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Monday, October 27, 2008 |
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Blitz: The League II
By kolop1 @ 9:34 PM :: 1029 Views ::  :: PS3
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Since Midway does not have the rights to use the NFL in any way, they have to try to find a gimmick to make you want to buy their game. With cheating, over the top end zone celebrations and a lot of swearing Blitz: The League II tries to be the antithesis of the NFL.
When you first enter the game, you can choose quick play, campaign, tournament or online. Quick play lets you get right into the game either against the CPU or against a friend. It’s good if you want to go straight into the game.
Campaign mode lets you live the life of a player starting his football career. I started off as a player called Franchise and after a few cut scenes you have to answer questions at a press conference. Depending how you answer these questions determines what position you will play on both offense and defense. That’s right; Franchise is so good he plays both sides of the ball. From there you decide the location and name of your team and the color of your team’s Jersey.
You want to earn money by getting endorsements. It’s supposed to be the better you play the more endorsements you get, the more money you earn, and the more women you get, however, after losing some games he still got the money and the women. I don’t know if this is a bug in the game, but I didn’t really feel the effects of losing all that much.
Tournament mode allows you to play with up to 16 different people in single elimination to see who is the best; online lets you play against other people through the internet. There were not many people playing this game online and at times it was difficult to find a game.
Now let’s get to the meat of this game, the game play. During the game you have an in game play-by-play announcer, a John Madden impersonator who repeats himself constantly, and a coach that sits in a booth and swears a lot. The game play itself can only be described as buggy at best.
When you play on offense, you can slow the game down by pressing the left trigger, doing this is supposed to help you evade would be tacklers, but what it does is make the game too easy. All too often I would run a deep pass play on offense, slow the game down, throw the ball to the deepest receiver and score a touch down on just one play. I should mention that when you start a drive it’s first and 30 not first and 10. In addition, the ball gets fumbled a lot. It’s as if they knew how bad the defense was so they had to arbitrarily add fumbles.
After each tackle, if you hit the correct pattern of buttons, you can hit a player while he is down, usually by kicking or punching him. Doing this weakens the player. Injuries also happen a lot; if you can get a power tackle on someone, you can cause an injury; usually resulting in having him sit out for a few plays. When an injury happens the camera zooms inside of the player's body and you can see the injury take place. If you are squeamish, you may want to turn your head, but I think it’s one of the best parts of the game. Depending on the injury you then go into a mini game to try and fix it. If it’s a broken bone, you'll have to line up the left and right analog sticks to the stick icons on the screen; the closer you are to lining them up the faster your recovery time. If it is a muscle tear, you have to line a needle up close to a circle that marks where the injury is; again the closer you are to the circle, the faster your player will heal.
End Zone celebrations are over the top. One of the celebrations is a guy pretending to crap out the ball, another is of a guy pretending to be shot by another player.
I see what Midway is trying to do with this game and if it were tweaked a little bit it would be a fun game. Overall, as it stands right now, I didn't find the game fun enough to hold my interest for longer than a couple games. Midway should spend a little more time on the game play, and less on the gimmicks. It doesn't have to be Madden to be a good football game, but it does need to play a good game of football.
4 out of 10
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