![]() For veterans of the tabletop game the flaws will be all-too obvious, with the AI given to prioritising its moves in rather odd ways, seemingly more intent on advancing its own line or breaking a receiving player through yours than in actually getting the ball forward. While much improved on the efforts of the original Blood Bowl, the AI is far from brilliant. The single-player AI, which for large parts of the campaign seems heavily scripted in your favour, is more dynamic once the stabilisers are taken off, with opposing teams taking better advantage of the traits that define the eight core races on which you can base your teams, with the agile elves and fragile Skaven making dashing runs through carefully-arranged tackle zones, while dwarven and chaos teams huddle around the possessing player to steamroll the opposition with their strength and armour values. ![]() Get through it, or more likely avoid it once you've got the gist of things, and the game comes into its own. By the end of it you'll know the depths of despair only Emilio Estevez has plummeted. ![]() To be fair the campaign punditry does a fair job of stringing together what is essentially a series of cleverly-devised tutorial matches, but beyond the story of a team being bought back from the brink, it's rather a ham-fisted and boorish fantasy retelling of The Mighty Ducks. The best that be said of the vocal work is that technically it's an improvement on the original game, but if it wasn't for the odd audio levels in some parts of a match - birdsong over a mass of visibly fervent fans, for example - you'd likely turn the speech right down and never bother with it again. If you thought an arrow to the knee was overdone in Skyrim, just wait until you've been served the line about halflings on a sandwich for the third time in a row. With its crass cultural cross-referencing and nose-picking humour, the lines of your studio hosts, Jim and Bob, wouldn't be quite so insufferable if they weren't so repetitive and poorly cued. Contrary to what you might think of a game chiefly inspired by American Football, soccer scores are more usual, with 3-0 representing a proper drubbing. If however you're playing the campaign (which, as a newcomer, you likely will be), you might instead lash out purely to offset the perpetually annoying and deeply unfunny commentary. That is, if you're playing in a league with your closest internet chums, which is where Blood Bowl 2 shines the brightest, with it's customisable ladders, knockout competitions and transfer windows. ![]() Assuming you're successful at reducing the effectiveness of a couple of the opposition - or, even better, ending their careers prematurely - you be giving the other teams a useful advantage when they'd be lining up against replacement rookies. It's a risky strategy to pursue, to be sure, one that might result in an even more humiliating scoreline and a sending off or two, but there are payoffs beyond the fact that you'll be taking your frustrations out on your opponent. You can roll the bones and stamp on their heads after they're down, or bundle them over the sideline and get the crowd to do your dirty work for you. Of course, being a synergy of gridiron football and turn-based fantasy wargaming, in Blood Bowl you can go one better than shoulder charge the opposition and have them stretchered from the pitch. Availability: Also available on PS4 and Xbox One.Not the whiney-bitey nonsense we've seen from the likes of Suarez and Costa, more the kind of full-blooded assault demonstrated by Harald Schumacher (no relation) in the 1982 World Cup semi-final, after which the unrepentant West German goalkeeper, since dubbed the Butcher of Seville, briefly beat Hitler into second place as the most hated man in France. When you're 3-0 down inside the second half, the dice are forever against you and the chance of a consolatory touchdown seems increasingly slim, there is always a strategy you can turn to that will rekindle your appreciation for the Orwellian sporting spirit: violent conduct. I can't think of a game in which it's more enjoyable to lose than Blood Bowl. It has numerous issues and lacks content, but Blood Bowl 2 offers a solid foundation for the future of the celebrated turn-based sport.
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