Brutal Sports Football

The Good
Brutal Sports Football is not so much soccer or American football but rather a rugby-style game. The setting is the mid-21st century, and genetically-engineered warrior-freaks play this half-rugby, half-battle game in a football-style arena. Each game is just seven minutes in length, but a lot can happen in that time. Like most games you want to score more goals than the opponent, but you can also win whatever the score if you can decapitate six players from the other team! If the game ends in a tie, you play "sudden death", and it is exactly that; the first team to literally kill off the other wins. Vicious! To gain possession you tackle, kick or punch the opponent, often maiming him in the process. To add some spice to the game, icons for power-ups such as extra speed, bombs, or even swords (!) are scattered on the field. Yes, you can stomp on an opponent, blow him up with a bomb, or even lop off his head - and the game is not shy about showing plenty of spurting blood. By halfway through a game, the field is littered with bomb craters, corpses, and severed heads!

The Bad
The players are large colourful sprites. They look okay, but the animation is very choppy: for example, when they run, it looks as though they're using perhaps two or three frames of animation, giving the game a very clunky look. The playfield and the stadium are nicely detailed, but they still look rather flat. The controls, although simple, are a tad sloppy too. I find that when the football is free, it's a bit difficult to judge the exact position of your feet as you try to run over the ball and scoop it up. Perhaps the most annoying aspect is that the 'pause' feature seems very slow to react; you need to press and hold the button for a half-second or so before the game finally reacts and stops.

The Bottom Line
The game is a good deal of fun to play for one player against the CPU, but it becomes outstanding when you go 2-player against a friend. Overall I recommend Brutal Sports Football. It's a good game with some flaws.