Blood Bowl (2010)
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Review: Blood Bowl (X360)
Blood Bowl takes the basis of American Football into a fantasy world where careers are ended not just through injury but death on the pitch. Adapted from the board game first produced by Games Workshop in 1987, Blood Bowl has already divided the critics but it does offer both positive and negative elements.
Blood Bowl pitches two teams of 11 players against one another in a hostile environment where not even extreme violence is taboo. The main object of the game is to advance into your opponent’s half and score a touchdown in the End Zone. Dependent on your style of play, you can focus purely on scoring touchdowns or you can adopt a more malevolent approach and concentrate on injuring, even killing, opponents, leaving gaps on the pitch to exploit and make scoring much easier. There are eight races in total – humans, orcs, dwarves, lizardmen, skavens, goblins, chaos and wood elves – with each race being purposely built for different tactics and strategy. The nimble wood elves are well suited to swift advances in the pursuit of touchdowns, whereas orcs live for brutality and are more adept at injuring opponents.
Faithful to the board game, the pitch in Blood Bowl is divided into a grid with the 22 players occupying one square each. At the start of play you will be invited to place your team in your own half, applying the formation that suits you best – be it defensive or attack-minded. Once the game begins each team is given a time limit to move each of its players around the pitch. There are 16 turns in total, 8 in each half, and for every move that is made, a roll of the dice can be heard in the background and helps to decide the success of your intended objectives. For instance, if one player is chosen to run towards the end of the pitch and one of the squares on their intended path is adjacent to an opponent then the dice roll will decide if your player successfully evades a tackle and continues. If the dice doesn’t favour you then your player will be knocked down, if you are lucky your player will continue to advance and complete their move. The same rule applies if you choose to attack an opponent. The dice roll will decide the outcome of the exchange with the attacker, defender or even both players being floored in the exchange. Blood Bowl is all about luck in whatever you choose to do – picking up the ball, passing it to a player, scoring a try – all of these intended commands can quickly come unstuck. If you fail to complete a move successfully your turn ends and your opponent takes over.
The menus in Blood Bowl offer plenty to get your teeth into. You can name and customise your own team – Barnsley in my case (no sniggers please!). After choosing one of the eight races you are given a budget to purchase a group of players. As you work your way through the game, players will inevitably be injured or even killed, leading you to replace the loved and lost. To progress you will need to win matches, earn more money and experience for your daring team, and invest this wisely in better protection or designating specific skills to individual players be they evasive, defensive or offensive. Aside from your team you can hire cheerleaders to boost morale, apothecaries to help heal your wounded players, or even resort to bribing the referee.
Unfortunately, Blood Bowl is undone by many factors. Newcomers to the franchise will have to negotiate a series of tutorials that are not helped by the small text. The game is also let down by slow loading times before and after a match which wears at the patience. The matches themselves I found frequently frustrating with such simple tasks as a player running being at the mercy of the dice with a negative outcome leaving your player flat on their face. A seemingly clever strategy could be quickly undone by a player unable to complete the simple task of picking up the ball! Though your opponents are in the same position as you, I did find that they seemed to have the lion’s share of the luck with the bulk of my team left in a bloody heap while they advanced unopposed to score a touchdown. Newcomers to Blood Bowl may find these strategic elements too difficult to persevere with, but on the other hand veteran Blood Bowl players will be able to pick this up quite easily. Blood Bowl is a good concept but instead of the strategy I would have preferred the fast-flowing sport I once enjoyed on the Amiga in the form of Speedball 2 and Brutal Sports Football, both a mixture of violence and sport but more accessible to a wider audience and easier to pick up.
Ratings for Blood Bowl so far have been at both ends of the scale and I believe this will continue. Many aspects of the game work but this is not easy to master and the heavy reliance on luck, though faithful to the board game, I found difficult to accept. That said I believe the game warrants two ratings for my concerns and issues are for newcomers, such as myself, whereas experienced Blood Bowlers will surely find much to enjoy here.
Final Score: 2/5 (for newcomers) 3/5 (for veterans)
Game Review: Blood Bowl | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave