Without the NFL's decency restrictions football is destructively fun!
By delving into a "Playmakers"-esque storyline the ugly, dirty side of professional football comes out. Drugs, sex, and LOTS of broken bones. This formula made the original Blitz stand out in a sea of cookie-cutter football, but it was also saddled with incredibly long load times. Thankfully this problem has been rectified.
BLITZ II takes the savage, souped-up action of the original and kicks it up a notch. Brutal X-Rays of injuries have been upgraded to near-sickening muscle/bone graphics, including the stomach-churning ruptured testicle. Believe me, when you fracture a skull and suddenly you see DAYLIGHT hit the brain... oh man, HERE is the violence I've been waiting for!
Play is virtually identical to the previous installment. BLITZ is high-octane/low rules football. With the power of the Clash meter your players are virtual supermen. Considering it's 30 yards for a 1st down and late hits and pass interference are all part and partial... you'll need them to be. Soup up your players on the drug cocktail of the week and see them impervious to the frequent injuries that abound, or juice the right linebacker and he may break a record for broken bones in one quarter. Beyond that the controls are familiar to anyone who's played pretty much any football game... ever.
The soundtrack that accompanies the game is so-so. A mix of ego-stoaked rap and dingy metal. The best thing about it is that the 360 can replace the game's soundtrack with music on your harddrive or your computer. As for the actual soundeffects they are brutally fantastic. One cannot say enough about Frank Caliendo as the faux John Madden announcer. He's enough to make you drop the controller and convulse with laughter. More than once I screwed up a play still trying to recover from what he said! The on field-banter is what you'd expect, and the voice acting is top notch.
You're required to build a custom team for the campaign mode and although the method of it's creation is a little obtuse, it all works out okay. Your star player answers questions in a press conference; then his answers determine his position, qualities, and the overall strengths of your team. Once you get past that press conference the real fun begins. There are a ton of team logos, cities, and uniform/color combinations to choose from. If you're like me you'll end up making about 6 campaign teams just to further populate The League.
I can't tell you anything about multiplayer as I haven't tried it. I still haven't been able to convince myself to pay 50 dollars a year to Microsoft for what Sony gives away for free.
Overall BLITZ is a blast... unless you're a football purist. Then the late hits, pass interferance, and excessive yardage for downs will grate on you. For those of us who think that football would be more entertaining if the violence was ramped up: Blitz II is your game.