Xbox Addict

Blitz has a play book of pages upon pages of plays, which are broken down into different sets. The plays I used most happens to be the default set, known to us old-timers as old school, which are the ones we grew up using in the earlier versions of the series. The newer plays are nice, but a lot of them have trick routes that for me got a little confusing at times. Plays still can be flipped, to keep your opponent guessing.

It wouldn't be a Midway sports title without the ability to set a player "on fire". On fire meaning that when a player on offense does certain plays with the same character X amount of times, the character then becomes engulfed in flames (that would be the visual cue) and becomes faster, powerful, and greater at skills such as catching the ball. On the defense side, your team can become on fire by sacking the ball carrier behind the line of scrimmage. This feature makes playing catch-up a bit easier if falling behind.

The one thing that did get on my nerves were the tackle animations. When being tackled, the ball carrier is moved forward which counted as positive yardage. But tackles that knock a player back didn't give them negative yardage, instead the game marks the line of scrimmage at the place where the tackle started. You have no idea how many times I helped my opponents out by hitting them into the end zone for a touchdown.

The usual gameplay modes are available in Blitz such as exhibition, season, tournament and quickplay. Game settings are adjustable for time of day, weather, skill level, quarter length as well as a host of other options. The controller can also be configured to your liking, though the default controls felt comfortable and worked well.