Blood Bowl

What it comes down to, and what really starts to grate after a few hours of play, is those damn dice rolls. Admittedly, attacking a game like Blood Bowl - to which dice-rolls are the very life-blood - for randomness is a bit counter-intuitive. The element of chance is key: every move is a calculated gamble, and very quickly players must learn to prioritise their least risky moves, putting the basics into place before attempting any panache

Much like any successful gambling activity, the risk/reward balance needs to be excellent in Blood Bowl, and for the most part it is. Often though, it all feels a bit too unpredictable. As a control freak, if I set up a masterful strategy, meticulously planned and executed, I want to know why it fails and what I could have done about it. When the answer to that question is usually "bad luck", I start to feel a bit miffed.

More time and a deeper understanding of the sport would help, but even so, watching your star player smashed to death in the first turn of a match, having spent six or seven matches crafting him into a lethal steamroller with the game's rudimentary experience and progression system, is extremely galling. More often than not it had me reaching for a restart rather than struggling gamely on. Only having a 50/50 chance for most players to even pick up a loose ball whilst under no pressure seems a bit too harsh, even when that player is half-goat.

Perhaps I've not really grasped the spirit of Blood Bowl. I had too many teams decimated (many to the point where they could no longer field a full team at kick-off after a few matches), too many long-term investments wiped out in a single unlucky tackle, too many matches lost on a crucial, easy roll failed against the odds. I suspect that for many enthusiasts this is actually the kernel of the enjoyment, this chaotic unpredictability, but I was unable to move beyond sighing frustration.

Matches against human players are more satisfying, partly because the tactics are generally more interesting, and partly because there's less of the distrust over extremely unlikely outcomes which can creep in against a computer-controlled opponent. If it's a chess-like predictability you're looking for though, best knock on another changing room door.

In general, the presentation is much what you'd expect from a small studio developing a niche licence: it's not particularly pretty or polished. Humour is base, and there's the mandatory fantasy-world smattering of adolescent sauciness with female characters' outfits. Commentary is well-voiced but repetitive, with anecdotes making up the bulk of the vocalisation rather than any direct explanation of the events on pitch. Players are hard to distinguish, with the customisation of models so limited as to be pretty pointless. The full Living Rulebook 5.0 is included on the disc, but a better tutorial wouldn't be hard to implement, especially as so many aspects aren't so much glossed over as sanded down and hidden under a layer of lathe and plaster.