From the Warhammer universe comes Blood Bowl, a game of fantasy football. Taken from the board game of the same name, Blood Bowl features teams of humans, orcs, elves and other Warhammer creatures. The basic premise is that in the far future, some warring races discovered an old football rule book and an old football stadium. After reviewing the rule book they decided that the book was in honor of the great god Nuffle (NFL) and his priests called coaches. Anyway, they decided that the ritual outlined in the book was a good way to kill each other and still have fun, thus was born Blood Bowl.
Blood Bowl is based on the game of football, key word being "based." There are no first downs or huddling and there are no plays called except for the formation of your team on kickoffs so don't expect a football simulation. Blood Bowl is divided up into two halves with each team getting eight turns per half. In a turn, each team moves their players around, blocking, passing, picking up the ball, and so on. Each race has their own abilities: elves are a great running and passing team while orcs are more of a strength and violence team. Individual players have their own strength and movement attributes, as well as special skills like jumping, blocking and throwing. A moving team's turn is ended if one of their players is knocked down or if the ball is turned over. So some turns can last as long as you have players to move and some turns are over after one player is moved, if that player is knocked down.
At the beginning of the game you can play either a single game or start league play, which is where Blood Bowl is the most fun. In league play you set up which teams are in which conference and then you decide which team you want to coach. As you progress through the season your team earns more money, which can then be used to buy free agent players. These free agents are star players which have special abilities and unusually high attributes in strength and ability. You'll need to be buying plenty of these players since the death toll in Blood Bowl can sometimes reduce the roster of your team.
Blood Bowl is a lot of fun to play but there are a few shortcomings, mainly cosmetic. The announcers for the games (one of which looks suspiciously like Jack Nicholson) are very bland and make the same faces while their animated mouths flap around. They also tend to say the same things over and over, which can really get annoying.
There is also the instant replay feature, which would have been a nice touch if it wasn't done so poorly. After a big play, the game will go into a 3d view of the field and you watch the ugly animated characters perform whatever play just happened. It takes way too long and interrupts the fun you were having. There should have been some kind of better animation, digitized video, rendered graphics or, anything instead of just watching one player throw and one player catch or intercept. Better yet, how about an option to toggle it off? The game comes on a CD-ROM, so I'm sure the problem wasn't that they didn't have enough space to store the good animations.
I've heard about add ons in the original board game (like wizards on the side lines which cast spells for the teams) but they weren't included in this version. However, there's a card in the box which says you can send in for a free patch which will allow modem play so the designers are obviously still going at it. Maybe they'll eventually come out with add ons for the PC that are like the ones for the board game.
The board game seems to have been translated very well onto the PC with the only problems being in the extra design stuff of the program. Blood Bowl is fun to play and becomes very addictive after you play a few games. There's a certain warm, fuzzy feeling you only get from watching your man stomp an opposing player into a bloody pulp, and you'll find yourself grinning as you look at the field with wiped out bodies everywhere. It's a shame that some elements of the game needed more attention. The announcers are boring, the touchdown screen is the same each time, and the instant replay neither instant nor useful. The effort was definitely focused on the gameplay instead of the bells and whistles . . . which, I suppose, is better than the other way around. However, Blood Bowl is such an interesting, fun game that it is easy to look past these minor flaws and have a great time.
