Blood Bowl - Xbox 360 and PC

It's no secret here that I spent a lot of my formative years as a massive Games Workshop nerd. Whilst the Warhammer 40k universe is one of the best realised fantasy game settings ever in my opinion, the game itself was (In the good old days at least) a little inaccesible and as such, it wasn't that many people that played it. Far more popular at my school was Blood Bowl, GW's take on American Football. The fact that you only needed 15 miniatures and the games only took an hour and very little floor space meant there were a load of players and we had for a few years a fairly regularly attended league going on. I loved the game myself and had at least four teams so it was with delight that I discovered a computer game was being made so I could relive the days of being 14 again. As such, I bought it, primarily to play online against my old mates.

First thing to say is that the PC version is the one to go for. Microsoft apparently have rules regarding maximum load times for games and in order to meet these on the 360 version, the developers had to remove all the visual customisation options for your team. On the PC you can personalise your players' armour and design the kit and logo yourself. On the 360 the players all look generic and you're either the red team or the blue team. Not a huge issue but given that each game lasts at least half an hour, I would have accepted a longer load time to be able to play in whatever colour I wanted at the very least. On top of that, I imagine the modding community will only improve this game over time, so get the PC version, unless like me your computer is a steaming pile of turd that won't play anything more modern than Quake 2.

With that out of the way, for fans of the board game, this is a great conversion. The game uses the 5th edition rule set which is slightly different from the 4th edition we used to play but in a good way. The 4th edition rules were heavily biased in favour of aggressive, physical teams and most matches devolved into a big fight on the line of scrimmage with one person scoring in turn 15 once all the opposition players were off the pitch injured. The 5th edition rules limit this by putting stricter limits on the types of each player you can have on any given team and more relevant, limiting you to hiring star players for one match only, rather than permanently adding them to your team, meaning that the days of facing five ogres every match are forever gone.

As such, there's actually a lot more tactics involved whereas before the game was a bit of an exercise in calculating probabilities. Elf teams are actually a threat now and my primary team of choice, the Skaven, can concentrate on scoring a lot rather than going toe to toe with the opposition with a front row made up of only Rat Ogres. This is a good thing.

The game offers two modes, Classic is a direct translation of the board game, Blitz mode allows for some rules-tinkering, including a real-time mode for weirdoes to play. The only variation in Classic mode is the removal of Wizards, as for Blitz mode they introduced race-specific spells, which not being part of the original rules set, couldn't go into classic mode. Not a huge departure but you do miss the fireball spell when there's a pack of 8 dwarves steamrolling through your team.

Races included thus far are the pointless humans, now actually tough orcs, fast runners skaven, passing masters the wood elves, annoyingly hard to knock over dwarves, mixed bag lizardmen and comedy option goblins. Dark elves are available for the PC version and will probably be dlc on 360 (Probably for 400 points too, the cheeky bastards). I'm sure I read somewhere that there's an undead and norse team coming too which would leave only the halflings from the original board game rules. The teams are well balanced with the tougher teams being suitably hard to hurt and the quicker teams tough to catch.

Gameplay-wise, I've only actually played classic mode thus far and it's an exact translation of the board game, what more can one add? The computer AI is decent, if a little predictable. It will pick up the ball as a priority then put as many players round the ball carrier as possible and try to move down the pitch in a big block. It will pass the ball occasionally but it only ever sends out one receiver so it's easy to predict when it's going for the pass, allowing you to take steps to counter. You can play with a number of pre-made teams or embark on a campaign, playing through a number of consecutive tournaments and building up your team as you go.

Most people I imagine will be buying this to play human opponents and it's here that one of the strangest decisions by the developers becomes apparent. Your team doesn't gain and star player points (The means by which your team improves) or suffer any long-term injuries from online play. Essentially, you play online using a snapshot of your campaign mode team. I guess they did this to stop people boosting their teams with their mates but it seems a really negative step. This is hardly the sort of game that's going to attract the kind of players who do that kind of thing and by stopping advancement through online play, you're forcing people to play offline to improve their team and meaning that if you play the same mates over and over, you'll pretty much be always using identical teams. For me, not allowing online play to advance your team was a really dumb move.

The game's graphics are pretty spiffy, what music there is is pretty forgettable and the commentary is extremely limited and often drowned out by the crowd noise. There's only an option to alter the overall soundeffects volume, not the component parts so you'll have to learn to ignore the commentary, or play with the sound off.

Overall, this is not a game I'd recommend to anyone who either didn't play the board game or at least isn't into the whole setting. It's not ideal for casual players (i.e. it takes a long time for each match, the rules can be pretty mystifying and aren't even explained in the game manual and there are some niggling flaws to the game) but if like me you were a fan of the board game and want to relive those good old days, this is a great way to do it. Like I said though, the PC version is clearly better and will probably attract more development support in future. If anyone does get the 360 version though, I'm always up for a match.

By all accounts, the developers Cyanide are interested in reviving a few more of GW's older, dead IPs in vidya form so here's hoping for a Man O' War, new Space Hulk and Advanced Heroquest games soon!

Jam it back in, in the dark.