Blood Bowl
Developer: Cynaide Studios Publisher: South Peak Interactive
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC
Rating: Teen Release Date: 01.26.10
Cyanide Studios' Blood Bowl probably isn't anything gamers have ever played before. A spinoff of the popular, table-top board game of the same name, Blood Bowl is an unlikely combination of turn-based strategy, American football, excessive violence and fantasy stereotypes. Imagine if the cast of a Forgotten Realms novel one day decided to beat the crap out of each other over a leather ball, only an omnipotent dungeon master was dictating the action with dice rolls and stat sheets.
That's Blood Bowl in a nut shell, and if that doesn't sound at all like the Lord of the Rings meets NFL Blitz hybrid that the game's' marketing seemed to suggest, you're not at alone.
A glance at its cover art --which depicts monstrous orcs attacking a muscle ripped human for control of a spiked football -- harkens memories of Mutant League Football for the Sega Genesis, but for better or worst, Blood Bowl is very much its own game.
Blood Bowl adheres to the rules of American football. Sort of. You have two teams on a field, and the objective is to secure a football from one side of the field to the other. That's pretty much the only similarities, though. There's no holding penalties, no flags for off sides and certainly no qualms about excessive roughness. Skulls will be cracked, blood will be spilled and fewer players will walk off the field then originally walked on. In fact, you can win a match either by scoring the most points or by violently incapacitating every member of the other team.
You start off your career in the Blood Bowl by choosing one of eight fantasy races (Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, etc.), each with their own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the Elves are agile and can run circles around slower races, but they're considerably more fragile and susceptible to injuries. After that, you can sign new players, manage the team's finances, equip your athletes with new abilities as they level up and, of course, participate in tournaments and play some football.
The turn-based variant of Blood Bowl plays out exactly like the board game. You assign your players moves, watch them play out and then wait for your opponent to take their turn. Every action is determined by calculating together dice rolls and your player's individual stats. For example, if you move in to tackle an opposing player, what dice rolls you get plus your character's base stats will determine if you completely screw up the tackle, nudge them to the side, injure them or force a turn over.
There's an incredible amount of depth to Blood Bowl and it can be intimidating to gamers unfamiliar with the board game, especially since there's not much of a tutorial to explain anything beyond the barebones basics There is a tome of an instruction manual online that's a must read for anyone picking up the game, but aside from that, you're pretty much on your own. Suffice to say, the learning curve for the uninitiated is absurdly steep.
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