You there: do you like Football? Do you like fantasy role-playing? What, really? Both? Well, silence those voices in your head that incessantly cry ‘weirdo!’ and ‘murder animals!’ with the gladsome news that Games Workshop’s 21-year-old Blood Bowl board game is headed to PC and 360 in the second half of the year. Bloodthirsty finger-fullbacks have been staging Blood Bowl games since 1987, but avid fans have hitherto only had the ancient CD-ROM version for those times when Mom insisted on clearing away the toys to lay the table for dinner.
Step forward French sports-management-sim kings Cyanide, putting all the knowledge gleaned in creating games like Pro Rugby to good use, recreating the endless battle between Humans and Orcs, giving you the chance to top the fantasy football league. The violent clashes will be the main body of the game - you can hire Ogres to balance out the Orcs’ superior strength and gut-ripping ferocity, although Black Orcs will still rule the field, leaving you, perhaps, to use the Humans’ superior tactical brains to save the day.
However, the developers are laying great stress on the management and customisation element of the new adaptation, putting you in charge of your own team of legendary brutes, and working your way up to Blood Bowl glory with the careful accumulation of personalised equipment - as well as hiring crucial healing apothecaries and fantastical cheerleaders. And of course, you’ll be able to play both the original turn-based game and the all-new action version online, where Cyanide are hoping that huge tournaments will eventually thrive. Well - we’ll see, eh? A small amount of aficionados will be jubilantly counting the days until the next gen Blood Bowl touches down. For the rest of us, the Live offerings aren’t likely to be tempting enough to invest more than bargain bin money on what is essentially Madden with goblins.
Jun 6, 2008
