I will admit that I was not looking forward to playing Blood Bowl for the Xbox 360. With an under the radar release, there was not a single piece of hype surrounding the game’s launch. This sometimes creates a nice surprise, giving gamers an experience that doesn’t have to live up to any expectations. On the outside, the game looked like a blast: gather a bunch of elves, goblins, orcs and other creatures into a football arena and let them have at it. My heart started to swell with flashbacks of classic zombie and robot sports games from the Super Nintendo and Genesis era where super moves and power ups made the game winnable at any moment. Sadly, my heart deflated the instant I picked up the controller. Read on to find out what caused me so much heartache.
Blood Bowl does not reinvent the wheel when it comes to gameplay. It is straight from the pages of any board game you have ever played, just throw in some crazy looking characters, football, and mix it together with a video game. The overall action is all controlled via dice rolls. Certain rolls correlate to specific actions and thus goes the game, rolling the die and watching the action. I wish I could go into more detail about how the game is played, but the tutorial is so convoluted, that it would take me a 10,000 word essay of nonsense to explain it all to you. There is a mode that allows for real-time control of your characters, but it is so poorly implemented, that I would highly suggest not even trying it. You think this mode would be more along the football games that you have come to know and love, but think again. It only allows you to control your character in little snippets, pausing the game automatically to determine the next action.
Graphically speaking, Blood Bowl does what it has too and that is about it. At it’s best, this would be considered a low level, 1st generation Xbox 360 game, possibly even creeping into the original Xbox realm. Character models are nice, distinguishing between the various classes of characters. But as soon as the action heats up on screen, it is very susceptible to slow-down. Graphics would have been a lone bright spot in this game if the developers had managed to create a wonderful CGI world where you were controlling all the on screen action via dice rolls. It would have at least been entertaining to watch!
I will admit that these types of games are not my style. I don’t like having the fate of a dice roll control my game. Yes there is more to it than just the roll of the die, but if I want to play a sports game, I want to control every move, whether it be a bomb down field to an open receiver, or running backwards to the 1 yard line to see if I can then run it all the way back 99 yards for a touch down. That is the beauty of games like Madden and NBA Live. They allow you the freedom to play the game how you want to. With Blood Bowl, it just doesn’t offer up anything that sets itself apart and makes these types of turn-based dice game worth my time.
[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]
That's a shame because I'm always on the lookout for a good football game. Don't get me wrong NCAA and Madden are ok and keep me satisfied for the most part. I just wish I could recapture that feeling I had playing Blitz at arcades when I was younger. Something that was easy to pick up, fun and that finished quickly. Something I could whip out and play a few times at halftime of an NFL game for instance.
I totally feel you on the old school Blitz. I remember popping a lot of quarters into that game into the arcade. Then when it came out for the N64, it definitely kept me and my friends up all night playing hundreds of matches….great times.
Blood bowl is a great game, you're just a retard going into the game expecting yet another boring ass football game >.<
I think this game is targeted at the small group of players who like the table top game. It's made by the same company that does Warhammer and 40k.
And if you think the video game plays slow…
Yeah this game is definitely for those who were fans of the boardgame, which I fondly remember playing as a child with my friends on Saturday mornings. Maybe that's why I disagree with the review completely. I haven't played Blood Bowl for years, but me and my brother find ourselves playing this game online at least 2-3 times /week. It is an extremely addictive experience once you get into it, and it captures the tabletop feel of the boardgame perfectly, down to the detailed paint on the miniatures.
And I do play Madden as well and am an avid NFL fan as well, so don't think I'm some geek who doesn't understand football.
This kind of game is a refreshing change from the usual rehash that EA puts together every year, tweaking a couple of minor things and then putting their enormous marketing campaign machine behind Madden and selling it to the masses.
This isn't for everyone. Then again neither is long drawn out anime RPGs where the hero has to avenge his father and save the princess. With the same lame story over and over and the brocken engrish sobtitles.