Brutal Sports Football

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Chopping heads is the name of the game
by Gregory D. George

June 5, 2001

You know, you try to impress your friends with games like Battlemorph, Tempest 2000, or Iron Soldier, but what do they bite on? Brutal Sports Football. Yes, those wacky Medieval guys are here to show you how to play a game of football. Punch, kick, bomb, and chop your way to the goal line.

The graphics for the game are certainly not 64-bit. This was a port from an Amiga and Atari ST game back in the 16-bit era. However, I doubt either of those computers could manage the amount of colors that the Jaguar version sports. I like how the turf gets ripped up and destroyed as the game progresses. The animation of the characters is smooth and fluid.

The music is actually pretty nice for a Jaguar game. There are just so many games for this system that have no music and we always make excuses for it. "Oh, this game is better without music anyway!" Many times that's the case, (as with [i]Alien vs. Predator[/i]) but it's nice to have music once in awhile. The sound effects are pretty good too but there don't seem to be all that many "oofs!" and "booms!" you'd expect.

The control is practically perfect. Push right, your man moves right. Push left and your man moves left. Push up... Well, you get the idea. There's no lag when moving your character around, which is nice. You can also jump, throw the ball, and pass. Sometimes it's hard to remember which button does what if you haven't played for awhile.

The gameplay is superb. There are powerups around the field that will make you faster, give you bombs or weapons, give you a shield, and other abilities. Of course, my favorite ability is chopping off the heads of your opponents and using THAT for the ball!

There are a bunch of gameplay options here including a password feature, but I must confess, I usually just play a quick game of Unfriendly. But if you want to really get into it there are several modes of play including League mode, Unfriendly, and Knockout. You can change your formation to aggressive, standard, or defensive. You can also go into the locker room and heal/upgrade your players.

Brutal Sports Football won't wow your friends with it's 64-bit looking graphics. But the fun and energetic gameplay more than makes up for it's lack of visual pizazz. If you like these kinds of fantasy football games go get BSF.