance. I do caution you though, you must have 20 user games played in order to qualify for the achievements.

Online Play

I was able to finally get some online games in playing against a buddy of mine recently. I was blown away at how smooth the game play and lag free it was. The online experienced was very enjoyable and fun to play (largely due to the lag free environment).

I am aware of a reported issue where users attempting to play ranked games are experiencing game freezes and system lockups. This is reported to be fixable only by a patch and at this time it is unknown when that patch will come.

Graphics

Another issue that plagued 2K9 last year was a looming performance issue where the game would slow down with graphics lag, that issue however was later improved with a patch. This years version is much improved with almost zero noticeable game lag or slow downs. That is about the only graphics based upside to this years game, there were general fixes but players look just about the same that they did last year. I was hoping for an upgrade here because there are some easy fixes that could vastly improve the game.

Presentation

This years game presentation is phenomenal, John Kruk, Steve Phillips, and Gary Thorne present a very realistic feel to the game play. They talk of previous games that have occurred in your franchise mode or the previous games that have been played in real life. On top of general talk they go in depth and bring up batting averages and hit streaks against the opposing teams. Some of the facts the commentators bring up are obscure ones which makes the commentary actually interesting.

Overall Fun

This game is very enjoyable now that My Player mode has been added. 2K Sports hits a triple with this game just like I stated earlier. It’s a vast improvement, but there are still a great deal away from hitting a grand slam with the series.

Last year’s version could be described as unplayable by a great deal of people. The improvements 2k has made to this year’s version gives baseball fans a playable, more realistic game. If you have a PS3, chances are you should go with Sony’s The Show 10. However XBOX 360 baseball fans, now have a good option in MLB 2k10. If you’re a baseball fan, you WILL have fun playing MLB 2k10.

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MLB 2K10

8.3/10 : Rating is based off ranking of 5 members of the VSN Staff who plays MLB 2k10 in good detail.

If this trade were to go down and that’s a big if,  what would these two all-star first basemen look like in their new jerseys?  Lucky for you, we here at VSN have the answer.

First let’s take a look at what Albert Pujols would look like in a Phillies uniform.

And now what Ryan Howard would look like in a St.Louis Cardinals uniform.

Hey guys,
Here are the notes of patch fixes for MLB 2K10 on the 360. I have been informed that the patch could go live as early as this week, no later than next (if I get further update, will pass the word along). I want to confirm that there is scheduled to be another 360 patch along with a confirmed PS3 patch (that will most likely be a combination of the two if all goes as planned). We got the support to be able to fast track this patch for 360, so pretty cool that we’ll have it out this early for you MS users.

I should point out that this update addresses the issue with Online Ranked Games, Check Swings, along with several (by my count, at least 5) points that you guys discussed in the community feedback. Also, we have a fix in place for My Player, and we think it should get you guys having issues squared, but I personally don’t want to guarantee that it will be the only fix needed. There might be another weird cause of My Player issues, but we’ll be working around the clock on reproducing any additional My Player issues after the below fix is in place. Remember always to hold on to your My Player file and please let me know if you have issues after the update. I have been told by Dev that some cases in Q&A have cleared up the locked up My Player post-update, so hope some of you are lucky like that.

The next (scheduled) patch should aim to alleviate even more of your feedback and address any outstanding issues. Thanks!

General
• Fixed Inside Edge Batter Breakdown letter grade assignments on screen (cosmetic issue previously only)

• The correct ‘Player of Game’ was not consistently being chosen. It is now.

• Player of Game not consistent for all dialogs & audio, should be now.

• Fix for bug where head morphs changed when changing hair-style/length in create a player, also addresses extremely odd looking faces generated using randomize head option in create a player.

• Post Season pause menu stat issue – batting averages will be from the season, not post season as it should be.

• The loading screen would display a playoff *race* key game message, rather than a playoff key game message.

• In ReelMaker a wipe would not appear properly the first time, but it appeared if you played the reel again. Fixed.

• There was a case where the user had to press the button through button twice to advance to the next pitch. The intended behavior is to only have to press the button once.

• There was a stray camera cut after action replays, before advancing to the next batter.

• Fixes a bug with player stat leaderboards over specific timeframes: Last 10 Games, Last 30 Days, This Month, Last Month

• Breaking the consecutive game hit streak record was not being recorded and displayed on the Records screen. It is now.

• Bug where batting averages like .27777778 were not rounded up to .278 in the batter intro overlay when displaying split stats like “career vs. pitcher”.

• Bug where franchise and career modes would display the incorrect year that players won a Gold Glove (shown in-game as “Top Fielder”) award.

Gameplay
• Added Check Swings.

• AI Pitcher will no longer throw special pitches in a clutch moment (intentional walks, etc.).

• Fixed batter batting without a bat.

• Improved wall climbs and catches at the wall.

• Strike Zones are updated when a pinch hitter is brought in.

• User was unable to throw after queuing a throw before playing a wall collision animation.

• Composure is always affected on a mound visit.

• The fielding shadow was not drawing correctly vertically against walls.

• Show the pitch break arrows in two player games.

• CPU pitchers were staying in too long/throwing too many pitches.

• Sometimes a player wouldn’t do a celebration.

• Incorrect 1st baseman behavior when a runner tried to advance from 3rd to home just as the 1B caught the ball.

• Umpires faced the wrong way when a runner stole 2nd

• Players would occasionally be called out on 2-man steal/pickoff animations when the ball didn’t actually touch them

• There were several issues with double play behavior when one of the players was significantly out of position

• Players had a hard time making running tags

• Outfielders would occasionally play a casual-looking queued throw animation while there was a runner advancing

• The user would occasionally be unable to throw the ball to 1st base after fielding the ball and stomping on 2nd for a double play

My Player
• Fix for a bug in My Player where the “Break a MLB single season record” hall of fame goal was not being marked as completed when the user broke a single season record.

• Fix for a bug in My Player where broken pitching records were labeled as hitter records and broken hitting records were labeled as pitcher records on the timeline.

• The spotlight indicator option was not working, when you turned it off in My Player Setup Options it was still appearing.

• When playing as a catcher in My Player when you had to field bunts they were being hit to hard and the pitcher was fielding them.

• There was a crash when returning to landing screen after first round playoff games in career mode when you have a post season goal.

• My Player: The camera is fixed / focused on a patch of grass / the field as the Game recap screen transitions onto the screen at the ending of a My player game and

• My Player not always being put in appropriate place to see him when we draw the End Game recap in My Player games.

• Base coaches are in sitting pose during clutch moments in My Player.

Online

• Fixed bug that caused players to end up on team select screen with no controller icons when trying to enter a Ranked Online Game.

• Online divergence bug caused by split stats being enabled in online games.