So.. Many of you have read my first Blog Entry in which I promised a 2nd one. Anyways if you didn't read my first one, there's no need to do that anymore, since this will be teh uber Blog Entry of Might&Steel.

Cyanide's BloodBowl Game.. I will split this report into two parts, one concerning Real Time-mode, the other one will deal with Turn-based play. Let's start with the part that I think of being more important. The turn-based play:


Turn-Based Play

Hum.. In General it looks really good, nice graphics and so on. The AI is completely useless in turn-based mode, but it pwnz in real-time, thus I won't complain about that.
I really enjoy the turn-based play in lrb5, it is fun and I did not encouner any major bugs yet. The game feels a little slower than on fumbbl mostly, because the graphics are a little annoying. On fumbbl you click on the player and he gets up, here the player has a real get up animation, requiring like one second. Not that bug much of a deal, but this fact and the stupid cinematics are a bit annoying, but that is just personal preference. I know, that there are some players, that will enjoy exactly this kind of fluff.
Anyways. There are just 12 inducements implemented, that seem to be a little overpriced, but that is lrb5 stuff.

The average opponent that I faced is way worse than on fumbbl, but once better players start playing cyanide's, the community there will become better.

Playing turn-based games is real fun and I really enjoyed it so far. It feels like Blood Bowl. I will still play on fumbbl mostly, because it offers way more options, but I will definitely start to introduce my friends to Bloodbowl via Cyanide's.


Real-Time mode

Man.. This mode.. I think there is no right opinion about it.. Just play Dwarves and you are gonna have loads of fun. In Multiplayer you'll have to controle all your players simultaneously with your mouse. There prob are some options to move a whole bunch of players, but we didn't get the hang of it yet.
Basically you can give a player 3 schemes on how to act before the kick-off. Offensive, neutral and defensive. But don't think a defensive player will take players into his tackle zone. He will run back no matter what, waiting for your orders. Same goes for offensive or neutral. It is just an order on where to place the players when without orders.
I wish for a basic AI that tells the player to intercept incoming blitzes on my ball carrier, automatically tackle catchers near my td zone and so on.

Another problem with real-time mode is, that I mostly can't understand what exactly is happening. I tell my Block CW to block a Troll Slayer, while my opponent just runs away. Then my CW will go down, because Dauntless works when being blocked too, because there is no 'attacker' and 'defender' at least that's the explanation that we came up for seeing my cw go down approximately 50% of the time.

There are just the explenations on how skills work in turn-based mode. I wonder how for example Grab should work in real-time, but I suppose it simply doesnt. The whole mode reminds me of the ideas my mates and I had in the Netherlands after consuming a little too much of a substance that I won't call by name. (Beer of course !!11).
It's like 'Hey, let's take this whole bunch of skills, characteristics and game-mechanics, that only work in a turn-based game and let it happen in real-time !!11' on which everybody started to scream in euphory.

In real-time mode a Blitz just adds a plain +1ST bonus like Horns. So Horns have no effect at all, at least I did not notice an effect.

Anyway it is really enjoyable and fun, in general I like the idea (prob because I was in the Netherlands during last week.. Long-term effects prob), but it definitely has to be patched, skills have to be changed for real-time-mode (who the hell needs Frenzy? I mean srsly.. You can just block him again if you want.) and the automaticaly made decisions like directions of push backs clearly have to be fixed. I pushed my opponent's player into my own TD-Zone like three times, when my BM could've nailed him to the side line instead.

Anyways I like the game, after seeing the first patch go online yesterday I have high hopes for the future game developement. If you don't want to buy the game, then at least donate the money for Christer. If the game is worth 50 € and you think fumbbl is better, just pay the bucks to the better one of the two products.

Regards