Blitz: The League II Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 27th November 2008

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Blitz: The League II review

Blitz: The League II Details:

	Sports
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	Midway
	Midway

18+

Out Now

1-2

What would the NFL be like if the league threw away the rule book and turned a blind eye to players off field antics? Midway well and truly answer this question with their arcade styled take on one of America’s most loved sports.

Having not played any of the previous Blitz games, in all honesty I wasn’t expecting much from this 18+ rated game but what I found was an engaging, brutal and sometimes gruesome alternative to EA’s Madden games.

Without the constraints of an NFL licence Midway have been free to take a look at the uglier side of American football and thrust it firmly into the limelight with no penalties and only basic rules. Players in Blitz: The League II are free to punish each other with bone crunching tackles or dirty hits that will leave their rivals with severe injuries and a bloody mess. This is really no holds barred football action as inflicting an injury on a player switches to a cut-scene that shows you the full brutality of an injury. An x-ray style model of the player sees bones snapping and blood oozing from wounds. It’s enough to make even the most harden player cringe!

Unlike many sports games Blitz: The League II also features a story mode in which you take up the role of a hot rookie called “franchise”, who can play both defence and offence. The games campaign mode sees you start with a press conference with reporters throwing all kinds of questions at you. The answers you give during this press conference determine what positions your character plays in and his strengths and weaknesses as each answer improves one of the player’s abilities such as strength, speed and agility. You then go on to create a custom team from a very impressive array of options that allows you to create uniforms of choice and pick your teams badge and name from an extensive list. The story in the campaign mode is a little unbelievable and sees you locking horns with The Leagues corrupt commissioner meeting and dating girls and getting into all kinds of trouble on and off the field. Despite the story mode needing something of a reality check it is fairly compelling to play through and will have you hooked to find what happens next to franchise and his team.

Throughout the campaign mode you have to progress up several divisions until you reach Division 1 where you have to compete for the championship, at the end of each season you are also able to draft new players into your team, you usually have a choice of players so are able to improve on known weaknesses on your teams roster. Blitz: The League II also dares to tread where others sports titles wouldn’t with the games juicing system. Juicing basically allows you to administer up to three players in your team to get the best performance out of them. You can use both illegal and legal drugs to juice players however the more juicing you do the more likely you are to get caught by The League! Whilst it sounds like a novelty juicing is sometime essential to get the best performance out of your players and make them able to deal with an opposing team’s star player.

Apart from the games campaign mode The League II features pretty standard games modes you would expect to find in any decent sports title, including quick play and tournaments. The games online mode allows you to take on players in ranked matches with leaderboards to climb up. Also as a nice addition you can take your custom team online from the games campaign mode. There are also a number of bonus games to play that are unlocked by playing the campaign mode. These are very much arcade style takes on football with each game having a unique condition such as ButterFingaz that has every tackle resulting in a fumble, there’s also Make It Take It a game that sees you get the ball back whenever you score a touchdown. Lucky 7 sees the points for a touchdown reduce by one every time someone scores. In Pain you not only score points for touchdowns and field goals but also for performing dirty hits, unleashed moves and injuring rival players. Prison Ball sees the action take place on short pitches with no first downs or field goals. In Bone Crusher players don’t wear helmets so as you would expect there are lots of injuries. The bonus games overall are fun especially the ButterFingaz mode and are a worthy addition to the game.

As already touched playing games themselves is brutal, tackles can result in horrific injuries that can see players out for a long period in the game or even out for entire seasons. Also once you’ve tackled a player you are sometimes able to beat them down with late hits that see your player attack the downed player reducing his stamina. This also boosts your unleashed meter, which once full allows you to perform powerful moves both in defence and offence. Activating an unleashed move allows you to slow the game action down enabling you to accurately perform tackles or dodges. Gaining good yardage from a run or pass, or scoring a touchdown and performing a celebration also fills your unleashed meter. The system is good for the most part however it does seem slightly unbalanced in favour of the computer that seems to stop one of your team’s unleashed moves a lot easier then you can stop its moves.

Other then the gratuitous violence and unleashed moves Blitz: The League II plays pretty much like any other American football game, you pick your play and the action begins. The game does employ a pretty good system for kicking requiring you to press a sequence of buttons as they appear on the bottom of the screen. It’s a lot better then the typical meter based approach. Challenge wise the game seems a bit random as the challenge doesn’t always seem to match a teams rating. For instance I often struggled against weaker rated teams than those that had a much better rating than my team, which doesn’t really seem to make sense and can be fairly frustrating at times.

Visually Blitz: The League II has a very arcade look, character models aren’t the best and player’s uniforms seem to have sheen to them that gives the games characters a plastic look. The various stadiums all fit in with the theme of each team and are fairly varied, however the best part of the games graphics is the slowdown injury system described above that shows the full horror of injury in glorious HD.

Sound in the game is pretty typical of a sports game, and includes all the effects that you would expect. The game features a Hip Hop soundtrack that is very fitting to the games theme and the story of the campaign mode. Voice acting in the games campaign is also fairly good despite the somewhat over the top storyline.

Blitz: The League II definitely won’t appeal to football purists but those looking for an alternative to Madden might want to take a look at the games over the top brutality which at times can be surprisingly fun.