Cheat Index - Blitz: The League XBox Review

Break bones, pump steroids, throw your helmet, moon the crowd, and celebrate by sending some hookers to your opponent's hotel room to make sure they are too tired to play the next game.

This is Blitz: The League, a game that strikes fear in the NFL and aims with every second to hit professional football below the belt.

Betting, end zone celebrations by a receiver named TO Mass, quarterback named Mexico…I'm surprised the game wasn't delayed to include some kind of sex cruise with a character called Pepper Smoot.

But in the end, when you're finished laughing at the various jokes and cut scenes, what matters is the gameplay, and while Blitz: The League has its moments, especially during two-player contests, overall the title suffers from inferior AI and unbalanced gameplay to the point where if the computer takes the lead with 15 seconds left, you know that's 15 seconds too long. Time to break out the money plays and win with plenty of time to spare.

The Game
Treat or juice, that's the question. Do you send your player to the bench and lose him for the game or inject him with a substance neither of you really want to know about and throw him back in the lineup at any cost? Real life…I'm sitting my player out. Blitz: The League? You're getting a needle in that polygonal ass, best believe it. And these are the types of decisions that you'd never see in a game like Madden. The types of things that a licensed game would never allow you to do. And I think the designers behind Blitz did an amazing job in the initial planning stages of the game. From the substances you can purchase for your players to "juice" their abilities to watching player profiles that include stars who just got out of jail, it's a clever concept, and probably one of the only ways that a non-licensed sports game will ever compete with the big boys (why isn't Jose Canseco Baseball already in development, anyway?).

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