Blitz: The League Review

Campaign Mode

The main single player mode is campaign mode and in it you are given the task to building a team from the ground up and taking them to the championship. You get to choose the team name and city, colors, logo, stadium, coaches, players, and even a team doctor. All of these decisions at the beginning of the game will affect how your team performs and it really is pretty cool to have so many different options available to you. You can also spend money on new equipment that will give you performance bonuses as well as decide what type of training to put your team through as well as what type of performance enhancers you want to give them. All in all, the customization options you are given as well as some of the decisions you can make during the season (such as sending hookers to the opposing team’s hotel before a big game) are really quite cool and well done. Of course, this is supposed to be a football game so you also have to actually play and try to win a championship. Similar to soccer, there are three tiers of teams and your goal is to win the championship of tier one by the end of the season. The story itself is pretty interesting, but there isn’t nearly enough scenes to really tell it all that well.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is one area where Blitz: The League really shines because it ditches the cruddy AI and pits you against another human being. It is still a money play heavy, score every possession- type of game, but trash talking and hanging out with friends is always a good time. Is it better than multiplayer Madden or NFL 2K5? No, but it is undeniably fun - much more so than playing by yourself. You can also play the game online with your custom team from story mode and the game runs silky smooth.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Blitz: The League is a gorgeous game. The player models look great and the animation is absolutely superb. The stadium and the field itself also look really nice. There are some weird little hiccups during cutscenes such as the wrong player will occasionally be shown celebrating a touchdown, but overall the game looks great.

The sound is also very well done. The sounds down on the field are spot on and hearing players trash talk back and forth really adds quite a bit to the experience. You also hear every sickening bone snapping hit, which is nice. There is a lot of spoken dialogue during cutscenes and the voice actors do a good job.

Note to game developers – Having characters constantly use the “F” word doesn’t make your game more mature, or more hard edged, or more cool, so knock it off. The only people impressed by it are 12 year olds and they shouldn’t even be playing “M” rated games.

Bottom Line

Blitz: The League can be a fun game, particularly in multiplayer, but its hard edged act gets old pretty quickly. The biggest problem, though, is that it seems like they forgot to actually work on the football aspect of their football game. Honestly, I am really not impressed by the brand of football presented in Blitz: The League because it forgets all of the things that make football good like strategy and clever play calling and player management and the satisfaction of actually having to earn every yard you get. A wise person once said that in order to be the man, you have to beat the man, and at this point Blitz is still light years behind Madden and Visual Concepts’ football games. Flashy presentation and a “mature” theme aren’t nearly enough to make up for sub-par football. It’ll entertain you over the course of a rental, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it