Comments on: Blood Oath: Mat Kumar On Blood Bowl

By: mrpier

mrpier — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:20:59 +0000

I'd like to see a flaming dice shaped like a red skull rain down from the sky and crush a player every time there is an attacker down resulting in a death.

By: Ffitz

Ffitz — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:04:03 +0000

I used to play boardgame Blood Bown a very long time ago, and the RPS League’s writeups convinced me to buy this. For all its flaws, I’m really glad I did.

Those Skaven ratbastards are causing me no end of trouble though.

By: DMJ

DMJ — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:18:02 +0000

I agree with the sentiment that the best bits of the game are because it is such a faithful recreation of the board game. For that matter, the dice rolling sound is nice, but why hide the mechanics in a chat window? Why not put a pair of icons in the corner? Like “4+” and a picture of a green dice with a “5″ on it, or a red dice with a “2″ on it. If we’re playing Blood Bowl, the chances are we’re not afraid of dice. The dice geek in me would like to see a little animation of rolling dice too. Oh, and the “turnover” box shouldn’t just say “knocked down”, it should say who was knocked down by whom, or who failed to catch the ball, or who got sent off by the ref.

I’ve heard of people people complaining about the random number generator. Have these people never used real dice before? Sometimes your Ogre does get killed throwing triple skulls against a single Goblin… That’s what makes it Blood Bowl.

By: Hmm-Hmm.

Hmm-Hmm. — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:08:01 +0000

I haven’t read the rules since I started playing (and I’ve never played the boardgame), but what helped me a lot is that I’ve been following a Let’s Play on youtube.

But yeah, the information and interface could use work. Sure, you can save a setup.. but it doesn’t even tell you. Or whether you can save just one, two (say, one for kicking and one for receiving) or more.

And I haven’t even tried to go online with it yet (busy working my way through an easy competition with a human team to get a feel for it all). Oh, and what I really miss are the advanced things: how to best use your starting capital, for instance, and some information on what teams you can build with each race including how you can improve it over time. Me, I missed out on purchasing fan factor at the very start, for instance.

By: BookieGnu

BookieGnu — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:49:42 +0000

I’d say that clinches it then. Better finish reading the LRB I downloaded.

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:46:09 +0000

You can save during any “setup” phase, so immediately after a touchdown or at the half are both viable. You can also pause indefinitely in single player, and if you run the game windowed but at full resolution you can alt-tab to your heart’s content.

By: BookieGnu

BookieGnu — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:40:58 +0000

Still massively torn as to whether or not to buy this. Can someone confirm for me whether you can save mid-game (single player obviously), as I don’t often have 90 minutes to commit to gaming at a time… I think this will be the deal maker/breaker.

By: Saul

Saul — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:03:08 +0000

Couldn’t agree more. Blood Bowl is my all-time favourite boardgame, but I found the computer version so clunky I couldn’t even bear to play it. All it made me want to do it crack out the boardgame version, which I couldn’t recommend more highly.

For the record, there was another computer game version released fifteen or twenty years ago, which was probably the worst piece of game design I’ve ever seen, so they’re moving in the right direction, at least…

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:59:03 +0000

It’s been out on a sort of direct download unofficial beta for some time. International copies have been available for months as well, because it’s been out in Europe. In the US, your best path is to use GoGamer.com and order a boxed international copy, which is what I did.

It’s been patched pretty consistently thus far, with promises of many more to come, as well as some free extra content (like adding the Dark Elf and Undead teams).

By: Duffin

Duffin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:47:20 +0000

It's been available since August on direct download and in France, it was only released in the UK the week before last. I think it's yet to have a boxed release in the US.

By: bill

bill — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:38:32 +0000

they seem to have done an amazing job capturing the essence of BB in a pc game… something that must be very hard.

But i’m confused about how it’s been for sale for ages, but isn’t released yet. Are they still working on it? Has it been rushed out and abandoned? What’s the status?
It seems like most of the gripes are very minor things to fix.

The singleplayer AI is what worries me… but it must be almost impossible to make a bloodbowl AI… with all the options and levels of chance involved… it’d be like a chess computer. Be even harder to make one that doesn’t always win.

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:12:58 +0000

Dark Elves and Undead are supposed to be added for free this fall.