Chaos League

"Welcome to Chaos League", that what it states at the begin of the match and what a welcome it is.  I could not believe my eyes when I saw that someone was going to release a game that looked like Bloodbowl on the PC.  I looked at Cyanide's site and saw some of the screen shoot and there is was a game.  Well how wrong I was.

To say that this game is like Bloodbowl is unfair.  To say that this game is like any game, table top, computer or otherwise is missing the point.  It is true to say that there are some elements to are similar to Bloodblowl in the game, but it is also true that the game builds upon Speedball, Brutal Football and the Fifa series of game.

How much candle power is that thing

Where to start, the game is a very simple and easy to learn RTS, where different fantasy races play/fight each other.  You play a team versus another and the object is to win.  See no rocket science here.  The team with the highest score wins the game.  I love it, a simple game for me well that's what I thought when I first played it.  After about a few minutes I started to work things out and started to get the hang of it.  It would of helped if I had dropped the difficulty level but after being truly beaten by the computer and still found that I enjoyed it, especially as I had score 1 touchdown, I started afresh to look at the game.

Cheerleaders a go

The first thing I looked at was the different teams.  There are 8 different races, each with there own different team members, monsters and star players.  Each of the team players have different positions , Quarterback, RunningBack, Receiver and Lineman, like in American Football and each of these players have different skills assigned to them.  To start a game you select what race you want to play and build your team from the money you have.  Choosing the right types of players is what helps to win the game. This is similar to Bloodbowl where you have to build your team before you can play.  In a quick game you can just go with a pre-made team.  At this point you can also add in Monsters (Big Guy) into your team as well.  Each of the players have difficult stats, speed, endurance, strength, dexterity that help define the players, also well as different skills and spells.  After playing a game, especial a league game, the players gain experience points to buy more or better skills, abilities and spells.

who let the orcs out

Here's the ref

The races all have there different styles of play and tactics.  There is the usual fantasy types here.   Humans are you baseline average team, Undead slow but hard hitting, Wood Elves fast and dodgy, Dark Elves fast and hitty, Dwarves are slow but brutal, Orcs are just plain killing machines, Goblins are real fun and just goblins, a race called Praetorians, a large cat like race, which are very fast and a good all round team, Barbarians which are average speed and brutal and a Mercenary team made up of the linesmen of all the race.

There are different types of games that can be played from the one off match play to the full league play.  The league game is set over a nine game season where you play the other team once.  You get to choose your home game opponents, but not the away games.  This adds tactics to choosing the correct opponent to win the league.  Then you progress to the pre game screen.  This is a real nice  touch to the game, because here you have a limited slush fund where you can buy bribes for the ref, get hooligans, dope your team players and check there team players for doping.  You need all those bribes for the ref you going to keep fouling the other team or you will be sent off. 

Wood elves and praetorians coming out

Now to the game.  This is a simple click and point affair, just like any other RTS.  The game itself has three different modes to play in, Real Time, Turn Based and lastly Real Time with the ability to pause the action.   All three modes offer different styles of play and thus different tactics.  The real time mode is fast and hard to control all the players at once but real fun.  You have to think on your toes and react to game.  The Turn Based game relies on you tactics so you don't know what the opponents going to be doing next and Real Time with pause is the one mode that I play the most.  Here you can pause the game and think about what you are going the do next and see what is happening.  The game does rely on using the best players for the right jobs, no point in sending a receiver to Blitz someone or a linesman to pick on the ball and run with it if you want to win the game.  The game is fast paced and can be brutal against some teams, so it is a good idea to have reserves or heal any players.  The players themselves have a health and stamina bar, health is how fit they are while stamina is needed for running, fighting and casting spells.  Using the right spells at the right time is needed to win the game or save your team.  At the end of the game you can assign new skills to the players to increase there skills, spells or the abilities.  This is especially important in the league game, for without the right choices for skills, spell, etc, the players will be weak and easier to defeat and so will the team. 

in the dead of night, one of the lovely pitch to fight, play over

opps missed again

To sum up the game then.  I love this game because it has a good balance between game play and action.  The graphics and presentation of the game look really nice and the players have lots of different movements and actions and are animated really well.  The pitches and the crowd reactions really work for me, and I love the commentary that actually follows the passage of play.  The level of detail is good and the game flows.  The use and affects for the spells and special abilities look great and have a place in the game tactics and are not just there for show.  There is the abilites to play online or on a LAN, so some good parties for me coming up.  I do have some downsides to the game, click on the correct player can be hard at times, especial when there is a few players around the ball and there are not enough teams for my liking.  But these are minor downsides and in all the game is a good, nice package.  This is the nearest thing to will get to Bloodbowl on a computer, go out and buy it.  On sell from the 6th August 2004.

For more information on the game go to the following websites and don't just take my word for it.