Huh. Why haven’t we posted about the upcoming Blood Bowl electric videogame for a while? Oh, that’s it – because we hate Skaven. Can’t stand the ratmen. We’d never discuss them, and there’s no way one of our number would spend his every spare minute painting plastic figurines of them. No way.
Since we last posted about Cyanide’s adaptation of Games Workshop’s brutal fantasy football tabletop game, the whole gamut of the game’s playable races has been revealed. You got yer Orcs, Humans, Dwarfs, Lizardmen, Goblins, Skaven and, as most recently announced, Wood Elves and Chaos. Which rather makes this one of the most faction-full Warhammer-related videogames in ages, excitingly.
While we know all the races – and, as you’ll see below, have pretty trailers for most of ‘em – what we don’t know all that much about is how the game will play, outside of the core concepts. It can be played as either real-time or turn-based, which means there’s potential to win a brand new audience as well as charming the purists, and there’ll also be a theoretically endless career/league mode, complete with player customisation and kit upgrades. It should, then, be a whole lot more substantial than the Blood Bowl, er, tribute Chaos League, which Cyanide released in 2004. Oddly, they seem to have removed most references to that and its expansion pack from their website…
It’s due in the second quarter of this year, so hopefully the floodgates of armoured sporting carnage should open any day now. Here’s those trailers, anyway. The first is by far the most interesting, as it features the first snatches of in-game footage – including peeks at both the real-time (lots of running) and turn-based (lots of coloured squares) modes. There’s also a fun look at the character customisation stuff, which looks pleasingly elaborate – like Dawn of War’s army painter but with more daft hairstyles and spiky things.
Also some race-introducing trailers which feature a lot of grunting and thumping, but nothing so essential as an interface or in-game camera:
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The commentary in Chaos League was amazingly clever. Kudos. Kieron, you need to flex that witty muscle of yours more often on RPS!
If its really worth that kind of praise i should replay it. Maybe patches improved it.
Or are you all raving sicophants.
Based on how I play Madden, if this allows persistent blitzing and is basically good fun I’ll be happy.
BLITZ!
Psh, American Football with their shoulder-pads and their helmets. Real men play NRL, a game which is not unlike Blood Bowl, only more violent.
Seriously though, this looks rather awesome. The character customization looks especially fun, which is always good when you’re dealing with persistent teams and leagues. I do fear that my brain wouldn’t operate fast enough to play the thing in realtime, though…
Also, Inquisitor is clearly the king of the GW specialist games, at least in my heart. Those models were so beautiful.
I say, even though I don’t like football, I think I’d dare wager that this looks like it might be a fun game with the same appeal (to me at least) that Defense of the Ancients has. It’s kind of limited in its scope, but it makes up for it with (what appears to be) variety.
sort of want
@Ian: HOLD X, RIGHT THUMBSTICK DOWN, INSTANT DEFENSIVE SUCCESS. 3RD AND LONG (YARDAGE IS LONG) COMING UP.
Cautiously enthusiastic about Blood Bowl. I’m not at all interested in the so-called ‘American football’ sport, but Warhammer combined with a silly sports game? True to the rules (which I’m not at all familiar with, but I am with some of Games Workshop’s other games’ rules)?
Seems like it could be fun. Although I do have to agree that a true-to-form Necromunda game would be so very much awesome it would blow Blood Bowl right out of the water.
I’m one of the many lucky people currently in the MP beta, and am briefly popping my head above the NDA parapet to report that bloodbowl is shaping up well.
the game aspects seems to be well implemented, and more importantly it’s good fun to play – hiding much of the tabletop game’s dice rolls, photocopied stat-sheets and arguments about the rules from the player, but retaining the classic cuboid-controlled combat. Not enough alliteration mind, but you can’t have everything.
Controlling your team is simple, if marginally counter intuitive – you’ll be right clicking. a lot. Whilst the game mechanics seems to have been faithfully ported for the
anally retentivepurists. Visually, perhaps unsurprisingly, the whole shebang resembles their earlier Chaos League.The bad points are the horrible, clunky mid-90s UI, and to a lesser extent, the workmanlike graphics. Rubbish unskippable cutscenes whenever a touchdown is scored are an exercise in frustration and the game currently contains very little in the way of assistance for players new to bloodbowl, so learning the game is reliant on finding yourself a mentor, digging out the original pdf game manuals (see: google) or good old fashioned trial and error.
My first half dozen games were a painful lesson in human nature as experienced players pretending to be novices pounded my fledgling team into the ground, whilst neglecting to inform me that i could make my players stand back up after they got kicked over. Many vicious beatings and dozens of deaths ensued.
Slowly, though, i began to get the hang of the game and through a combination of perseverance and there being nothing better to do on a Wednesday, i’ve started making progress. the Da Socially Inept Brawlerz have now scored a touchdown, and are on schedule to win a game some time in 2010.
The foundations are iron-clad, but at this moment the rest of the house is made of corrugated iron and string. If Cyanide can make finding opponents, starting a game and managing your team a slicker experience they’ll have a winner on their hands, at present the GW fan-factor is enough to ensure it’ll be a niche hit.
oh, and contrary to the impression given in the original article, the current character creation options are ‘a bit limited’. in the same way angora underpants are ‘a bit itchy’.
I assumed that was to keep much of the content under wraps until release. I certainly hope so.
I’ve not played RealTime mode either. I couldn’t even tell you if it’s in the beta or not, but given there appears to be no option to enable it yet i don’t think it is.