Blood Bowl

October 12, 2009 by Alex Seedhouse
Filed under Nintendo DS, Reviews, Sony PSP

I wonder whether I should be embarrassed for revealing that I was often labelled as being ‘one of those geeky kids that collected figures‘ in my youth. I regularly visited Games Workshop, collected the long running White Dwarf magazine, and enjoyed painting the incredibly detailed figurines with the smallest pots of paint ever and a trusty paintbrush. Well, now that confession is out the way I can go on to say that when I heard that Cyanide Studios were working on a computerised version of Blood Bowl, Games Workshop’s American football themed table-top game that utilises teams consisting of species from the companies Warhammer universe, the little geek inside me was immediately reawakened!

It was certainly great therefore to find that Cyanide have stuck very close to the genres roots, bringing to life each of the races from the game with a great feel of authenticity as well as encapsulating the rather brutalic nature portrayed within the franchise.

I’m sure many will hop straight into a Campaign, which provides the most depth within the title as you strive to guide your team on its ascension through each league. As well as this there are also options for shorter competitions as well as single matches. Of course, before you reach the point of play you will have to select and form your team. It is here that the diversity doesn’t disappoint – with similar Games Workshop related titles we’ve seen expansions that have been released to introduce new races, yet Cyanide have strived to include an extensive selection that includes Humans, Orcs, Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Skaven, Lizardmen, Chaos and Goblins. Whilst fans will notice that there are a couple of races missing, we’re hoping that these may be added in at a later date.

However, although the broad selection of races is apparent it’s unfortunate that the customisation options aren’t as satisfactory. You’ll pick a team colour, alongside a name and emblem before moving on to purchase your players. Here you can cycle through three ’skins’ in total for each player role yet these barely alter the appearance, more often than not being a simple change in skin/ fur colour. It is certainly disappointing considering the majority of the target market for the title will be fans of the original version, and would therefore have painstakingly taken the time to paint their models with individuality. Whilst here, there just isn’t the feeling of applying your own identity to your team, which i’m sure some will miss.

As you’d expect the game inevitably centres around the matches, and on the most part these work quite well. You will be able to choose to play the game with either real-time or turn-based settings, allowing you to select one of two very contrasting styles of play. The former provides a much more fast paced experience where you must react quickly to ensure the enemy team doesn’t bash all your players to the floor and dash to score, whilst the latter allows for a slower but far more strategic approach that can more directly relate to the table-top experience.

Throughout my time with the game, I preferred the more tactical approach of turn based gameplay (probably stemming from my previous Games Workshop experiences!), allowing me to move my players around the pitch without any immediate worry of being caught out, as well as being able to watch the roll of digital dice whenever there was a need to perform any action as to see whether I was successful or not. This’ll occur for everything you do – from picking up the ball, throwing it to a team mate, bashing an enemy player to help run the ball down the pitch etc. Once you’ve gotten hang of how everything works, it certainly becomes much more enjoyable but I can imagine such tactical play may be initially daunting for younger players who are probably more interested in seeing the races bonk each other on the head and fall to the floor in an unconscious heap.

My reasons for avoiding the real-time settings are purely because I just found that it just doesn’t work. In providing a continually paced experience, all the background ‘rules’ and dice rolls that can be visually seen within the turn based mode are hidden – most probably to reduce distraction, in aiming to allow for a more visual experience. Unfortunately, this leads to complete and utter bafflement as you try to pass the ball across to another player for it to land a metre in front of you – with no explanation. You’ll attempt to try and knock out one of the opposing teams star players only to find your strongest character suddenly fall over himself, meaning that it is here that the games AI starts to show its flaws. Your players will begin to automatically making moves unless you give them direction, or set AI behaviours for them yet more often than not whatever they do will immediately end up putting you at a disadvantage – its an incredible shame.

Regardless of whether you win or lose each match, you will be able to spend the time prior to starting your next fixture levelling up and unlocking new abilities for the players that performed well within the previous game. These relate to the nature of your chosen race, and range from being able to extend player movement distances, increasing accuracy and range of passes etc – all the things you’d usually expect. It works incredibly well though, as you will begin to notice that you’re team is becoming stronger even though the AI obviously ramps up the difficulty as your progress towards the harder leagues.

If you grow tired of facing the AI, then you can hop straight into online play where you’ll have the opportunity to enter both public and private matches. Whilst the interface isn’t too intuitive, once you’re in you won’t regret it as it is here that Blood Bowl shows that it is just as enjoyable as any other multiplayer sports title despite its fantasy setting.

Finally I must mention that Blood Bowl suffers from some of the most lengthy loading screens i’ve encountered in a while, and for what reason i’m unsure. I found myself regularly walking away from my PC to occupy myself for a few minutes, to come back and still find that the matches were loading up still at times. Hopefully this may be improved with the aid of a patch, but at the time of writing it hadn’t been addressed.

On the whole Blood Bowl offers a humorously authentic version of one of Games Workshop’s celebrated games. Whilst a good enough title to ensure it’ll satisfy fans of the original, it isn’t totally blemish free but will prove enjoyable for those willing to spend time to learn how to play it well.

Lost Gamer Verdict: 6/10