Brutal, crazy, tactical… this is Blood Bowl! The iconic death sport returns with the new video game of fantasy football faithfully using the latest board game rules and new content. Create your team, then crush, mulch and cheat your way to the top... leaving your opponents in the graveyard.
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What a shame this was.
I loved Cyanide's previous Blood Bowl games, for all their quirks; the shonky AI, the clunky interface, the bizarrely restrictive controls and camera. Despite that, they offered a faithful translation of the miniatures game to a digital format, offering dramatically sped up gameplay with the dice-rolling and maths done for you, and made arranging leagues and tournaments vastly easier than in-person-only logistics allow; I'm certain the two games were instrumental in Games Workshop reviving Blood Bowl as a going concern in tabletop form, and for that I'm deeply grateful.
So, I was really looking forward to Blood Bowl 3, only to be put off by the dramatic drubbing it got at launch. Buggy gameplay, gross monetisation, no league admin tools — it didn't sound great. But, after a year of patches, and some severe price cuts, I decided to give the game a try; getting to play Blood Bowl's modern ruleset digitally was just too appealing not to.
And, well, I wish I hadn't.
Upsides first:
The game looks quite nice! The first two were many things, but 'a looker' wasn't one of them; Blood Bowl 3 is a significant upgrade in that respect.
It applies the new rules successfully, as far as I can tell. So that's good.
Okay, that's the good news out of the way. Here's the less good:
Somehow, the AI has gotten worse. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but here we are. It's gone from idiotic to completely self-destructive, and renders all single-player modes — including the 'official campaign' — completely worthless.
On the subject of incompetence, I cannot believe how much of a step back the interface is. I've encountered poor UI's before, but I can't think of a single example in a video game that is worse than this. Tiny, unresponsive buttons pop in without ceremony and blend in with the background, leaving you wondering why a turn has seemingly frozen. Text is tiny and divided wildly about the screen; this is a PC game that will leave you wishing you had a lower resolution monitor so that you didn't have to keep scouring the screen for information. An auto-log that you can't pause, so it becomes impossible to keep track of events vs the AI (which doesn't pause between actions). Right mouse button as the default cancel and back button on any screen, which you can turn off, but can't then replace with any other button (like, say, escape). A need to confirm every move, every selection, by moving the cursor over to a tiny button or hammering the spacebar, rather than simply double- (or, say, right-)clicking, or rather than having the confirm option appear near where you clicked. Just astoundingly boneheaded design throughout. And of course the series' dedication to not providing a list of its keyboard controls or any remapping options remains impressive.
And then there's the bugs. Every game — including vs the AI — is 'online', which adds random pauses, weird teleporting lag and even outright crashes to menu from disconnections when the server is being flaky. Which, as far as I can tell, is All The Time. Not a great experience.
And finally, we have the infamous monetisation. And my goodness it's egregious. The game is so skinflinted with its doling out of in-game currency that you will need to become a whale even if all you want is to unlock the handful of extra teams available, never mind even considering the option to choose cosmetics for them. Cosmetics which, for maximum insult, are doled out one tiny, unimpressive piece at a time, and do barely anything to change the look of their players. Exciting new outfits these are not; you'll be lucky to even notice the difference between a fully kitted out character and an untouched one. I suppose at least that makes it easier not to care about how overpriced they all are! And that's without getting into the game's dedication to not having any female models in it at all (outside of the Witch Elf specifically, and cheerleaders), putting it at odds with the actual modern tabletop game.
So, yeah, not great stuff. Offensive monetisation, worsened controls and AI, and a laggy, buggy experience in every mode. I'd love to play a competent digital version of Blood Bowl 2020, but this ain't it.
I loved Cyanide's previous Blood Bowl games, for all their quirks; the shonky AI, the clunky interface, the bizarrely restrictive controls and camera. Despite that, they offered a faithful translation of the miniatures game to a digital format, offering dramatically sped up gameplay with the dice-rolling and maths done for you, and made arranging leagues and tournaments vastly easier than in-person-only logistics allow; I'm certain the two games were instrumental in Games Workshop reviving Blood Bowl as a going concern in tabletop form, and for that I'm deeply grateful.
So, I was really looking forward to Blood Bowl 3, only to be put off by the dramatic drubbing it got at launch. Buggy gameplay, gross monetisation, no league admin tools — it didn't sound great. But, after a year of patches, and some severe price cuts, I decided to give the game a try; getting to play Blood Bowl's modern ruleset digitally was just too appealing not to.
And, well, I wish I hadn't.
Upsides first:
The game looks quite nice! The first two were many things, but 'a looker' wasn't one of them; Blood Bowl 3 is a significant upgrade in that respect.
It applies the new rules successfully, as far as I can tell. So that's good.
Okay, that's the good news out of the way. Here's the less good:
Somehow, the AI has gotten worse. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but here we are. It's gone from idiotic to completely self-destructive, and renders all single-player modes — including the 'official campaign' — completely worthless.
On the subject of incompetence, I cannot believe how much of a step back the interface is. I've encountered poor UI's before, but I can't think of a single example in a video game that is worse than this. Tiny, unresponsive buttons pop in without ceremony and blend in with the background, leaving you wondering why a turn has seemingly frozen. Text is tiny and divided wildly about the screen; this is a PC game that will leave you wishing you had a lower resolution monitor so that you didn't have to keep scouring the screen for information. An auto-log that you can't pause, so it becomes impossible to keep track of events vs the AI (which doesn't pause between actions). Right mouse button as the default cancel and back button on any screen, which you can turn off, but can't then replace with any other button (like, say, escape). A need to confirm every move, every selection, by moving the cursor over to a tiny button or hammering the spacebar, rather than simply double- (or, say, right-)clicking, or rather than having the confirm option appear near where you clicked. Just astoundingly boneheaded design throughout. And of course the series' dedication to not providing a list of its keyboard controls or any remapping options remains impressive.
And then there's the bugs. Every game — including vs the AI — is 'online', which adds random pauses, weird teleporting lag and even outright crashes to menu from disconnections when the server is being flaky. Which, as far as I can tell, is All The Time. Not a great experience.
And finally, we have the infamous monetisation. And my goodness it's egregious. The game is so skinflinted with its doling out of in-game currency that you will need to become a whale even if all you want is to unlock the handful of extra teams available, never mind even considering the option to choose cosmetics for them. Cosmetics which, for maximum insult, are doled out one tiny, unimpressive piece at a time, and do barely anything to change the look of their players. Exciting new outfits these are not; you'll be lucky to even notice the difference between a fully kitted out character and an untouched one. I suppose at least that makes it easier not to care about how overpriced they all are! And that's without getting into the game's dedication to not having any female models in it at all (outside of the Witch Elf specifically, and cheerleaders), putting it at odds with the actual modern tabletop game.
So, yeah, not great stuff. Offensive monetisation, worsened controls and AI, and a laggy, buggy experience in every mode. I'd love to play a competent digital version of Blood Bowl 2020, but this ain't it.
My brother bought the extended edition of this and we could not make it an hour before abandoning it. Buggy and just really rough around every edge. An easy "avoid it"