Blood Bowl (Xbox 360)

**Caveat: This is for the Xbox 360 version***

pros:

- none

cons:

- terrible graphics;

- terrible sound;

- uninspired and ugly presentation;

- long load times;

- cumbersome tutorial and gameplay;

- no custom online leagues;

- small number of teams and playmodes;

- limited camera (no zoom as far as I can tell);

I played the tabletop version of this game years ago. I loved every minute of it, and the only reason I stopped playing was job, starting a family, moving, and lack of finding other players locally. When this was announced, I had hopes to return to this game, if only in a virtual sense. Finally, a good fantasy-based take on football, using a tabletop game world I knew and liked.

Then, I actually got the game. Wow, huge disappointment. For one, the graphics are terrible. I don't expect bleeding edge FPS graphics for a turn-based game, but I don't expect a regression back to the original Xbox, either. There are scant few graphical indicators to let you know what a given player's skill set or "best" position to play (blocker, passer, etc.). Instead, you get a display of the players stats when that player is activated. While helpful, that shouldn't be on the main display.

The sound is atrocious. The announcers are repetitive and boring, and the there's very little "in-game" noise made. When I play a game with a Troll and a Black Orc or two on one team, I should be hearing a lot of yelling and bone-breaking; not in this game. The crowds are equally dull.

Gameplay is dull and glitchy. Telling me that I might have to forfeit a turn just to proceed through a tutorial means the tutorial is poorly thought out. The control scheme doesn't fully use all the controls on the control pad, mapping several commands to one button; very repetitive. There's little information given during some plays. There should be some graphical indicator displaying the probability of completing a play, such as a pass, but there isn't. I spent time trying to hover over players to see which ones had stats best suited to catch or throw a pass. If I wanted to do that, I'd play the tabletop game, referring to my player stat sheets all the time. The pace is dog slow even for a turn-based game. I shouldn't have to answer *every* dice roll. Simply let me setup auto-select choices, or default it to the "best" outcome until I change it. Why would I use anything less than the best outcome for a block or something?

I couldn't save some stats between some matches in a campaign. It's a known glitch, but doesn't seem to affect a lot of people from what I've read elsewhere. Your mileage may vary.

The camera only offers two modes; useless corner view from the grandstands, and a manual camera. No other modes, no zooming in, nothing. Would've been nice to have a zoom function when a block is resolved, as it would've provided some entertainment value watching Orcs pummel Dwarves or something. Instead, they present to you...dice rolls. Yes, you see the results of the dice rolls in the lower right side of the screen, as if you were throwing those dice yourself. There's some value to be had in seeing those rolls, but honestly, for a video game, that's just not gonna cut it. If I wanted to see that, I'd play the tabletop game. There should've been an option to turn this on or off.

The final insult to injury is the utter lack of online leagues, custom or otherwise. If this game wants to compete with the likes of other sports games, or other multiplayer experiences in general, it fails miserably in this regard. The forums on the game's website describe in-depth the frustration this one point has caused.

I could go on and on, but won't. I only played the game for about two hours, thoroughly disappointed the whole time. That's plenty of time for *any* game of *any* genre to prove that it has something redeemable to it. Not this game, not for me. If I could get a full refund for this, I would. And not only did I waste my money on this, but I wasted my time. Once bitten, twice shy...

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This game is way better than I was expecting. The graphic animations are awesome. The commentary is hillarious. Building a team is sooo addicting. This game never gets old. I really don't understand why this game wasn't well distributed - I have parked every other game in favor of BloodBowl including Madden, Call of Duty, and WoW. This is one of the best kept secrets in gaming. AAA+++

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This game is made by the warhammer guys and to my knowledge its a game the uk actually plays with pewter models.

It takes a while to learn the controls because there is no real set of instructions with it. If you have never played the game before (like myself) it will take a massive amount of time spent in trial and error.

The teams are the Humans, Orcs, Wood Elves, Skaven, Lizardmen, Goblins and Chaos and depending on the playing style you are will most likely determin the team you want to be.

The gameplay is basically like a board game. You start of picking your team each with their strengths and weaknesses. Then you purchase players for your team ranging from lineman who are the basically spot fillers in my opinion and can buy all up to basically and ogre sized player (depending what team you have). After that you can spend whatever money you have left on apothacaries who can heal your downed players, Re-rollers that can let you roll again if you didnt like your first roll, and cheerleaders who will from the side lines cheer and try to bring you in some revenue.

You then start the game from the lines choosing heads or tails and picking wether or not to kick off or recieve (depending if you won the toss) Then it is kicked and is a dice game afterwards. Each player has so many squares they can move and there is 2 spots after those solid squares that have dice on them. Those are just if you have to go that little extra. It is a dice roll to basically what i think is if you are swift enough to go that little bit. The blocking in the game works really only if you are already next to an opponent. Select your player then select your opponent right next to you and you get to roll the dice to see if basically they take you down or you take them down. Once per turn you get the blitz effect which allows you to run up to a player and then do a block.

The passing game doesnt seem to difficult just you have to make sure no opponent is in your line of passing or they have a chance to roll the dice and interecept. Depending on your person is depending on your passes.

The more special charactors in the game you buy come with small perks such as cannot be knocked down or dodges easier which is always useful to look for.

Like i said this is as much as i have learned from the game it is still trial and error for me and starting out there is already quite a few annoying moments that i just have to shut off the game and take a break from but all in all it is a game to a least take a look at.

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