The fabled over the top football franchise returns to the field. But dose it live up to its name?
This title comes with 5 game modes. The first being "play now" which is your basic instant offline game. Then there is the "blitz gauntlet" where you play against teams in a ladder style tournament as you would see in games like Mortal Kombat. In "blitz gauntlet" after every few wins you will be tasked to beat a boss team which has crazy uniforms and have different types of power ups. "Blitz Battles" is where you go to play online and here there are various leader boards for different regions, if you do well you will progress into higher leader boards. NFL Blitz also comes with a online co op mode where you and a friend can team up to play another co op team. Finally there is "elite league" where you build your own team by purchasing players in the form of cards that you pay for with an in game currency you collect from online battles. In this mode you can also purchase power ups for your teams to use. Once you have made a team to your liking you can take it online to battle against other "elite league teams" to see who's is best. "Elite league" is where most of the replay value of this game is to be held.
The game play is the same as you remember. No rules, the hits are over the top and sending a opponent flying out of bounds is as fun as it ever was. Stiff arming a foe and watching them fly 5 yards out of the way is as satisfying as it ever was. If you have played a Blitz game before, it's what you remember. With one big fault that is. The late hits are gone. Which to some this may not be a big issue, but for me it is. I personally liked nailing a foe after they scored and where doing a annoying end zone dance. Also the language in this game has been cleaned up a lot. Gone are the days of over the top trash talking and language you would hear in a rated R movie. With the lack of attitude this game brings compared to other blitz titles, at times it feels more like a "NFL Arcade" part 2 then it dose a blitz title.
When playing against the computer it still has that "catch up" feel to it. What I mean by this is that if you gain a large lead, bad things seemingly happen to you on every play. WR's drop balls into waiting defender's hands and fumbles happen every other hit or so. But online this dose not carry over, so if you suck, better step your game up because it's not going to bail you out.
I've played 10 or so online matches and the servers are actually pretty good. I haven't seen much lag or anything that would hamper the experience. With that said, sometimes it can be hard to find a match. Now I tend to play very late at night so this just could be due to the lack of the community. It always seems to find somebody for me to play, just sometimes it takes 2 or 3 tries.
The announcers are funny the first time you hear them. But by the time your finished playing your third game they begin to get old. By the time you finish your fourth game you've learned to despise them. By the end of your 5th game, you have killed the in game volume for in favor of your own personal music.
Teams are not balanced. Which really I don't find to be an issue, because in the NFL not all teams are balanced. So if your a fan of the Rams, your most likely going to want to find another team to play as. Just trying to give you a heads up.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting much when I downloaded this. Come to find out, it's actually pretty fun. Even though a lot of what made the old blitz titles great is missing, this game still has much to enjoy. With the different game modes and solid online performance I must say that this title is well worth the $15 asking price.