Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition Review

20 Nov, 2010

I have never played a game quite like Blood Bowl and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Blood Bowl: legendary edition is a mix up between two unfamiliar genres, the sports game and the strategy game. Actually come to think of it I suppose they are quite closely related. To gamers unfamiliar with Blood Bowl, either from the original game or the board game, then here’s a quick overview. Blood Bowl is a fantasy football type sport, which parodies American football, based in the world of Warhammer. The objective is simple, get the spike covered football from one end of the pitch to the other, bashing other players out the way and using all manner of tricks to succeed. The legendary edition includes 20 playable races, from Dwarves and humans, to Lizard-men and the Undead. There are a number of game types including story mode, which details the history of the sport, campaign mode, where you take control of one team and coach them to victory, and multiplayer.

Jumping straight into the fray, as a Blood Bowl newcomer, is not very clever. Taking time to understand the rules and how the game is played out is well worth investing your time in. Straight away you can understand that gamers with little or no patience will quite easily give up and stop playing all together. It is here where Blood Bowl meets its first problem. The sheer complexity of the game, or should I say sport, to the new player can be incredibly overwhelming. It is not rare to find yourself wondering what on earth you are doing and questioning how the computer is beating you time after time. I myself struggled to beat even the lowest ranked teams, purely because there was so much to learn and take into consideration. It is probably now wise for me to quickly summarise how the game is actually played. The game is played out on a grid type system thing and players can arrange and move their team according to this grid. Everything from catching to tackles is worked out using a dice roll system, which can also be influenced through a number of ways. Teams can employ cheerleaders to help rally them on, bribe the refs, or bring on illegal weapons to sway the match in their favour. This is about all I can tell you really, considering I myself have never really been a massive fan of turn based games. Despite my constant defeats I soldiered on an eventually won. ‘Huzzah’ I thought ‘Maybe I can get into this’. Learning from your mistakes is pretty important if you want to win, and only the most dedicated players are likely to endure a stream of losses for the occasional win. So it is instantly clear Blood Bowl favours the people who have played before, and it is these players who will enjoy the instalment the most.

Blood Bowl: Legendary edition is a very impressive looking game. The stadiums are well thought out in terms of art style and are a joy to look at. The players in Blood Bowl are equally well designed. As a fan of the Warhammer world I spent a good while trawling through each team and just admiring the detail on each player and the subtle design choices. If you have a good enough computer then the game will run very smooth, and every animation will be entertaining to watch. Luckily Blood Bowl is not one of those games that require you play with the best graphics, and players who may not have the best graphics cards are still likely to get some enjoyment out of it.

After shamefully giving up on the whole turn-based method I turned my attention to the real-time mode. The real-time mode throws the whole you go then I go, more strategic method out the window and opens the game up into a quicker paced, newcomer friendly, and arguably more easy experience. Each character on your team can be clicked on and instructed where to go and what to do in a very simple manner. Time can also be slowed down with the space bar in order to organise your players in a smaller amount of time. Some may protest that this removes the whole point of Blood Bowl and replaces it with a more mainstream form of play. However, for people wanting to get into the game it is a much more steady progression into the more tactical side of the game and allows players to enjoy the sport without wading through reams of text to understand the rules.

The new ‘story mode’ is a brilliant new instalment. This mode takes you through the history of Blood Bowl and puts you in the shoes of some of the most famous Blood Bowl coaches. It’s actually rather interesting seeing how the legendary sport came about and fulfilling the objectives for each match can be rather fun. These objectives can range from simply winning the match, to using your hefty trolls to launch the scurrying little Goblins around the pitch. This takes an emphasis off constantly winning and allows the player to become familiar with some of the game mechanics that may have otherwise been overlooked. Once players are reasonably familiar with the game the next natural progression is campaign mode. This mode is a far more in depth version of play, where players take one rough and ready team and chisel them into hardened Blood Bowl warriors. You can train individual members of your team, buy new ones, employ cheerleaders, and buy new equipment. It is incredibly in-depth, but not too overwhelming for those already familiar with the game. It takes the player through a number of tournaments and allows for steady progression of the team. It’s a pretty standard format for any sports game and is well fitted in here.

Blood Bowl is not for the faint hearted, or the easily annoyed. Patience and tactics are the name of the game, and if you are one of those people who like to jump right in then this probably is not for you. For those who are willing to sit back, take time to learn and gradually improve then give it a go. As a fan of Warhammer in general this game was fun to play simply for the whole atmosphere. You can lob this game in with the more ‘specialist games’, one of those games you’re a bit wary of picking up because you know you’ll be unfamiliar with the whole thing. Given time you can quite easily take joy in trouncing opponent after opponent but don’t expect to be God’s Gift to Blood Bowl straight away.

Rating: 3/5