This import has been staring at me from my madness sales emails. I loved Blood Bowl, the board game. My brother and I played it a good bit. Chaos League looks the same, and it even says it is turn-based. But I am still hesitant to buy. Anyone tried it? What do you think? Did you also play Blood Bowl, by Games Workshop, so you can make comparisons?
Didn’t like the controls, didn’t get a good connection to the game. Demo:
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=7191
Yeah, I’m with Anders – the game didn’t really grab me, somehow lacked oomph. But as a result, I have a copy kicking around that I’d be happy to send your way, Robert. PM me if you’re interested.
Loved the demo, but the full thing didn’t grab me for some reason. Barely played the turn-based mode, the realtime modes are what most people use. Suffers from a lack of tactics due to the insane smokescreens you can put up that obscure most of the pitch.
Still worth picking up on the cheap, you might like it - especially multiplayer. Beware the Starforce, etc.
Also note that there is a new “expansion” out which contains the original game: Chaos League: Sudden Death.
I’ve only been on the forums briefly where they discuss it; a lot of people are very unhappy with the longetivity changes they’ve put in (and I think some other changes as well).
Its my one in-game credit, as I did the English script translation from the original French*. Which involved ripping off Best In Show and excising the worst bits of gaelic sexism. I even managed to cram in a particularly geeky “Looks like a good crowd today.” “Hmm… actually, looks more Neutral/Chaotic to me” gag, which I should be ashamed of.
Haven’t played it enough to have a proper opinion though. I dare say someone who loves Blood Bowl would enjoy it more than anyone else, as they’d be used to the idea of the straight strategy interface on a sports game rather than something that actually plays like a sports game.
The demo gives a decent enough impression of the full game to decide if you’re interested or not.
KG
*Though not the new add-on.
Oh, c’mon. That’s a great line!
I’m English. We’re all about the self-efacing.
I’ll go as far to say that it’s better than the bemusingly untranslatable line which I deleted to make room for it.
KG
I loved the game, and the little quips by the announcers were absolutely hilarious. The game is best played in real-time pausable mode. (space bar to pause)
Picked this one up from GoGamer several days ago, and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I’m a huge Blood Bowl fan, so this type of game really appeals to me. I play it in turn-based mode (though I would’ve appreciated an unlimited turn-timer for this, but not a big deal), and it does feel quite a lot like Blood Bowl this way. I found that you really have to plan ahead against the faster teams and/or keep a couple of Safeties deep in your backfield in turn-based mode, as an Elven or Praetorian receiver that gets behind your lines can easily run all the way to the goal, while you have to wait for the 5-second turn to end and you can react.
I love the look and feel of the various races in the game, and have made at least 1 team from each race except Praetorians and Undead so far. For my style of play, I’ve found that Barbarians work best for me - hard hitters, with quick strike run and pass ability, but not necessarily the protection and breath to last in a prolonged fight. I usually end up using a forked attack on offense, passing laterally once I’ve diverted most enemies to one side or the other, and then running in for the goal with 1 or 2 blockers. On defense I tend to play a balanced Zone, with my Linebacker Captain acting as a floating support, and a QB and Receiver acting as deep Safeties.
I can understand how the game can feel repetitive over time, but that complaint can be leveled against any sports game.
Crap game, funny script, and not just because I know Kieron.
You’re a beautiful man, Chary. And not just because you’re a beautiful man - because you liked Chaos League’s script too.
Er… yes.
KG
Aw, you…
Hey Guys!
I feel like a NECROMANCER!
Just curious, just started playing CL:SD recently (got the latest v2.03 downlaodable version) and was wondering what the take was on this new incarnation?
I’m liking the new races, transfer market, and EVEN that dreaded longevity statistic (no supermen lasting forever for you or the AI).
I’m THINKING the AI seems to be able to better deal with the human using the pauseable real-time mode (in the original CL this really did just confuse the heck out of the AI, it seemed) but it may just be that I’m out of practice and the AI is pathetic as ever was.
There is no denying that the interface is far from intuitive (like why not just let me click once on the bribe ref to be done with it…as it is now I’m not really sure where I’m supposed to then click on the main screen once I have the bribe option selected) and that you must micro-manage every team member since the only automated options are just not trustworthy (why ever use the aggressive stance and burn up breath quicker so then you’ll have no breath left to quickly heal itself or get out of a pickle).
You and me both. But I want to talk about chaos league:sudden death, and this seems as good a place as any. I seem to play it every 6 months or so, but rarely convince any friends to give it a try.
You are dead-on about the longevity factor. The challenge of the original game dropped off sharply once you had built up a squad of elite players - with enough resurrection cream, they would be too easy to keep alive.
In sudden death you can only keep the same players for 3 or 4 seasons before they have to retire, forcing you to constantly draft in and train up new recruits - making it feel much more like a realistic team management game - X-com with touchdowns. I guess that added challenge is not everyone’s thing for expansions.
As for the interface, its tough, but no worse than something like Starcraft, in my opinion. If you are enthusiastic enough about the game, you will learn it easily enough. I doubt that someone could improve the interface without dropping features.
Of the 3 new races, I found Damned and Gnomes to be perfectly playable (I’m playing god difficulty, real-time), but Cicutas were incredibly painful to play, I won perhaps 5 games out of 60 with them (other races I would win about 1 game in 3 or better). However, playing against them is a different prospect, as the AI can make the most of their micro-management intensive special abilities, and they turn out to be a fairly effective attrition-based defensive unit.
It could probably have done with a few more features to be especially satisying. The “transfer” option is not fully realised - I wanted to be able to buy players from other teams, or recruit players whose contacts had expired. Unfortunately, it simply allows you to buy characterless randomly generated players from a race-limited pool (they would start with a chunk of unspent exp and reduced longevity).
Some more polish here and there would be welcome eg. I’d like a message (and perhaps a “hall of heroes”) to record my player retirements - as it is they just disappear from the roster once their “time” is up (now I think of it, this may well have been addressed in the most recent patch).
You don’t have to select the bribe option. In fact, just forget that that icon even exists (other than for telling you how many bribes you have left). Ref-bribing is done in a single click, you just have to click the ref picture (highlighted in red) that appears in the top-right corner for about 5 seconds after your player has been red-carded.
Perhaps not intuitive, but child’s play when you know about it.
In fact, the same process works when using healing creams on injured players, just click on the injury icon in the top-right when it appears.
Yup, “aggressive stances” are a nice idea but pretty useless. As it turns out, human players are not keen on spending valuable resources just to let the AI have limited control of their players.
It’s pretty much a Jenga-brick feature, take it away, and the game is still basically the same. I like to think someone somewhere finds it useful.
Of course, if all one is looking for is a little Blood Bowl action you could try: http://fumbbl.com/
I’ve been dying to try it myself.
Isn’t there an actual Blood Bowl PC game in the works? I remember hearing a while back that some French developer was developing a bona fide Blood Bowl game for GW.
Yeah, Cyanide, the very folk who GW shut down because of this game, Chaos League. Evidently that served as a pretty decent prototype for what WD would like to do with BloodBowl. After that initial announcement and Cyanide no longer supporting or selling Chaos League (since some point last year I think), there haven’t been any new updates that I know of on this project.
I used to play in this league. It’s very very fun.
On a (semi) related note, a few days ago the company behind the new version of Speedball released a cgi movie. The CGI movie, as useless as they are, did look neat. There are also some other videos of this latest Speedball on Youtube, but I only found developer movies that didn’t show gameplay.
For those that don’t know, Speedball is a fantasy football/rugby/soccer/lacrosse game for Amiga/C-64/PC that came out 20 years ago. It was similar to Mutant League football for the Genesis, but is not as close to bloodbowl as MLF is/was.