Blitz: The League Review

The Gameplay

Blitz: The League basics should be familiar to any Blitz player. It’s 8 on 8 football with 30 yard downs. Really that’s it. The rest is simple football with play calling and play running.

One thing that’s different is the addition of the Clash Meter. The more yards and touchdowns you earn will raise your Clash Meter. When it’s full and you activate it, everything slows down except the player you control. Wide receivers can change their lines to better effectively catch the ball; runners can juke and spin around defensive mean without a problem. If you’re on defense, turning on your Clash Meter intensifies their hits, making them more brutal if the Clash Meter was off.

Speaking of defense, you have many opportunities to cause serious injuries to players. Hits can be career-ending or they can be... well, just really bad. If one of your players is on the receiving end of the hit, you’ll have a chance to fix the injury normally (by sending him to a hospital, or bandaging it up right there on the field) or illegally, by injecting your player with something called juice. It’s illegal and it’s called juice…what do you think it does?

The Graphics

The look of this game is tremendous. It’s very smooth and rivals Madden ’06. The character animations on the field are fluid and lack that jerkiness that some sports game have and there seemed to be a lot of them. It took over 3 hours of gameplay before I started to see repeats.

Stadiums, while not resembling any real-life ones, are huge and over-the-top. One thing I liked about the graphics was the atmosphere. The mood in each game was dark, like something bad was going to happen. Maybe I was going to shutout my opponents and score 70 points myself or maybe I was going to tell all my linebackers to “punish” the quarterback. And I mean punish real good.

Campaign Mode

There isn't a multi-season franchise mode here. What you do have is Campaign mode where you take control of a team you create that gets sent to the depth of football hell. You have to bring your team (resembling the Packers of this year) from the bottom of the heap to the top by winning the Division 1 championship (out of 3 divisions). You pick a rookie offensive star and a veteran defensive star that will be the main characters in your story. Why would you want to play for the championship? Well, the owner has made a bet with the city that you’d win. If you do, you get a nice, new, shiny stadium.

Basically you play around 30-35 games to get through all the divisions and to the championship. You can bet on your games to get cash so you can buy doctors that are willing to juice up your players without question. Your players can have sex with the team cheerleaders.

Negatives

There’s very little bad about Blitz: The League. The actual storyline in Campaign mode is entertaining, but seems forced. I didn’t need to hear the players cursing constantly or wondering which cheerleader might get pregnant. Some of the cut-scenes are fun to watch, but I just wanted to get into the game, earn some money and move on.

Thompson’s Two Cents

Midway took EA’s license buyout in stride. They created their own players (except for Lawrence Taylor) and their own style of play. Blitz stays with the arcade play, but adds some bone-crunching flavor and a little Matrix style play while keeping it all fun. If you ever wanted to supply a QB with a career-ending knee breaker, then hike Blitz: The League into your console of choice.