Blitz: The League
October 23,2005 -

As you probably already know, Electronics Arts has bought the rights to the NFL—meaning that they are now the exclusive developer and publisher for all NFL-related video games. But do you really need the NFL to make a good football game? As the great Chris Rock once said, “Hell to the no!”

Blitz: The League brings the game of football to a whole new level, the hardcore level. It’s no holds barred. It’s survival of the fittest. Only the strongest men survive. If you’ve ever played a Blitz game before, then you know what to expect. It doesn’t take 10 yards to get a first down anymore. That’s weak sauce. It’s triple the yardage now. Is your opponent’s best receiver dancing after making a big play? Did the opposing coach call you a Nancy? All kidding aside, kick their sorry asses. There are no penalties. It’s all allowed, and now’s the time to get loud and proud.

Despite how rough the main rules in the game can be, learning the controls is pretty easy. You pick a play—run or pass. To make it even easier for you (and your opponent) you only have a few to choose from. With that, you can’t call any audibles. You pick a play and you stick with it. If it works, more power to you. If it doesn’t, suck it up.

When you’re carrying the ball passed the line of scrimmage, you can do all sorts of things. You can jump, you can stiff arm, juke, spin, and you can even run faster, jump higher, and punch harder by holding on the turbo button. The cool thing about these abilities is that you can punch other players in the face if they try to hit you, and it’s actually pretty funny.

On defense, it’s pretty much the same deal. You can roam wherever you want on the field, but you can’t cross the line of scrimmage no matter how much of a cheater you may be. You still have access to the turbo button, and holding that button while performing a tackle will result in a harder hit that can cause a fumble. When the ball is in the air, you can jump without turbo to automatically pick it off or swat it. This is about as simple as the game gets.

The game can become a little bit more complicated as it goes on though, but this is where things start to get a bit more interesting and satisfying if you’re not squeamish (but hey, you’re a football fan). As you do all sorts of things like score touchdowns and field goals, or perform late hits on other guys, your clash meter will start to rise. With the clash meter, you can perform more bone-crushing hits, and you’ll cause your players to have a bit more life to them. For example, after throwing a pass while in clash mode, you’ll be able to take control of the guy you’re throwing to and allow him to get to the ball manually. After that, it’ll then become easier to avoid would-be tacklers.

Your clash meter will eventually put you into Unleashed mode. Unleashed mode is not unlike the GameBreaker in the NFL Street games—it’s better. On offense, you can go Prince of Persia on the defense by causing time to slow down, and you’ll be able to move on by and walk into the endzone untouched with anybody on the field, even if you’re cocky enough to pitch the ball to a blocker. Or, if you want, you can knock over everybody you see like bowling pins. On defense, you can’t slow down time, but you can unleash some painful blows that are almost always going to lead to some sort of injury.

To those who aren’t faint at heart, injuries are the coolest thing in Blitz: The League. These unreal injuries can be anything as simple as a torn ACL to a mind-boggling shattered ankle. We actually caught our very own Scott Gualco and Chris Barrett playing a while ago, and they were hysterical as one of their players was carted out with a dislocated neck. Depending on the severity of the injury (as if they weren’t already severe), you actually have the ability to keep them in the game by using one of your drugs. These different kinds of performance enhancers allow you to not only keep certain players in the game, but they’ll even play even better than before. You have to be careful though, as most of the drugs allow your player to become more vulnerable to injury, and if he gets nailed the same way he was last time—he’s gone.

Alone, you’ll spend most of your time in the game’s story mode. Basically, the story is about you rebuilding a team after they get pummeled by the New York Nightmare—a team led by the dangerous Quentin Sands (played by the great Lawrence Taylor). You’ll then be dropped to The League’s worst division, and it’ll be your job to revamp the whole team.

From here, you pick a rookie offensive player and a veteran defensive player who’ll then be the main stars of what goes on in the story. After you complete a sort of suicide mission to get money to buy a nice stadium for your team to play in, everything will start coming into play. To progress through the story, you have to keep winning games. To move on to a higher division, you have to qualify and win the championship—which you can only be eligible for by winning 7 out of 10 games. At first, it’ll be easy because Division 3 just sucks.

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