Customer Reviews

Blood Bowl

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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 (because it plays exactly like a board game would). Trying to elaborate on the game's rules 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 have a better understanding of 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 campaign 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.

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!

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.

This is a creation of love. Yes it's not the prettiest or fastest playing game out there. No it's not mutant league football for the twenty-first century. What it is, is a game that any fan of Blood Bowl (the table top game), boardgames, and/or the Warhammer universe is sure to enjoy. Everyone else should proceeded with caution, but at the price it is now (about $20 at the time of this writing) you should find some value in it.

There are some flaws but they are beyond forgivable, as you sink your teeth into the campaign mode (season mode?) you quickly realize that following your team through match after match in knockdown drag out matches you've become invested. You want your star player to reach that next level, to give him yet another skill, in the hopes of demolishing your next opponent. While this has the trappings of football (the field, end-zones, the ball, cheerleaders, etc.) real life football fans who aren't into fantasy are probably going to become bored with this and bemoan the "outdated" graphics. If you love the Madden series, steer clear of the this title, it's going to do nothing but frustrate you.

The learning curve is about three game for someone that is familiar with intricate boardgames. The play is style is very tactical. Your plays are carried out by moving individual players one at a time across the field and deciding their actions, foresight and planning are critical, making this a dream for someone who loves boardgames but doesn't always have the people around to play them with (god that sounded depressing).

The game makers where wise to limit the amount of play by play that goes on. It's not a constant chatter that has you reaching for the remote, but you will hear the same things over and over, mercifully it's not constant. One other thing I think could have been beneficial would have been to have the ability to scroll through the log that game gives you of the action, so you could analyze your plays more. Another thing is I've been playing on easy for the moment, and still find the A.I. at times to be fairly challenging, definitely a good thing, though at this point I feel a bump up to medium could bring the game to another level.

If you've ever watched an NFL coach on a losing team, stomp around and curse and just generally become sour when things don't go his way, get ready to fill those shoes, because your team is going to make silly mistakes (in classic mode everything is based on dice rolls influenced by chance) and your going to be using some choice words.

For those upset over the graphics they aren't actually as bad as people are making them out to be. The action is mostly viewed from a distance so you can get the full scope over whats happening and what you need to do next. However you can zoom right in on the action as your Troll smashes down on a scurrying skink trying to slip past your defenses (oh did I mention how gratifying it is to see "Dead" accompanied by a little skull float over the top of an opposing player as he is brought low by one of your guys) and when the camera is in that close you really can see some of the wonderful details that the game makers have included.

I've played a few matches against a human opponent and if they aren't invested in the game and it's mechanics as you are, the matches may be fun but come up a little short of being engrossing.

It's a love it or hate it affair but I think gamers need to give more games like this a chance, you might discover something about yourself you didn't know before, as far as a monetary investment goes, well I can't remember the last time I stayed up all night playing a video game was, until i got this. It does a lot more right then it does wrong.


*There is an updated version for the PC which includes even more races and a few other options that make it even truer to the original, if your computer specs can handle it and you plan on buying the game, go with the PC version so you can get all the extras.*

I've played my fair share of strategy games, sports games, and fantasy RPGs. I love Warcraft and remember the board game Blood Bowl fondly from my college years.

This video game is terrible. It has ugly graphics, the worst Tutorial imaginable (particularly inexcusable since it's based on an existing board game), and it is, simply, no fun to play. The gameplay is slow, the controls are unintuitive and frustrating, and the learning curve is WAY too long to be worth it.

Want to know why a game less than a year old originally priced at $50 is going for $17 on Amazon and $30 at Best Buy? Hint: it's not because they're trying to build up the online community. It's because the game sucks. Consider yourselves warned.

**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...

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.

***UPDATE***
Since I first wrote this review, I've TRIED to play on multiplayer. I say try, because literally trying several times a day for nearly 2 weeks straight, I've found only ONE other person online to play against. Reading his gamertag profile on 360, he was from New Zealand! Now, I ASSUME it's because of his connection, but the game lagged TERRIBLY. I have yet to play someone in the US or Canada to see if it'll happen again. It literally took 15 minutes just to play out one turn, so choppy that I just quit. Other reviewers have complained of the multiplayer, and being based on a tabletop game, poor multiplayer just makes an already bad game worse!

I believe this game is under-rated due to the learning curve required to learn to play well. The luck elements can be managed with careful, thought out play. Much of the risk in movement is managed by using the lowest risk (highest probability of success) moves first. Alternately utilizing abilities that negate poor results can minimize risk (ex Dwarves w/'Block'). Mastering the use of players other than the ball carrier is essential as the ball carrier is generally the last player to act.

My boyfriend used to play this table game with his best friend when he was younger, and after his friend found out it existed in video game form, he became very interested in obtaining it. With his birthday coming up, I decided to purchase it for him and he's been pleased with how it plays just like the table game. He's planning nights to play with his friend online every other week, allowing them to reconnect because they don't see each other very often now.

So I'd say, if you were a fan of the table game, this is definitely a good purchase for you. If not - it's fun, but much of the appeal rests with nostalgia.

One note - the booklet was very badly translated, which makes for some hilarious reading.

First of all, don't be scared away by the title... and definitely don't be offended! I am a nerd myself. It's self-diagnosed, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on.

Two of my favorite game genres are real-time strategy and sports. When I heard about Blood Bowl, I couldn't help but get interested. I found the game for a relatively low price on Cyber Monday and thought what the heck. After playing a few times against the computer, I realized that the game was much deeper than I ever would have thought. The strategy starts with the team that you pick and keeps getting more and more like a chess match with every move. The game is very challenging which keeps me interested.

However, the most fun that I have with Blood Bowl is the online play or head to head play if I can convince someone to come over to play against me. Every person I have played with online has been very friendly. I've gotten a lot of tips and advice from more experienced players, which isn't common to find on Xbox Live!

To be honest, I enjoyed the game so much that I ended up buying another copy for a friend for Christmas as well. He and I have been playing a game every few days, and it has been a lot of fun. Although the games can take a while and turns can be very slow paced and drawn out, Blood Bowl is a good purchase if you are interested in real time strategy. To be honest, the football references are minimal (It's rugby more than anything really). As any RTS fan will tell you, there aren't a ton of options on the consoles, but Blood Bowl should keep your interest for a while.