In many genres you have games that take a different slant on the traditional way of doing things. You've got your Burnout series, focussed on speed and destruction as opposed to slick clean racing. Then there's Fifa Street, an over the top football game which focuses on outrageous tricks and skills instead of a more standard football fare. Blitz: The League II also falls into this "alternate" category. Rather than simply being an American Football simulation like the Madden series, it instead places a huge emphasis on dirty tackles, causing bone shattering injuries (literally), and juicing players up using illegal steroids. It also has a proper campaign mode, with a definite conclusion and a decent storyline, something very few sports games have. It's a nice twist on the usual Madden type game that proves to be very enjoyable at first, but suffers when it comes to longevity.

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though. As the name suggests, Blitz: The League II is the imaginatively titled sequel to Blitz: The League, developed by Midway Games and released on the original Xbox and PS2 in 2005, with the Xbox 360 iteration being released in 2006.  With the official NFL license being snapped up by EA, Midway decided to focus on a fictional league and teams, creating a dark history of on-field deaths, drug abuse and corruption. It's an interesting history that's told in the various loading screens and makes you feel more like you're playing a real league rather than a completely fictitious one. 

The main meat of the game is the campaign mode, where you first create your "Franchise" player (the nickname the game gives you). You're the first two way player in the league's history, so you can be a Quarterback and a Cornerback, or a Wide Receiver and a Linebacker. You have 4 offensive and 4 defensive positions to pick from, and your character creation is done via a press conference, with your answers to the various questions determining your stats and positions. You can then create your teams name and colours and set about your progression through the divisions towards your ultimate goal of the Division 1 Championship title. Each of the 3 divisions has 7 games to play and a divisional championship, providing you win at least 5 of the 7 league games. You can place bets before each game if you think you can match the challenge they give you (usually winning by at least a certain number of points, but occasionally keeping the score to within a certain range). After each game you'll earn money depending on your performance, which can then be spent on upgrades to the training and medical facilities. Before each game you may also get a personal challenge for your Franchise player, either from your agent or other interested party. This may be to get over 200 yards on offence, score 3 sacks on the opposing QB, cause an injury to an opponent, or something along those lines. You don't have to complete these challenges, but doing so can bring benefits such as sponsors who give your team better equipment, or a girlfriend who knows how to get drugs for your team at a much cheaper price.

The way the campaign mode is structured is very nice, and the story that pops up during the career mode makes you want to finish it so you know what happens. A good storyline isn't enough in a sports game though, and for the most part, Blitz II delivers an enjoyable experience on the field. If you've ever played a Madden game before you'll feel comfortable with the controls and the way the game plays, but if you're new to the Blitz series then I'd recommend at least watching the tutorial vids to make sure you understand how to effectively use the Clash Meter. The Clash Meter builds up as you make big hits on defence or huge yards on offence, and can be used by holding down the left trigger. On offence it can be used to slow down time, allowing you to skip around defenders, while on defence it's used to add that little bit of extra oomph to hits, giving you an extra chance to injure players. If you build your Clash Meter up fully you can then use an "Unleash" move. These are absolutely huge moves that are virtually unstoppable, such as huge stiff-arms while running with the ball, or bone-crunching tackles that could easily leave your opponent with a serious injury.

You'll no doubt have noticed that I mentioned injuring players twice in that last paragraph, and this is because injuring players is a big part of what Blitz is all about. If you make a big enough tackle on someone, time slows down and you'll get a brief chance to pick a body part of the opponent, then you have to hammer the A button as fast as you can to make the injury as severe as possible. Each injury is accompanied by a rather graphic bit of CGI showing the injury occurring from within the body, so expect to see bones breaking, ligaments snap, and muscles rupture. The injuries themselves range from fairly minor things such as broken fingers to more serious injuries such as ruptured scrotums (which looks as painful as it sounds) and broken necks. With the exception of the really serious injuries that put players out for several games (or the entire season) you get a chance to treat the injury just after it happened in a little mini-game. For most broken bones you get a chance to re-set the bone, using the right and left thumbstick to align and then "snap" the bone back into place. For everything else you have to give the player an injection in the affected area, with a target mark around the area. The more accurate you are with either treatment method, the quicker the player will get back into the action. In keeping with the theme of an over-the-top game like this, injuries you'd expect to keep players out for a few games are generally only enough to put them out for a few plays.

Not only can you inflict damage on your opponent with injuries, but after dirty hits you often get a chance to put a late hit on the opponent. This is another chance to hammer your A button as fast as you can to lay the smack down on some poor victim. These are pretty violent scenes again (but funny with it I think) as you lay the boot into the guy's groin, take his helmet off and smack him with it, or put the boot into his ribs. These late hits can be countered though, often with funny results that leave you on the ground looking stupid.

If the gruesome injuries aren't enough to convince you that this is a game aimed squarely at adults, then the audio certainly does. The songs and in-game speech are all filled with various swear words, which is not overly surprising given the adult themes running through the rest of the game. The pick of the audio has to go to the colour commentator on the matches, as he comes out with the most random nonsense that really is quite funny at times. It's just a shame there's not more of it as you'll hear the same stuff several times through the course of the campaign.

Graphically the game is a mixed bag. The animations all seem a bit stiff though the tackles all look sufficiently painful. The weather effects are quite nice, with heavy snow and rain covering the field, only to be worn away and mud to appear as the game wears on. The cut-scenes where the story takes place are decent enough, but again nothing overly special. It's certainly not the worst looking game on the market though and as the game has a good solid framerate you can forgive a lot of the more minor problems as any slowdown would be a killer in a game like this.

Outside the main campaign mode you've got the usual multiplayer choices, locally and over Xbox Live. There are also 6 different kinds of bonus games to play, such as Butterfingaz, where every tackle forces a fumble, and Make it Take it where the scoring team receives the kick off instead of making it. Some of the modes are more enjoyable than others (Butterfingaz is a bit to manic for my liking) but they all provide a nice distraction from the campaign and give you more ways to smash your friends into little bits.

After the fun of injuring people, what are we left with? Unfortunately for Blitz, the majority of the fun comes from the huge hits and crunching injuries that occur, and by the end of the campaign mode you'll have seen the majority of the injuries (there are 31 different injuries and some seem next to impossible to cause), and after watching the CGI of a dislocated shoulder for the umpteenth time you start to get a little bored of it all. The actual sport action in the game is not actually that bad, but it falls some way behind the Madden series, and when you're bored of the injuries you do start to wonder if you should be playing Madden instead. After you've played your way through the campaign mode, the answer to that question is certainly going to be yes, you should be playing Madden. Blitz: The League II is enjoyable as long as the campaign lasts, but has a very questionable lifespan beyond that. If you're after a pure American Football experience then steer clear of this, but if you have a darker side and fancy seeing just what a ruptured scrotum looks like, then give this a try. You may find it strangely enjoyable.

Discuss this in our Forum