Touchdown!: Blood Bowl (PC) I

It has often been said that, all in all, Blood Bowl is the most addictive game ever invented. I may be wrong, and by all means correct me if so, but once you've started playing you will never stop.

For those who don't know, Blood Bowl started life in 1987 as one of the many tabletop games produced by Games Workshop. It's creator, Jervis Johnson, seems to have pretty much decided that what American Football really needed was fantasy creatures, and it seems he was right. The game has never looked back since (well, it has, but only to qualify oddities that have popped up along the way)

The PC game, entitled Blood Bowl (as you'd have expected it to be), takes the version 5 rules and effectively animates them, creating a living version of the game. This might sound lame (as I write, I am reminded of the Chessmaster series of games which ruined the concept for everyone) but trust me, it's not. Rather than dicking around with the stuff that made the game cool, Cyanide studios has attempted with the utmost diligence to keep true to Jervis' vision, right down to the fans running out of the stands to kick the fuck out of any player who gets pushed off the field. It has kept the dynamics of the teams, has updated some of the players to the point where you wish the miniatures looked like that (I'm thinking of the Orc/Chaos teams here) and even kept many of the little anecdotes you find in the rulebooks. Admittedly, these are in the form of the commentators, who rapidly become background noise very quickly (you'll understand if you play it; they say the same damn things over and over again) but it's the thought that counts.
All in all, the Classic mode (where the game play is effectively the same as that of the board game) is a whole heap of fun. I selected to play a Chaos team at the start, knowing full well that my strengths do not lie in the running plays of the Skaven but in beating people pulpy, and 19 games later I'm freaking unstoppable. I am especially proud of my Minotaur; two advancements later and he's a freaking tank. Everything he touched dies. I'm serious.

The only gripe I really have with this game is the CPU teams. They are dirty god-damn cheats, and don't let anyone tell you different. Whenever the CPU makes a block that should be in my favour (the player they are attacking is very high strength, or has a lot of assists) 9 times out of 10 they'll pull the damn block off. I'm serious, I counted them last time. Of 16 blocks which I had the advantage in, they pulled off 12, and 4 of them knocked my players down. Gragh.

Otherwise I have no problems with classic mode. As to Blitz mode (or realtime mode), I haven't actually got round to playing that yet. Therefore the next post you see here... I'm sure you can guess.

Tally Ho!