02.05.2009 - Goal Line Blitz is a web-based American Football multiplayer online sport game with a custom football simulation engine to provide managers with the ultimate football experience on the web. Manager can choose to play in role of a player’s manager or in role of a team manager. That makes this game special comparing to other football games. In this review I will look at the player’s management part of the game.
Game interface is pretty friendly, navigation through pages is simple. There are few things that can be improved, but overall design of the site is very nice, details and small elements just fit the concept of the site.
Manager can set tactics how the player will play for every match. There is only one choice for offensive plays, five choices for defensive plays and one common choice. Basically tactics in this game does not change a lot, and have only small influence on the match result. But that is not the main point of this game.
Far more important part of this game is a strategy of building player. At first manager has to pick which position will his player play. There are 7 physical attributes and 7 football skills to be trained and at least 10 special abilities to be improved for every player. Combination of this components makes a good player. Usage of player attributes is very intuitive and have a big influence on overall performance.
This leads to description of match engine. Every play during the game is calculated separately and usage of player skills is calculated depending on the specific game situation. This is when manager find out how well he built his player. Match visualization is very good, user can choose to watch game on text based description of every play which is not so special, but also have a possibility to switch to play visualization where he can see movement of every player on the field.
After all those parts of the game which I rated very high, it is time to come to the worse part of the game. After few seasons of playing I still did not find out how can player owned by a great manager using only his managing skills outrun players who were created earlier even if their managers are not so good. Players gain experiences with the same speed depending on their current level so if manager avoid big mistakes his player has always higher level than player created after him. Of course if player trains wrong skills which he don’t need as much as others he will play better during the game, but in my eyes that is not enough. And there is another part I don’t like too much. That is player boosting using real money, so if you want play this game at the top level, you must boost your players three times a season using flex points. On the other side I must say that if manager agrees to spend money on this game, and will boost his players three times a season, then he has the same chances as other paying managers, so the money does not affect so much and to manage one player this way is really not so expensive.
After all this game is really not so far from the reality. Yes, player boosting and how players train attributes (gain experiences and got skill points to be assigned to attributes) is not close to reality, but other elements of the game are very good. It really is a matter of individual preference how much reality you want in the game. For me it is just enough.
Community in the game is not built very well comparing to other games, but it is not bad either. Managers can chat in team forum, which is very important in a team game like Goal Line Blitz is and that is done well, but on the other side after 6 months of playing I still did not find a friend in the game. OK, I must say that I don’t have enough time to browse forums.
I must say, that this game really makes me to login few times a day, I like the idea of building players and manage their contracts with the teams. My overall feeling about Goal Line Blitz is very good. Don’t forget that if player management is not enough, you can buy a right to take over a football team and manage the game from another side.
