‘NFL Blitz’ was a popular Midway Arcade series, now owned by EA, which was known for taking its own spin on football. The ‘NFL Blitz’ series was never a “true” adaptation of the sport; NFL simulators were meant for EA Sports’ ‘Madden’ and 2K’s ‘NFL Football 2K’ series while Blitz just stuck with the arcade formula and gave something the lighter sports fans could easily enjoy, chaos on the field and “late hits.”

The Blitz games allowed you to enter cheat codes prior to the game starting, which let you change the look of the field, ball, players, and some gameplay codes that can make things a little easier or harder for you. If you want to know more about Blitz’s history, click here.

On January 3, EA Sports released ‘NFL Blitz’ as a PSN and XBOX Live download. Before this, the last Blitz game to be released was ‘Blitz: The League 2’ in 2008. The League games took the most of the arcade elements out of the Blitz series and went for a more realistic style and brought Blitz into a new hyper violent sports game by including real, and sometimes nasty injuries.

It was because of this that the NFL license dropped from the Blitz games and the series took a downward spiral. Though still entertaining, they were no longer the Blitz series that everyone remembered. That is, until EA picked up the rights and returned Blitz to its former glory.

The Gameplay

For those of you new to the Blitz franchise, be ready for illegal moves, unrealistic plays, crazy teams, and the arcade classic invisible walls. In order to understand how and why these work, you have to know the two rules of Blitz:

Rule #1: There are no rules on the field. Any means for you to take out the ball carrier are allowed, including pass interference. If you are in threat of getting tackled, spin yourself to act as a shield or just knock down your opponents like bowling pins (sound effects included). You may also use your turbo meter to assist against your opponents. Though the meter runs out fast and slowly recharges, if you play your cards right, your team might burst into flames (literally) so you don’t have to worry about your turbo running out.

Rule #2: There are no out of bounds or offsides. There are invisible walls that keep you in the playing field and on your side of the field, until the play has started. This keeps the action simple and heated as well as helps give your character, in defensive position, a running start towards the QB as he runs in place on the line of scrimmage until the ball is hiked.

Worried about the two minute clock since you cannot run out of bounds? At the end of every play the clock stops. It’s just part of the rules of Blitz.

With EA’s revival of the Blitz series, they have returned Blitz to its bright colors, arcade controls, as well as the wacky character skins such as, Ninjas, Robots, Hotdogs, and many more including Zombies (Yes, they do the ‘Thriller’). Some of the new features brought into the series are:

• Blitz Gauntlet, which is where you face three sets of three teams in order to battle the bosses to unlock them as playable skins.
• Blitz Battles, where you go head to head with people online or even join up with a friend to battle others in two on two team battle.
• Elite League, where you build your own personalized team using your favorite players as well as banners and logos from your favorite teams to make your own personalized Blitz team.
• Online Coop, where you join up with an online friend to battle other online teams.
• The Blitz Store, where you use Blitz Bucks (earned through online play) to purchase logos and players for your custom team, gallery images, Fantasy Character skins, or cheat codes (All cheat codes can be used without having to purchase them, except for the fantasy characters).

EA’s ‘NFL Blitz’ is a true revival of the Blitz series and a fantastic game with solid gameplay for both sports and arcade fans. The only complaint I had with the game is that they did not allow late hits at the end of the plays. Besides that EA did a great job with reviving the Blitz series and the game itself does not disappoint.

Score: 4/5

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As First-Person Shooters go, this monster of a game is the king of the hill. There are few competitors who can match this level of focused development on a game with so many gameplay options. Infinity Ward has a long history for developing Call of Duty games, each iteration getting bigger and better as the years progress.

Players from Modern Warfare 2 will recognize the feel and gameplay mechanics of Modern Warfare 3; there is something that is unique to the Modern Warfare series that competitors can’t quite duplicate. What this creates is a game that is at once familiar and yet also features new elements for players to experience.

With Modern Warfare 3, the storyline is straight and to the point. Some fans commented in Modern Warfare 2 that the plot was just a touch past the point of confused head scratching, and so that has been tweaked to a degree, focusing more on the seamlessness between missions with noticeable highs intermixed with low points of the campaign. You won’t be bored here.

The visuals of the game are more streamlined and that really appears to be the name of the game this time. Previous Modern Warfare games have felt rushed or chaotic, and while there is no shortage of either in this game, the visuals certainly draw you into the game world. Developers have focused more on realism and less on quick and fast gameplay.

The campaign itself is indeed more fluid, with events planned out to prevent any and all confusion from setting into the players’ minds. You have options in weapons and in gameplay direction, but the flow is overall more cognizant of the players’ choices. You won’t have to worry about ammo or weapons, as there will be plenty of them to be found in the environment.

The Survival mode in Spec Ops is particularly organic, mixing different types of enemies after each successive wave of opponents that are trying to batter you down. Warning, the helicopter will make you cower in fear, if you make it to a good hiding spot at all. Here you’ll either play smart or die fast, and the player must choose their reloads.

Do you want more grenades or more ammo? You won’t have time to get both. This mode puts to shame any comparisons to Zombie Mode from Call of Duty: Black Ops; it’s just leagues apart.

The real draw for most players of Modern Warfare 3 will be the online multiplayer. Beyond the campaign and the reasonably predictable AI, the need to play against a living breathing person is the real advantage of the game. With new weapons and map packs likely to come online, players can expect to have a very customized multiplayer journey.

Experience points are gained for every kill and are also gained for every flag or dog tag collected in new multiplayer modes. The Kill Confirmed mode is one of the new modes available that should lead to a lot of creative strategies to avoid walking into an ambush. This mode will require the player to retrieve the dog tags from opponents that they’ve eliminated.

It means that, yes, you can be fast with a gun, but now you’ll also have to be strategic and not babysit the high ground with a big gun. Happily, all is not lost as you can actually deny the opposing team their points by picking up your teammates’ dog tags before they do. The Team Defender mode is a hybrid combination of Capture the Flag and King of the Hill.

The team that keeps the flag for the longest amount of time will accumulate the most amount of points as most would expect, except that the flag is mobile the entire match and it’s a race to see who can hide or run the furthest without dying. Flag generation will likely lead to no shortage of online trash talking since the first player to be killed is the one who generates the one flag for the whole match.

This should lead to some otherwise hilarious kill footage. The snag in an otherwise seamless game begins in a familiar area that fans are all too frustrated with experiencing. The re-spawning part of the online multiplayer is again an issue that Infinity Ward seems unwilling to address. Players just don’t like getting killed immediately after re-spawning; it just isn’t exciting.

The interactive button press cut scenes in campaign can be an annoyance on the second or third round of play through but are otherwise fine. Modern Warfare 3 is an excellent addition to the Call of Duty series. Its crisp visuals, combined with the better plotted storyline and continually evolving gameplay, make for an exceptionally focused game.

Players will be able to tell, versus Modern Warfare 2′s scattered jumble, that this iteration of Modern Warfare felt like it was developed along a very specific set of guidelines. As a result, the replay value on this game is particularly high, so it is unlikely that there will be many used copies available in the immediate future.

The overall game retains that great First-Person Shooter feel from past versions, and the new multiplayer options create an even greater range of death and destruction than ever before. This is a solid game that for any shooting fan is a must have for their collection.
Image Courtesy of   http://www.callofduty.com

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