Gaming spans all decades and all variety of past times and hobbies placed into a virtual world. It gives you an opportunity to take part in things that you may never get to see and concepts you never really thought were possible or would work. If ever there was a game that symbolised that it is Blood Bowl. Combining American Football and a board game by Games Workshop style to bring together some of the most surprising concepts seen on the Xbox One since launch. But, unique doesn’t make every game great so will the follow up from Blood Bowl back on the Xbox 360 is certainly intriguing to say the least.
For those wondering what the hell I’m on about, Blood Bowl is a fantasy sports game which relies on numbers and odds, from dodging defenders as you plot your path through the field to the luck of the dice role which determines the next move. This concept is a hybrid of American football and a dice determined board game. Only combat is determined by a dice role with multiple outcomes possible including friendly fire. The objective of blood bowl is to outscore your opponent in touchdowns by taking the ball into the in-zone.
In terms of a concept there is nothing like Blood Bowl, it is unique which also brings it’s problems, without any actual outline of any rules or definitions, new players such as myself will find it very hard and often frustrating to pick up and play for the first time, it took an awful lot of research before I could actually enjoy the game before me. The dice were especially frustrating as you would often be faced with a scenario where the attributes of the players had no effect at all and others where attributes were used.
Within Blood Bowl you have the ability to create and play with your team using one of 8 available races; These are the Humans, Orcs, Skaven, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves, Chaos, and Bretonnia. From there you can play in a league through single player or join one of the leagues online through the multiplayer system. Within each league is a competition based around a ladder format. Aside from this only the campaign is the main mode alongside this. The campaign uses a team which is rebuilding and looking for former glory. You progress through the games upgrading the stadia and players as you go along, aided by some excellent story-telling, the campaign is a fun edition, but blood bowl is low on features which affects replay ability.
Aforementioned, rookies will find the going tough in Blood Bowl 2, there are a lot rules and moves that seemingly made no sense to me, the attributes used make almost no sense at all and even though there is some structure to positions or position types it made little difference in all honesty. Almost all of my passes were perfect and the only issues I seem to have is a small percentage couldn’t handle the ball or run very far at all.
The way in which these positions are meant to work is through affecting the percentages in which you can do actions such as running, passing or catching. The combat seems to be the most strange of all, to be honest the dice system confuses things because there is little consistency between 2 of the same outcomes, unless you have full mastery of the rules it is a hard game to enjoy. That being said after a fair few games I eventually picked up the basics and the game became more and more enjoyable especially as I started to appreciate the small things in matches such as the commentary and combat.
Graphically the game is great and the animations are fun to watch as well as well drawn, they are sharp and once again very unique. Coupled with some excellent commentary from the “Cable Vision” team which is both Whitty and inventive keeps you interested through the games extensive loading times and presentation screens. It also adds great effect to the game which can become long and tedious as you opponent moves players around the field at a slow pace, even with the 2 minute limit.
In reality Blood bowl 2 does not have much to offer in terms of features, fans of the series will almost certainly love this once again but the game is not welcoming to new comers and rookies with no background of this board game style and rule set. That being said the creative element on show here is tremendous and the developers have done a great job in bringing some of the fantasy of the board game to life once again. Just because I didn’t really get a full grasp of the games many different working doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it, it’s worth a look in if you have the time.
