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BLITZ THE LEAGUE II Posted by Dan Pearson on Oct 7, 2008 10:18 (Oct 7, 2008 10:18) |
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Blitz: The League 2 has now arrived, a good month after the mighty Madden, but is this just another American football game or does it offer something different for fans of the sport.
Whereas Madden is the daddy when it comes to American Football, offering huge in depth modes and control more akin to a sim game, Blitz offers a raw arcade feel. For those of you like myself who are new to this franchise, Blitz is a fictional American Football league that looks at the seedier side of the sport, offering juice (illegal drugs) to boost your players attributes and where injuring the opponents is just as important winning the game.
 The controls are a lot more simple than in other football games and this helps keep in line with the fast paced action feel. As a Quarterback, you pick the plays from a very easy to follow play book, you have to press the corresponding face button to throw to your desired player. The left stick will move your character, handy for dodging defenders or even going for a run yourself. At the top of the screen you have an unleash bar, when this is full you can pull the RT to turn it on and use these new skills. The unleash bar essentially slows down time, allowing for more complex moves, each position has a different use of the unleash bar, the Quarterback has arrows appear on the floor for you to match, get this right and you will avoid oncoming defenders whilst looking for the perfect throw, the receiver is able to slow time and perform a manual catch with the Y button, when running for the touchdown you can mash the A and B button to use powerful stiff-arm’s and barges to throw the opposition out of your way and when defending it performs a rib crunching sack tackle followed by a humiliating stomping.
When you pull off a good tackle a gruesome x-ray perspective movie will play, showing in detail the part of the body which is breaking, this can be a tendon snapping or popping out of its socket to a bone breaking, the game will go back to real time and have your injured player writhing in agony with the medics around you, here there are two possible mini-games to use depending on the injury, if it is a bone related injury you have the chance to pop it back it, using the LS and RS to link the bones and then push the sticks inwards to put the bone back or the injection mini-game for nerves which is like a game of darts, the closer to the middle the better the recovery. Though the player will be out for a few plays, they will come back with a brief boost.
There are only a few game modes included but each one is very well designed and fun to play. The main story has you playing as “Franchise”, a newcomer to the 3rd Division. Once you have gone through the intro movie you start to choose the style of player, rather cleverly this is selected in a Q&A session with the sports press; your answers determine if you are a quarterback, receiver and what position in defence you will play. The idea of the Story is to impress the scouts and PA’s to get you the big sponsors, cash and girlfriends. To keep the arcade feel of the game you are able to have the computer to do all of your training, however if you want a bit more depth you can choose what training to carry out, what upgrades to select for each player in the likes of clothing, illegal drugs and body armour. At certain times of the game you are given a challenge to impress the big-wigs, this could be gaining 200 yards as your main character to performing a specific tackle. Achieve or fail these, the game will always progress as usual but you will earn more abilities and cash.
 The graphics are bold and clear enough to rival most other high end titles, the players have numerous sizes and the collision detection is spot on, making for some really brutal challenges.
Being a fan of Madden I was surprised how much I enjoyed this title, its separated far enough from the NFL to be more enjoyable, games that usually parody a real sport (FIFA Street for example) tend to be cheap, rubbish to play and lose the feel of the sport, Midways Blitz 2 shows how to make an effective and enjoyable new style of American Football.
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