Based on Games Workshop's two player, turn based game, which itself is based on a version of American football, Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition is the latest edition of this rather old game...

Based around the rules derived by Games Workshop, Cyanide have produced a loving rendition of the board game, including the same rules and the use of dice to move your characters. The update has added eleven more races to bring the playable total to twenty. The game can be played either in its turn based form, in real time or online against other players.

The big selling point of the new edition, apart from the bug fixes, is the inclusion of another eleven races, on top of the previous nine, which the player can play with, which now includes Undead, Khemri, Norse, Elves, High Elves, Halfling, Amazon, Ogre, Vampire, Necromantic and Nurgle. There has also been an increase in the number of stadiums.

I never did understand the logic of putting board based games, which by their nature are social activities into a computer game, which is often an isolated activity. I’m not saying that the game doesn’t reproduce the game well, when looking at the game play, but that is the easy part as the rules have already been created. There is an option to play against real people online, which works well, though there are still some issues to be ironed out in the peer-to-peer play, which goes some way to addressing the reason for the game's creation.

There is team building to involve you as well as refs to bribe and when the game kicks off there is violence to engage in, which can be played in campaign, story or on-line mode. Fans of the board game or the flawed original edition should be please with how far the game has progressed. That said for a modern game, I can’t say I was blown away with the graphics, which seemed overly primitive during the actual matches, more akin to an average handheld picture.

So it’s a decent game, which still has some niggling issues to iron out, but certainly not my cup of tea.

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Charles Packer