Blitz: The League

"The new football league"

Blitz The League, football game from Midway without the NFL license. The game uses it's own teams and players unlike past games in the series. As the past games it features 8 on 8, with 30 yard first downs. Also featured is being able to play people online.

Gameplay - 8/10 The game has expanded the playbook to rival that of regular football games. Now there are a lot of plays to choose from and playbooks vary from team to team as well.

One problem I have with the plays in this game is in the running game. Running up the middle hardly ever works and only works when people cheat to the outside. So sweeps and tosses are the main weapon running. But then again most football games end up with this flaw.

A new feature to the series is the ability to injure opposing team players. This is accomplished by landing dirty hits when tackling. Causing an injury is accompanied with a x-ray view of something breaking. Injuries can take players out of a couple plays to weeks. If one of your players gets hurt you have the option to juice a player and reduce the time he is out for. But be warned doing so and he gets hurt again will probably end up getting a very severe injury that cannot be fixed by juicing.

There is also a new clash system that replaces the on fire system. There is a meter that fills up and can be used to help make big plays. Clash is built up by doing positive things on the field. Like gaining yard on offense or making a stop for a loss on defense. Using clash is done by pressing and holding the L2 button. On offense it slows down time and slows defenders while making anything you do such as stiff arming more effective. On defense you hold the L2 while making a tackle to land a dirty hit which has a chance to injure the person you tackled.

Doing these things while using clash earns clash icon where after you earn 6 of them gives you the unleash meter. Earning unleash fills the meter up and allows a very spectacular use of ability. On offense it can allow you to juke someone and get around a second of tackle immunity. On defense it is a very hard hitting tackle which has an even higher chance to cause injury and fumble of the ball.

Another change in the blitz series is gone are the after play hits (well how you control the guy and hit whoever, the computer can inadvertently hit people returning to the huddle). What replaced this is that after so many dirty hits a brawl can take place. Where the all the players on the field pretty much go and tackle each other. This little mini game is see who can hit who the most. The winner in the brawl is awarded clash icons for how many hits they landed in the brawl.

Controls are pretty responsive except for when it comes to changing players and trying to land dirty hits where pressing the L2 button responds differently than just mashing it like the R2 for turbo.

Another new thing is Campaign mode. Here you create your new team. You can select a city from a list, name it what you want, choose the colors, and the type of uniform you want to have from the choices given. You also select the coaching staff and team doctor. This part will affect the type of playbook you will end up with. Also selectable is stadium, you can pick from 3 different one.

Then you select a rookie on offense, either a QB, RB, or WR. On defense you select a veteran of the league for DE, LB, or S. These guys are part of the story of the game. All other players on your team can be changed in look and name as you please.

As for stats for your team, those are built up through training your players throughout campaign mode. You can also juice your players to enhance their stats even more. There is also better equipment that you can purchase for stat boost team wide.

All of that stuff cost money which is earned playing games. So you have to balance out how you spend your money as you can't buy it all.

Story - 7/10 Campaign mode is where the story of the game is. But also a part of the story would be the history that Midway created for the league itself. I think they did a very good job laying out the whole history of the league and makes it more real. A lot of it can be seen at blitzleague.com.

The story for the campaign is alright. Interesting the first time through but it's always the same when you play the campaign again. Would of been more interesting if there was a campaign for all the teams in the league or maybe having different stories for the different choices you made when creating the team.

Graphics - 7/10 On the field graphics are a step up from older blitz games. But still have the blitz feel about them. A problem is that most of the graphics are these and cutscenes look pretty poor.

Playwise these graphics are fine. It's just you would like to see better graphics in when they are telling the story in campaign mode.

There are some better graphics in team introductions but that's as far it goes.

Sound - 7/10 The sounds in the game are above average. The sounds of the hits and stuff in game have the arcade blitz feel to them. The music that plays during the game works. The music that play when 4th and long and going for it, gives the down the feel that what happens here is very important.

There is a lot of talking from the players and a good amount of touchdown celebrations but some are recycled and just use different things they say during them.

In game announcing is really limited. This I think may need to be expanded on but this isn't what the game is about. But it does add more football feel to the game.

Another thing you hear is the calls from the coaches. But most of the time you never hear all they say because it happens as your picking plays and gets cut off when you select your play.

Music outside of playing the game is great but after a while it doesn't seem like enough songs. I suppose any game with music it tends to get that way after you play the game for a long time.

If the game announcing and call from coaches was better I would of gave this section a higher score. Most of the time here you always hear the same things over and over through out the same game. Turning these options off just makes there be holes in where you would hear things.

Play time/replayability - 9/10 Campaign mode is 33 games to finish. In the blitz league that would be the amount of games in the "Dream Season" of going from the worst division to top division champion. Each game consist of 4 quarters with 2 minutes of game clock a piece.

The game offers a lot of unlockables that are unlocked either through campaign mode or quick play. Most of these are options for quick play, such as big head, no first down, fumbles on hit, etc. These things give more replay in themselves if you're interested in changing the way the game works.

Campaign mode you would probably replay this to try and create a team with better stats. It's too bad campaign mode is always the same or it would be more fun to go through it again. I find I only replay campaign mode to make an even better team than what I had before. That's how I knew the different coaches gave you different playbooks and it's been the same story every time I played through as well.

Another unlockable is Cyberball. Fun for people who loved this game in the past. It's the arcade game but you have unlimited credits on it.

You can also play Blitz online. You can play ranked or unranked games and it keeps your record for ranked games. There is also a leaderboard to see where you are. Missing here is the game options you unlocked. Only options for online is how long quarters are, able to use created team, and if you have the clash meter or not.

Final recommendation
One thing I need to note is that there are very long load time before games and when selecting options that cause the game to check the memory card. Also saving takes a long time. This can be very distracting to some players and would very likely lower their view of the game.

Other than that the game is fun to play and playing online and seeing how you stack against others there is pretty fun.

Side note, the game is only 2 players at most. Kind of weird when 4 players is usually what I expect from multiplayer Midway games. Co-op is an unlockable feature which can only be used in quick play.

7/10 if you play only by yourself
8/10 if you play with others and/or online

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/05