Blitz: The League 2

Someone asked me to review this game back in February, and I said no. At the time I thought there was no way in hell I would waste my money (yea, I have to buy or borrow the games I review) on some half-ass fake football game when I have Madden in my library, a much better game. Plus, I had the original Blitz for PS2 and the cheapness of the AI pissed me off so much I never finished the campaign. After a stop at Gamestop after class, I saw the price for it to be $20, and I just happened to have $20 on me so I said why the hell not. During the first 2 days, something strange happened: I was having fun. Didn't see that coming. A week later and I can honestly say that Blitz: The League 2 is a big...MEH! There's nothing special about it. It's not this awesome alternative to Madden or a must own title. It's not even good enough for me to suggest giving it a try. At the same time, it's not horribly bad to the point I regretted spending 20 bucks or felt like punching the wall because of the awfulness of it. It's just.....there.

Bow to me, bitch!

I'm gonna assume everyone knows how football games work (played one, played the all in terms of controls) and just focus on what sets Blitz apart from other titles, and that is it's dedication to presenting everything that is wrong with professional sports and magnify it 10 fold. It also helps that rules are almost non-existent, the players are ultra violent, and most injuries can be walked off (as long as there a needle in you somewhere).

Allow me for a minute to talk about the most awesome aspect of Blitz 2: the injuries. When you hit someone with a dirty hit (and you're never not hitting someone with a dirty hit), there's a chance they will either fumble, get hurt, or both. When you do a dirty hit that will potentially injure someone, time slows down. Then the game allows you to pick from the available body parts you want to fuck up. After you pick your target, you have to press A as fast as you can to get a meter full. Once that's over with, you will fling the guy onto the ground where upon impact (and this is the sweet part) the game shows you in gruesome detail what's happening inside that person body as it bruises, breaks, snaps, or dislocates. Yea, they do get old after a while, but occasionally you'll see something new. One time I broke a dudes neck...HIS FREAKIN NECK! The game said he was out for the season, but I knew he was dead, and I would have to live with the fact that I ended a guy's life on the football field......and it was awesome. If you're the one injured, and it's not too severe, you can play mini-games to heal your player: a needle to the body or popping bones back into place.

Something's happening to Inside-Out Man's shoulder

Now, about that gameplay I neglected to mention because I was too focus on carnage. First off, the kickoffs are quick-time event, meaning press the buttons as they appear. Second is your Clash meter. This meter allows you to slow down time to evade the defense and make catches on offense. On defense, you need it to do dirty hits. Underneath the meter are your clash icons. You get icons every time you do something kick ass like TDs, dirty hits, late hits (which I'll explain later), and catching the ball during clash. Once you get enough clash icons, your clash meter turns into the unleashed meter. During unleashed mode, you can do one kick ass stunt like viciously tackling someone with a better chance of making them fumble, hurt, or both or making a unbelievable catch for the touchdown. Once you do that one thing, your unleashed is gone. I say use it for tackling. Third, you can do late hits, but not in the way you might think. Instead of a tackle after the whistle (or a leg drop like in the NFL Blitz series), late hits take the form of personal attacks. One late hit has you standing over a guy, removing his helmet, and beating the shit out of him with said helmet. Another has you slamming a guy's head on the ground. When the game prompts you to, press A repeatingly to do the late hit. If you're too slow, the guy might counter it and push you away....or punch you in the nuts, whichever works for him.

OOOOH SHIT!

While all this is fun and good, the rest of the gameplay is boring. You will grow to rely on clash moves to move your offense, which breaks the flow of the game. On harder difficulties, you'd be an idiot to run the football at all unless you're on the goalline. Passing is piss easy, which means the defense is only there to cause fumbles and hit dirty. In fact, the game seems to be confused as to what's a completion and what's an interception. Most of the time, the ball would go through the defender straight into the hands of an out-of-positioned receiver. Other times (especially in clash mode) the defender intercepts the ball despite being nowhere near the target receiver. I get this is an arcade game, but I should, whether or not in clash mode, make a play on the ball as a defender. And then there is the rubber banding. In the first game, it was a bad idea to get a commanding lead because the game would bullshit you by making you throw interceptions and causing you to fumble.....alot! I've lost many games that way and with it my respect for Midway. Their spokeperson made a statement saying they fixed the rubberbanding problem, which is funny because on the very first game I played it did the same shit. The only difference is that once the team catches up, it tends to calm down unlike last game where they bullshit you to the end. Actually, that still happens sometimes so I guess I still hate you Midway. Multiplayer didn't make the experience any better. In fact, we didn't even care about the score. We just wanted to see how many people we could hurt.

Personal foul...Purple Nurpple...defense...10 yard penality...first down.

Blitz is a one trick pony....injuries. Other than that it's a dry game. I probably should mention there's a campaign mode where a rookie leads his team to victory or the different game types to play in bonus mode, but fuck it. The league is structured in a interesting way, though. There are 3 divisions: division 3 (the scrub league), 2, and 1. The winner of the D3 championship has the right to move up to D2 and the D2 champ to D1. The worst team will be sent back a division. Interesting, but in the end, pointless. Yea, I guess there was no point bringing that up, either. They had so long between the first game and this one to make Blitz awesome, and it's a shame that's all they can come up with. And Midway, stop using the Renderware graphics engine. It looked cool for PS2, but on next-gen consoles characters look like shit with no or little facial expressions. Upgrade bitches.


NOTE: I like to thank Ign.com from whose pictures I blatantly stole from.