Blood Bowl (PC)
Genre: Sports Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Developer: Cyanide Players: Multi
Blood Bowl always had something that was lacking in the other Games Workshop franchises – a sense of humour. This year has had so many ultra-serious “games-as-art” releases, it’s nice to finally come across a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Cheating is not only encouraged, but essential to winning. Larger players like trolls and ogres are capable of throwing their smaller team-mates into the end-zone, and the goblins are fond of going at their opposition with a chainsaw. Matches are colourful, anything-goes affairs, complete with pitch invasions, secret weapons, and wizards tossing fireballs at star players from the terraces.
The game can be played in one of two modes, either real-time or turn-based. There are two different sets of rules - “Blitz” and “Classic” - with the option to further customise the “Blitz” rules for longer campaigns, or for each individual match. Sometimes it almost feels like there’s too much choice – even playing a single quick match requires you to click through multiple option screens, some of which have next to no bearing on the game.
The game ships with eight different races, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. Building a team mainly boils down to striking the right balance between brute force and finesse. Human sides have players which can adapt to any role without excelling, while the Chaos teams are centred on injuring the opposing side. The Lizardmen have players highly specialised for one role or the other, while the Dwarves are slow and clumsy, but almost impossible to stop when they get rolling.
The graphics are nice, but a little lacking. Character models are detailed and the arenas are well-realised, but the game is missing motion blur, heat-haze and those fancy distortion effects which we’ve come to expect in releases from the last year or two. The glaring omission is animations to distinguish the various moves and injuries your players are capable of. The little icons that pop up over dead or injured players are quite pretty and informative, but animations are the same regardless of whether you’ve fallen over or been decapitated.
The lack of graphical polish is a little surprising, considering that Blood Bowl is built around the versatile Gamebryo engine. This is the engine used by Bethesda for Oblivion and Fallout 3. Among other titles, it also powered recent indie hit Defense Grid: The Awakening. Overall performance is good, and the game scales back well for older systems, but the option to enable a few more bells and whistles would have been welcome. While the title is PC-only at the moment, a 360 version is due for release in September.
As well as the option for quick single-player games, you can take part in larger competitions, or guide a team through a campaign. This is one game where you’ll really need to play through the tutorial to get the most out of it. The single-player AI is absolutely unforgiving, even on medium, although it doesn’t differentiate between the different races. You’ll face the same tactics regardless of the side you’re up against. The commentary for matches is colourful and amusing, although giving the voice-actors few more lines might have been nice. You’ll have heard everything they have to say in very short order, some of it multiple times in a single game.
The real-time mode doesn’t quite work, and very few people were using it online. The random element of the game does not translate well to an RTS-style interface, and the commentary quickly becomes grating. There’s something a lot more addictive and compulsive about the random nature of the turn-based matches, where a close game will really have you sitting on the edge of your seat.
Multiplayer is where the game really shines. Even getting trounced to the point of ridiculousness doesn’t feel too bad, if you take the attitude that every serious maiming inflicted on the opposing side is a little victory of its own. My Chaos team was beaten 4-0 the first time I hopped online, but the number of casualties I inflicted on the Skaven side I was facing brought an evil grin to my face. There’s also a hot seat mode if you want to maim those near and dear to you, and as the game is turn-based, ping isn’t as much of an issue. You can even compete in leagues with friends and strangers.
The match interface is acceptable once you’ve figured everything out, but the menu screens leave a bit to be desired. A lot of game studios are based in countries where English is a second language, but this is the first title in a while where it really becomes apparent. The voice-acting is fine, but clicking through the broken English of seemingly endless menu screens gets old pretty fast.
By now, countless games have been made of various Games Workshop franchises, with wildly varying levels of success. As a full-priced game, Blood Bowl might not be for casual gamers, but the devotees are going to have a spike-studded ball. Where another developer might have taken the franchise and turned it another action-packed button-masher, Blood Bowl is the most faithful translation of the board game that you’re ever likely to get.
By Lachlan (30th Jun 2009)
A tabletop favourite makes its transition to the digital world. Can it faithfully capture the unbridled thrill of moving little metal men around a board, while appealing to a mass audience?
A few weeks ago, I remarked to my editor over a few beers just how tired I am of always spending the first few paragraphs of every review talking about which series or franchise a particular game ties into. So when a title like Blood Bowl comes along it’s refreshing not because this is a brand-new IP, but because it is so clearly intended for existing fans of the franchise. If you really need this game explained to you it's a pretty safe bet that you’re not going to be all that interested.
With that said, this is yet another Games Workshop franchise that has made the transition from table-top to computer screen. Blood Bowl is fantasy football in the most literal sense, for while the sport itself resembles Grid Iron - that bastard corporate endeavour masquerading as a competition – the teams are assembled from Orcs, Elves, and a half-dozen other races that will be more-or-less familiar to anybody who knows their Tolkien.
The origins of this particular title have a wee bit of controversy attached. Chaos League was a 2004 PC release that bore so much similarity to Blood Bowl that shortly after its release, developers Cyanide Studios found themselves in legal trouble with Games Workshop. Part of their amicable settlement was that they would develop a proper Blood Bowl title.
Blood Bowl always had something that was lacking in the other Games Workshop franchises – a sense of humour. This year has had so many ultra-serious “games-as-art” releases, it’s nice to finally come across a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Cheating is not only encouraged, but essential to winning. Larger players like trolls and ogres are capable of throwing their smaller team-mates into the end-zone, and the goblins are fond of going at their opposition with a chainsaw. Matches are colourful, anything-goes affairs, complete with pitch invasions, secret weapons, and wizards tossing fireballs at star players from the terraces.
The game can be played in one of two modes, either real-time or turn-based. There are two different sets of rules - “Blitz” and “Classic” - with the option to further customise the “Blitz” rules for longer campaigns, or for each individual match. Sometimes it almost feels like there’s too much choice – even playing a single quick match requires you to click through multiple option screens, some of which have next to no bearing on the game.
The game ships with eight different races, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses. Building a team mainly boils down to striking the right balance between brute force and finesse. Human sides have players which can adapt to any role without excelling, while the Chaos teams are centred on injuring the opposing side. The Lizardmen have players highly specialised for one role or the other, while the Dwarves are slow and clumsy, but almost impossible to stop when they get rolling.
The graphics are nice, but a little lacking. Character models are detailed and the arenas are well-realised, but the game is missing motion blur, heat-haze and those fancy distortion effects which we’ve come to expect in releases from the last year or two. The glaring omission is animations to distinguish the various moves and injuries your players are capable of. The little icons that pop up over dead or injured players are quite pretty and informative, but animations are the same regardless of whether you’ve fallen over or been decapitated.
The lack of graphical polish is a little surprising, considering that Blood Bowl is built around the versatile Gamebryo engine. This is the engine used by Bethesda for Oblivion and Fallout 3. Among other titles, it also powered recent indie hit Defense Grid: The Awakening. Overall performance is good, and the game scales back well for older systems, but the option to enable a few more bells and whistles would have been welcome. While the title is PC-only at the moment, a 360 version is due for release in September.
As well as the option for quick single-player games, you can take part in larger competitions, or guide a team through a campaign. This is one game where you’ll really need to play through the tutorial to get the most out of it. The single-player AI is absolutely unforgiving, even on medium, although it doesn’t differentiate between the different races. You’ll face the same tactics regardless of the side you’re up against. The commentary for matches is colourful and amusing, although giving the voice-actors few more lines might have been nice. You’ll have heard everything they have to say in very short order, some of it multiple times in a single game.
The real-time mode doesn’t quite work, and very few people were using it online. The random element of the game does not translate well to an RTS-style interface, and the commentary quickly becomes grating. There’s something a lot more addictive and compulsive about the random nature of the turn-based matches, where a close game will really have you sitting on the edge of your seat.
Multiplayer is where the game really shines. Even getting trounced to the point of ridiculousness doesn’t feel too bad, if you take the attitude that every serious maiming inflicted on the opposing side is a little victory of its own. My Chaos team was beaten 4-0 the first time I hopped online, but the number of casualties I inflicted on the Skaven side I was facing brought an evil grin to my face. There’s also a hot seat mode if you want to maim those near and dear to you, and as the game is turn-based, ping isn’t as much of an issue. You can even compete in leagues with friends and strangers.
The match interface is acceptable once you’ve figured everything out, but the menu screens leave a bit to be desired. A lot of game studios are based in countries where English is a second language, but this is the first title in a while where it really becomes apparent. The voice-acting is fine, but clicking through the broken English of seemingly endless menu screens gets old pretty fast.
By now, countless games have been made of various Games Workshop franchises, with wildly varying levels of success. As a full-priced game, Blood Bowl might not be for casual gamers, but the devotees are going to have a spike-studded ball. Where another developer might have taken the franchise and turned it another action-packed button-masher, Blood Bowl is the most faithful translation of the board game that you’re ever likely to get.
8.3
Single Play
7.5
Friend Play
8.2
Multi Play
8.5
Graphics
7.8
Sound
7.5
Challenge
8.7
Entertainment
8.5
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Blood Bowl (PC)
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I just broke Griff Oberwald's neck. I've been waiting a long time to do that.