RipTen Review: Blood Bowl (Xbox 360)

In order to accurately review a game like Blood Bowl, you have to look at it from two entirely separate perspectives. On one hand is the type of gamer who is intimately familiar with the warm embrace of the Warhammer tabletop games and their subgenera. You remember the days of wielding your 28 mm metal miniatures as if they held the power of Thor’s hammer. The rules already lay dormant in the back of your mind, ready to be awoken and destroy Tokyo by the depth charge that is a Blood Bowl video game. On the other hand, you have the other 90% of gamers who are going to play this and didn’t even have a clue that Blood Bowl was a tabletop game to begin with. That gives developer Cyanide the double edged sword of having to make a game that appeals to a large amount of gamers while staying true to the source material. If they pitch the balance too far from one side to the other they will either have a game inaccessible to new comers, or have to face the ire of a whole lot of people who are hardcore enough that they might have the Living Rulebook tattooed all over their body like they are in a Clive Barker novel.

So roll a d16 and see which one you are.

YOU ROLLED A 14 – YOU HAVE BLOOD BOWL IN YOUR BLOOD

For those of us who enjoy our football, or handegg to you angry Europeans, with a bit more of a blood lust and a higher level of Tolkien characters, Blood Bowl was always the answer. A table top RPG based around American football rules may seem a bit strange, but it is actually one of the more popular games of its type. This isn’t even the first time an attempt made to turn Games Workshop’s creation into an automated conversion. Those of us more elderly gamers may remember the DOS Blood Bowl that came out in 1995 and how it didn’t turn out very well.

Luckily in the 14 years since that, just the advances in technology alone should be enough to make a better and more loyal adaptation. Cyanide’s Blood Bowl is just that- a very loyal adaptation to the source material. Those familiar with the ruleset will be able to jump right in and know what is going on. Although, those familiar with Blood Bowl should skip anything that involves playing against the AI and go right to facing human opponents on the bloody pitch. The AI is just absolutely awful here. No matter what the strengths or weaknesses of the team you are playing, it will attempt to use the same small handful of strategies. Compound that with the fact that, while they are just a natural occurrence in any game like this, lucky rolls seem to only bounce in the favor of your AI opponents. It may just be that the gamer brain has been wired to think that the computer is cheating thanks to years and years of the “rubber band” effect in sports games, but it almost always feels like dice rolls are more balanced against a human opponent than they are against our future artificial masters.

Since Cyanide left the rules unmolested, the game can be as addictive as it ever was. That is a good thing- you could lose hundreds of hours and tons of scratch paper playing the table top version. There are, however, two major detractions that drag things down drastically and prevent any real enjoyment. With the issues the AI seems to have at every turn, to get your moneys worth you have to play human beings. Which you can in a one off match but, for some inexplicable reason, online league play has been omitted from the 360 version of Blood Bowl. It also lacks the customization options that the tabletop version has so ingrained in its being. Outside of your logo and your team name, you can’t do much else. The only option that would have been more welcome than deeper customization and online leagues would have been the ability to delete every single sound file that relates to the almost impossibly bad announcers. They both make Chris Collinsworth seem like an intelligent and articulate guy.

Blood Bowl is interesting only at the barest levels. Anything that can be considered a positive really comes from the rules and gameplay of the tabletop version. The additions made that weren’t from the source are too few and fall short anyway. This game won’t win any praise for its clunky menus and interfaces or for its low quality graphics, and the “Real Time” mode plays just as well as one would expect a slapped together real time version of game crafted from the ground up to be turn based would be.

It can be an interesting diversion for a very short amount of time though, but with no online league they replay value is almost non existent. When you consider the fact that anything beyond what you are already used to in Blood Bowl is lacking or unneeded, there really isn’t any reason to play this instead of the table top game or joining one of its non-graphical online leagues. The slightly positive score reflects only the fact that Blood Bowl is a whole hell of a lot of fun as a base and that the core is intact here, but because Cyanide brought nothing new to the table and gave no incentive to new players it can’t be suggested for anyone but Blood Bowl fans who want to see the game in action.

YOU ROLLED A 2 – BLOOD BOWL? IS IT LIKE MUTANT LEAGUE FOOTBALL?

This is the most frustrating game ever made. Apparently it is based on a board game or something? I’ve never actually heard of it before, plus we all know how well board games translate to consoles so you pretty much know what to expect here. For people expecting a fast paced game full of fantasy carnage and loosely based on football, don’t bother. Blood Bowl is turn based and has such a steep learning curve it is as impenetrable as an Imperial Guard’s ‘thousand mile stare’ after committing atrocities. I figured I would go for a Warhammer reference there as the analogy involving the word ‘inpenetrable’ I originally wrote was a bit off-color.

Speaking of off-color, the aesthetics of this game are just sub-par. Even if I enjoyed the gameplay or was a fan of the board game this was based on I don’t think I would play this version instead of meeting in a hotbox of a comic book store and playing it against fellow enthusiasts. At least if I was a brand new player and I walked into Blood Bowl Con 2010, there would probably be somebody in a “PUNCH IT CHEWIE” t-shirt to adequately explain to me the basic rules and how to play- because Cynaide’s version sure as hell doesn’t. I can’t honestly think of a game that needed a deep and detailed in-game tutorial so badly and presented you with something so unhelpful. I actually had to read the instruction booklet to make it the least bit comprehensible, but that wasn’t even very clear.

When you finally do start to grasp how the game actually works, you begin to realize it doesn’t matter anymore than when you didn’t. Whatever strategy you try to put in place is routinely decimated by the luckiest AI to ever be made. No matter how well your player stacks up against another, you will routinely be trounced. Even picking up the football comes down to a 50/50 chance, which is just ridiculous. The AI would still beat you on any important roll even if William H. Macy was standing right next to your Xbox 360. Maybe this is because if it weren’t for garbage rolls, somebody without fingers, thumbs, eyes, or a brain stem could still beat the computer controlled team. This is AI that rivals Rogue Warrior for worst on the system and should be avoided at all costs. Luckily, you can avoid it by playing online but with the ingenious decision to not include online leagues I don’t see anybody playing this for very long. I would be surprised if somebody even got far enough through the horribly unintuitive menus to find a human opponent.

If you do happen to have the patience of a living statue during a Moscow winter, Blood Bowl can present a decently entertaining turn based and carnage filled football game. It won’t do it for very long though, and anything beyond the basic mechanics of the game is dreadful.

Just to reiterate- this review was entirely for the Xbox 360 version of the game. The PC version, while still suffering from many of the same issues, includes online league play, better customization, and feels like a better balance and thus a better choice for vets of the game or those brave enough to try it. Newcomers will still probably want to stay away regardless of the system.