Blood Bowl for PC
Blood Bowl. You know what Blood Bowl is, don’t you? It’s not your toilet pan after a bad bout of piles. It’s Games Workshop’s violent sports game, and the PC version of the classic tabletop romp is now available for download.
Blood Bowl’s a bit like American Football. Except it has more Orcs and Goblins. Oh, and less steroid freaks and murder cases.
The PC game apparently lets you play in a turn-based style, just like the tabletop version, and mixes it up with a risky sounding real-time mode. Hey, it might work, we dunno. It might.
We’re trying to get our hands on some review code so we can let you know how it all hangs together, but in the meantime get yourself over to the website and see if you’re tempted to buy the digital download. It’s 40 quid.
It might, but it doesn’t, sadly. The turn-based mode is an ace translation of the board game though, provided you don’t try it in single-player as the AI is genuinely appalling (for the BB-initiated, the AI boils down to all races “caging” all the time, even the ones it’s suicidal to do so as. Also, they aren’t aware of the turn clock, so will just amble about amiably when they’re 1-0 down with a risky shot at scoring) . Oh, and the multiplayer lobby feels like an artifact from the turn of the century, with things like having a quick match against a friend being utter hell to actually get going.
Sounds bleak, but there’s a genuine gem buried underneath all that shite, and hopefully some heavy patching will help it all come together. Even as it stands, the multiplayer is pure class once you get it going, the whole thing just needs a lot more TLC before I could give it a definite recommendation.
You’ve listed everything I hoped would be changed from the beta. Bit of a cheek to charge £40 for game so unpolished. It’s coming to Steam, though, so I may pick it up then.
It’s glorious in turn based mode.. being Blood Bowl afterall. As I never had anyone to play a league with when I owned the 3rd edition it’s finally fiven me the chance of doing so and I’m loving it. Well worth getting for me personally, rhough many have understandably balked at the price and it is missing my old favourite team (Undead).
I agree with cheeba in that the interface is dire.. say mail for instance, you have new mail but to read it you have to select it then click on a drop down menu and select read. A lot of it is done that way in the multiplayer interface part, though the actual game part is fairly clean and smooth (it would be nice to see the number you’d need to roll to make a dodge or whatever beforehand, but aside from that).