Blood Bowl 2 is an admirable take on Games Workshop's cult-classic board game, improving upon many aspects of Cyanide Studios' first Blood Bowl release. But there's a startling small amount of new content in BB2 that, combined with a lack of streamlining, leaves me wondering who exactly Cyanide developed Blood Bowl 2 for. Because there’s not enough content to win-over veteran players and nothing that appeals to new players.
If you aren't familiar, Blood Bowl takes a great many inspirations from American football. The game is played on a pitch that looks like a medieval football field. Teams of eleven fight to score touchdowns in endzones guarded by the opposing team. Players take the field in armor that resembles modern football gear. Squads are comprised of throwers, catchers, linemen, blitzers and Star Players capable of filling several different roles. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.
There are no snaps. There is no play-calling. Blood Bowl is basically a monstrous equivalent to the way young children play football. After a coin flip, to determine who will get the opening possession, one team kicks the ball to the other. Once the ball is live, both squads swarm towards the ball-carrier, hoping to clear (or clog) the lane for whoever currently holds the ball. Player injuries are both frequent and celebrated. Occasionally, the referee will intervene, if the action gets particularly brutal. But don't expect to reap the benefits of a pass interference call in Blood Bowl.
Oh, and everything is turn-based.
Games of Blood Bowl are split into two halves, each of which is eight rounds long, during which teams will battle to put the most (or any) points on the scoreboard. Players take turns positioning their squad, "blocking" (the Blood Bowl term for attacking) any weaker players within arm's reach and generally doing whatever is necessary to obtain or advance the football. But the processes used to pursue those endeavors will change based upon which teams are currently on the field.
Some Blood Bowl 2 squads specialize in overwhelming strength, relying on a combination of injuries and strong running, while others rely on positioning, blocking assists and/or skilled throwers and catchers to outscore the opposing team. The key is knowing where your team excels, where the opposing squad needs work and making sure you're never too far out of position to respond to a sudden change of fortune. To give things a bit of structure, and prevent the game from going off the rails in the first turn, players have hard limits on some actions. Only one player may blitz, meaning move and block, per turn. The same goes for fouling, a specific action intended to injure an already-downed player.
Just about every outcome in Blood Bowl 2 is determined by dice rolls. The only consistent exception being uncontested movement. The number of dice in the pool will change depending on which players are involved in a given action. Re-rolls give players an opportunity to alter the outcome of a given action, once per turn, while assists from nearby teammates will occasionally give the defending player control over which die is honored. Dice rolls also determine the success/failure of your attempts to dodge, when moving through contested spaces, or pick-up a loose ball. Some traits even require players to make successful rolls before being allowed to follow-through with a chosen action.
In a bit of a departure, from your average sports game, the Blood Bowl 2 campaign doesn't give players the freedom to lead a team of their choosing to the championship. Instead, players are given control of the Reikland Reavers; a mostly-human (with one Ogre) squad, unceremoniously dumped from the previous year's playoffs, that now sits near the bottom of the rankings.
As coach, it'll be your job to recruit and train your players, win a few games and lead the Reavers back to their former glory. Occasionally, players are given secondary objectives to try and complete. which typically yield new Star Players when completed. But the campaign's primary objective is telling the Reavers' redemption story. The closest parallel would probably be the MyCareer offerings featured in numerous 2K Sports releases but focused on an entire team instead of a single player.
Presentation is noticeably improved in Blood Bowl 2. Graphic snobs, like myself, will appreciate that Blood Bowl no longer looks like a first or second-generation Xbox game. instead, it looks like something that probably could've run on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Which is technically a step forward, even if not as big of a step as fans would have preferred. Blood Bowl 2's menus and in-game HUD have also been re-tailored, making the game significantly easier to navigate and more controller-friendly than its predecessor. Color commentary is still grating. But when isn't that the case?
The real draw for Blood Bowl 2 -- at least for longtime fans of the game -- will undoubtedly be online leagues. Such offerings have become increasingly popular in modern sports titles and, after so many Blood Bowl players used third-party software to organize their own league, it only made sense to build the necessary tools into Blood Bowl 2.
The biggest problem facing Blood Bowl 2 is a noticeable lack of variety. Those who own Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition currently have access to 23 unique teams, each of which featured their own strengths and weaknesses. Blood Bowl 2 shipped with eight. Sure, two additional squads (Lizardmen and Wood Elves) were released shortly after launch. But we're still talking about a difference of 13 teams.
The player generator also feels sparse. It's near impossible to differentiate players, at a glance, without making significant changes to their hair color/style. And that can be frustrating if you're trying to level up a particular player. Some would argue that getting attached to players, in a game where they can die mid-season, is silly. But I didn't see anyone complaining when XCOM let you put fedoras and custom paint jobs on the randomly-generated soldiers being led to their deaths each mission.
Blood Bowl 2 isn't exactly bug free, either. I've experienced a handful of crashes during my time with the game, many of which occured when I was trying to drown out the game's terrible commentary with a podcast or Netflix. I've seen players fail Dodge rolls they didn't need to make in the first place because there weren't any enemies present. I've been forced to abandon games I was obviously going to win because of game freezes that result from the Blood Bowl 2 servers suddenly becoming inaccessible. And I cannot begin to describe how irritating, and baffling, it is for me to have to re-configure my customized offensive/defensive schemes (there's only one of each!) every single game because Blood Bowl 2 continues to swap the offensive/defensive arrangements.
At the end of the day, there's plenty to love in Blood Bowl 2. But the game includes more rough edges than many players will be able to forgive. The campaign offers an interesting mixture of the average tabletop narrative and the standard sports games season mode; delivering a rags-to-riches story that you'd probably never get from a traditional standard sports game. Online league support both extends the life of Blood Bowl 2 and gives fans an opportunity to face-off in matches that wouldn't otherwise be possible because of distance.
But there's not much in the way of quality-of-life improvements, other than online league support, and each game of Blood Bowl feels much longer than it needs to. You can reduce the length of your average game, by disabling the cutscenes that play during kick-offs, knockdowns, injuries, etc.; however it would be nice if Cyanide included an option that removed all animation in favor of rigid unit movement. Sure, it might not look as fancy. But Blood Bowl 2 isn't exactly competing for any Best Graphics awards anyway.
I have little doubt Blood Bowl 2 will appeal to existing Blood Bowl fans, if only because BB2 looks better than its predecessor. That slick new coat of paint extends from the game's menus and in-game UI, all the way down to the players and arenas. But I'm not sure the changes delivered in Blood Bowl 2 will win over anyone unimpressed by the first entry in the series. The game's pacing makes it less-than-ideal for marathon gaming sessions and Blood Bowl 2 shipped with significantly less content than its predecessor.
If all you want is a better-looking version of Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition, and/or built-in online league support, then Blood Bowl 2 has you covered. But if you were hoping for a bit more from Cyanide Studios' next Blood Bowl release, it might be worth waiting until the price comes down and/or an upcoming Blood Bowl 2 patch gives the game a much-needed content injection.
Score - 3 / 5
Full Disclosure: The PC copy of Blood Bowl 2 used in the creation of this review was provided by a representative of Cyanide Studios and Focus Home Interactive; however, neither the publisher nor developer retained any editorial oversight/privileges.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Blood Bowl 2 coverage throughout the rest of 2015 and for however long Cyanide Studios continues to support Blood Bowl 2 in the months following launch.
