March 17, 2006 @ 3:27 pm

Blitz: The League

by: Quibian Salazar-Moreno

Storyline: When the NFL sold its exclusively to EA Sports last year, sports game developers were shaking their heads and throwing their graphic design software out of the window — except Midway Games. Known for its arcade football game, NFL Blitz, Midway stuck its proverbial middle finger up to the NFL and dropped Blitz: The League. Blitz: The League basically mocks the NFL with players like Ron Mexico, Tito Mass, and Quentin Sands and the ability to use steroids, bet on games, and purposefully break other players' bones. But all that really matters is the game play right? Audio/Visual: The graphics are probably the best thing about the game. The camera gets you on the field in the midst of the action and sometimes can be a bit disturbing. If you tackle someone with enough power and momentum, you can actually break one of the bones, be it spine, ankle, leg, arm or whatever, the camera does an X-Ray CSI type of look at the bone breaking. And if necessary, some blood splatters across the field. You can't help but say, “ouch” even when you're the one tackling the player with the ball! The audio is pretty good too. The only known voice actor is New York Giant legend Lawrence Taylor voicing the character Quentin Sands. The dialogue on the field does have curse words, so children around this are a no-no. But in reality, this is probably how it really sounds on a field in the middle of any professional football game. left Controls: The controls of the game are pretty simple. On defense you have to tackle, jump/intercept, turbo, and switch defender buttons while on offense you have the same except with evade, power moves and taunting options. Kicing off and kicking field goals is a little weird but once you mess up a couple of kicks you'll get the hang of what they want you to do. Hotness: Clash Mode and Unleash Mode! Clash Mode helps you to slow down the rest of the defense (on some Matrix-type stuff) to evade tacklers while on defense it packs more power to your hits. After acquiring a certain amount of Clash icons, your team will go into Unleash Mode. In this mode you can perform some amazing and possible game changing plays, like making your QB invincible or giving you linebacker enough power to hit someone causing a fumble or severely injuring an opponent. Oh, and one more thing, if you make enough dirty hits, the frustration level of both teams rises to the point where the game will turn into an all-out brawl in the middle of the field. Finally, your aggravation can be released. Wackness: Besides not being able to play this with kids, it's a bit too easy on the offensive side. One pass play can be turned into a touchdown almost every play, and both the AI falls for it and when playing against someone, it's impossible to defend. They need to make the game more balanced on both sides of the ball. Because of the off-balance, the game does get a bit boring after several games.

Article tags: Ea Sports, Blitz: The League, Game Review