**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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This is a game that only a die-hard fan of the board game could even possibly love. Flat out, I have nothing nice to say about this game. I gave it six hours and during that time I did not enjoy one single aspect of the game.

The game is a technical disaster. The graphics and sound are about as low a quality as you can get. The in-game tutorial is utterly worthless. I did not bother with the real time play, but the turn by turn play is painfully slow - even by turn by turn standards. Every dialog is slow, every interaction is slow, and it is painful to watch the opposing AI think and play.

I tried my hand at one team, then the other. I figured I was not understanding how to play the team, so as I played one team I watched the computer AI play the other. Having discerned basic tactics for that kind of team, I tried my hand. Failure, utter failure. I even tried a campaign, setting up various teams, and trying various races. Same result.

It almost feels like the dice are rigged, which seems ridiculous, but that is how it feels. As I played one team I repeatedly failed to pick up the ball, losing my turn. I repeatedly got knocked down running passed enemies. Most of the time when attempting to throw the ball, it was fumbled. It was ridiculous. I switched teams, and watched the opposing AI do mostly everything on the first try. It was very infuriating. This was not an isolated incident. This happened for the entire six hours.

There may be a game there to play, but it doesn't seem to be worth pursuing. I am a huge Warhammer 40k fan and so I decided to buy this game, if nothing else, to support Gamesworkshop somehow. Sadly, I regret that decision. This was (...)wasted. Perhaps if you are super die-hard fan of the board game and you feel like watching very poor animation you may find the game of worth, but even then I would highly doubt it.

For those of us who value our time, I recommend passing on this game. If you feel like flogging yourself for hours with a frustrating game, then have at it. Yes, I am rating the game low because I did not do well at it. I also rated it low because it is of overall poor quality, and was not fun. In my opinion, a failure for a game.

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Read the previous two reviews, and agree on many points, but disagree on some as well. The game could have been better thought out I suppose, and yes it has some problems. The problems though are an afterthought after you understand what they are and how to basically accept them and work around them.

Gameplay is played exactly like you would any board game (instead of a board, you play on a football field). It is a dice rolling, turn based strategy game, set in middle earth on the gridiron. What makes this game GREAT, is the strategic aspect. Their is a bit of a learning curve...lets face it, nobody is going to pop this game in and win their first match. It will take about 10 matches to really digest what is going on, and another 100 to refine and perfect your skills. The game is Very deep (it does not have to be, but it can be). Basically you will love this game if you like Civilization, Culdcept Saga, Magic the Gathering or even Monopoly.

The problems with the game that I have had (like I said, you can overcome all of them)

1.It is sometimes difficult to differentiate your players just by looking at them (simply move your curser over them, you get full stats readout right there...but I do wish you could tell if they were a lineman or a runner with greater ease)

2. Tutorial Sucks (play games and learn by trial and error)

3. Weak Graphics (it is a strategy game so really who cares)

4. Online Community not very active (I have gotten 3 friends to pick this game up, and we are playing all the time)

5. Serious learning curve (put in the time to get good at it)

6. Understanding the 'odds' of simple successes, like picking up a ball, dodging an opponent etc (again, the scroll bar tells you what you need to roll....after you have rolled!! So basically it is trial and error and trying to remember what activities need certain rolls, and the odds of success etc. )

All in all, I wish there was more games like this available. This game is addictive, funny, fun, and a great time with friends, or even agains the enemy AI. It is not without a few flaws, but do not let that cause you to not go out and get this game!

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Blood Bowl is football sets to Dark Age rules, utilizing the rule that if you kill all of the other team members, you can score that much easier. Based on the board game of the same name, it is a faithful representation of the classic, though it also features a real time version, though I loathe setups like that.

Many problems arise. You don't have a guide, and unless you memorize every ability of every perk and skill, you find yourself with a bunch of blank backs with no idea of what they can really do. The few skills that would set them apart also don't show up. Given how simple, and boring, the graphics are (the field looks like a high school pitch, with no sign of the crowd of 30,000 you're supposed to have had) I was hoping that they'd at least give you the few mutations that you get, but having two players, one with an extra arm and another with as second head look identical to the rest. You have a limited time to complete your turn, meaning that you can easily run out of time since you need to read your skills and the opponents skills before you attempt that blitz.

The underlying mechanism seems broken as well, as even on easy, it feels like you're playing with a significant dice handicap. You struggle to make ends meet with a roster barely big enough to play with, while you're opponents have coffers overflowing with gold (after 4 games, every opponent has at least half a million gold, and I've never gotten above 80k), able to bring on star players, have a full lot of rerolls and chainsaws left and right, with no explanation of how the money portion works, as you can have a bigger fan base, and beat a team 3-0, and still lose on account of the purse strings. Many of the mechanics are never explained at all, and the tutorial is worthless and patronizing.

The gameplay itself is fun, and there's nothing quite like stomping the opposition into the dirt, quite literally at times, especially after you realize the game is lost and settle for killing as many of the opposition as possible. They at least made it so you can save in game at halftime and prior to every kickoff, meaning you can save as you go, and can rage quit to your hearts content when your entire team fails you pick up a ball for an entire game half.

In short, the game is fun but very poorly put together. GW usually doesn't get much between garbage and gemstone, but this is fun enough to be a gem, but aspects make this frustrating and initially unappealing. If you stick with it, and save and reload frequently, it can be quite enjoyable.

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Blood Bowl has got one of the most action-packed game covers out there, complete with a monster chasing a human while both of them are wearing football gear, that I've seen. It's one of those images that deliberately instills curiosity and fires up the imagination.

I knew the 360 game was based on a table-top game, although I'd never played it and wasn't interested in a turn-by-turn competition with "fantasy" football. However the representation of the game on a video game platform just seemed too interesting to pass up.

I still don't know if I like the game, though. After playing so many of the other games out there for the 360, Blood Bowl feels ponderous and slow while playing in single-player mode. Things just take too long to set up, and then the play is almost anti-climatic, almost like setting up rows of dominoes only to knock them down so you can set them up again.

Furthermore, the game interface is awkward. It takes some serious time and effort to simply get into the game. A player can't just intuit what to do in the game. Considerable time spent in the tutorial is necessary before you begin playing, and then I found it somewhat confusing as to what I could do with all my hard-earned knowledge and skills.

The game AI (at least to me) also has the disconcerting habit of beating you more times than you can beat it. After a while, that's not very fun because you don't get to learn that many more moves.

Playing with a friend is better because both of you are on equal footing: translation, unskilled, so any victory you have against your opponent is cause for celebration. My son and wife played for a time and I saw her frustration become evident quickly. She's a good game player, but things got too complicated and took too long to set up.

The gameplay is kind of like chess mixed with paper, scissors, rock. Even if you get a play off correctly, there's still the possibility the AI or another player can kick your butt or cause a foul-up. It's kind of fun to watch everything spin through, but you spend a lot of time to make that happen. The payoff just doesn't feel deserved for all the effort required.

The graphics aren't truly 360 level. They look a little grainy and dark compared to so many 360 games (like Mass Effect 2), and the motion is a trifle clunky instead of smooth. The color is vibrant, but a neon colored coloring book is still a coloring book.

One of the things I noticed quickly was how obnoxious the sideline commentators became. At first, the sarcasm and blatant insults were funny, but without true depth or a rich reservoir, the comments rapidly became repetitive.

The ability to design your own team is truly weak. You can't change colors, you can't mix and match humans and monsters, and the built-in limitations choked the imagination. Discovering this wasn't a happy moment.

On the bright side, limited though it might be, games don't last long. So this is a game you and your buddies can play against each other while waiting for other things, or can play round robin in a winner-takes-all combat fest.

My recommendation is to wait for this one till it hits the bargain bin. At $20 it's a decent investment as a buddy game, but at $50 you're just not getting your money's worth.

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Blood Bowl is a video game based on a board game (turn based). You can either play the game in turn based mode or real time mode (but, there's not much difference). The graphics are very average, and there really aren't many options to choose from. If you're a fan of the board game/table game, you'll really enjoy it. If you're not, you might want to steer clear of this one. It's not very fun and the AI is always one step ahead of you; it sort of feels like the "dice rolls" are stacked against you. If you're looking for Mutant League Football, this isn't it. If you're looking for Madden with a twist, this isn't it. If you've played Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl and liked it, this isn't the game that you're looking for. It's more like chess on a football field. There's not much action, and the learning curve is very steep. Once again, if you've played the table game, you'll be happy with this game. If not, you'd be better off waiting for the next big thing.

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This game is based on the table-top board game of the same name. I never played the board game before, but from what I've researched the video game seems to be a pretty faithful representation (and since it plays exactly like a board game would). Trying to describe how it's played would be difficult; and the in-game tutorials and instruction manual don't help either. I personally looked at an 52(!) page online guide for the official rules for the board game so I could better understand what was happening in the video game. It definitely helped and I've been enjoying it more since.

I think that anyone who buys this game without having experience with the board game is going to have some frustration. You will lose...a lot. And that's what it will come down to: If you don't mind making a commitment to a game that is hard to love. Once you understand the gameplay, you'll realize that it's really rock solid and you'll be more in control of what's going on.

The rest of the game is really a mixed bag. There are two different styles of play, Classic turn-based and a "real time" mode (which doesn't quite play as it's name implies). There are a couple different campaigns modes, which are welcome additions and add depth to the game (you get to buy players, cheerleaders, etc, and play in tournaments). There is online play, although not a overly strong online community. The graphics and sound are pretty low-grade. The main pull for this game is really the gameplay.

Blood Bowl isn't for everyone. I can't possibly recommend it to anyone looking for a fast-paced action game. People who are familiar with the table-top game, or who enjoy games like Magic: the Gathering, Culdcept Saga, or Civilization are more likely to give it the extra attention it demands. Once you put in the effort though, this game is a lot of fun.

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Not what i expected. Too much strategy for an arcade game meant for fun. Games like this should be playable for a wider audience. I still have no idea what i'm doing on this game. It takes some time to get used to it, but i don't have the patience for it.

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First off I need to state that I play ALOT of Games Workshop games, including owning and playing the table top Blood Bowl. I know I wasn't going to expect Madden or the fast pace even of a "Dawn of War" during the Blitz mode of this game. Unfortunately, I find this game somewhat lacking and slow...yes readers, even slower than a tabletop game of Blood Bowl. I get the turn based mode, which is very true to the tabletop version, but even then it seems to chug slowly uphill in comparison.

Pros: - True to the tabletop in the "classic" mode in terms of rules

- 8 teams to choose from (this is good and bad...good for the diversity, bad because the tabletop has 15 teams)

Cons: - The game seems somewhat slow

- Graphics are Xbox quality, NOT 360

- "Tutorial" mode is a complete joke and basically useless, could've been better thought out

- The commentators SUCK, as in the worst I've heard in ANY game...I pretty much tune them out...at times I forget there even are any, that's how innane and worthless they are

- There are constant grammatical and spelling errors...SERIOUSLY! Did they not edit this???

- Since the tutorial is so pathetic it's easy to get lost early on...the learning curve is pretty bad. If you have the tabletop version, the rules are actually the same...reading this will go farther than just the manual. (e.g. Ok, so fouling can get a player kicked off the field...the manual says it can, not why, while the tabletop guide says why and how)

- Each turn has a time limit...when I pressed the XBOX GUIDE button to pause the game, i noticed the clock in the background still ticking down! Really??? Yes, there is a pause button, but by going to the GUIDE, it should automatically pause like any other game.

- You can't change team colors. Yes, I know, this isn't Madden, but some more team customization would've been nice, since the tabletop allows you to design a team from scratch. I'm surprised some of this element didn't carry over.

So, overall, if you're a tabletop fan with no one to play with, this is a way to play on your own or online, albeit with issues. I really did want to like this game and was excited, but I honestly feel let down, even at the $49 pricetag.

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