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Chaos League Review
Jon Wilcox
26/07/2004
The atmosphere builds as the crowd noise increases. The cheerleaders do their well-practised routine, and in tonight’s match, you are playing against a Goblin team called the Corsairs. Yes, its time to play Chaos League from Cyanide and Digital Jesters…
In a fantasy world of Orcs and Goblins, the most popular game is Chaos League, a violent sport, where rules are almost non-existent. At its most basic level, the sport is best described as a kind of simplified American Football, but its much more than that. Cyanide and Digital Jesters, who earlier in the year released Pro Rugby Manager 2004, are obviously trying to appeal to a wide audience of gamers by melding a few of the most popular genres (RPG, RTS, and Sports). In other words, you can expect your opponent to have the ability to cast spells (including smoke screens), as well as utilise various team formations, to try and win the game.
After going through the tutorials and the various strategies (which I would strongly recommend), the game offers two game modes: Quick Match, and Championship.
A âQuick Matchâ is exactly that. But Chaos League comes into its own if you select the Championship route. The Championship mode includes 4 divisions, from the Premiership through to Division 3, and you can follow the progress of any of the teams in any of the divisions as the season goes on.
When you take part in the Championship mode, you have to create and build your own team. Now since the game takes place in the fantasy world, the teams can represent one of ten races, including Humans, the Undead, Dwarves, Orcs, and Wood Elves. Once you have chosen your race, you can then choose the team name and logo. After that, itâs just the small, but important matter, of buying team members and then you can start your campaign of chaos!
Well almost.
As I said earlier on, Chaos League is a game of very little rules. This means that after setting up your team, you also have the chance to bribe the referee, and dope your own players. Not wanting to be in the least hypocritical, you can also pick players from your opponentâs team to receive a doping testâ¦
The matches take place on playing fields in various fantasy locations, and the main default view is above and behind your team. I found this view a bit restricting, but the game has a few vantage points for you to choose.The pre-match build-up is now standard fair amongst Sports games, and Chaos League is no different, with short clips showing both teams entering the field, and the commentary team describing the atmosphere in the crowd. Add to that the heroic tribal soundtrack, and you find yourself anticipating the start of the match. But before I go into the match intself, a quick word on the two-man commentary in the game. When you first play, the banter between the two commentators is quite fun, and this makes it sound more realistic than most sports game commentaries. After a few minutes though, it becomes quite annoying, and you'll be searching for the Options screen to either turn the commentary volume down, or even off all together.
The game itself is quite unusual to play. This is due to the fact that you have to control the players with the mouse, rather than a gamepad, which is really strange and something that takes time to get use to. This is where the RTS and sports meld takes place. You have to switch from player to player by clicking on them and decide where to place them. It's quite remeniscent of a certain well known table-top football game in that respect, but it has the knock-on effect of slowing the game down. The matches don't seem to be fluid like standard sports games do, and that is one of its downfalls. Yes, it's fun to get players to target a player from the opposition and watch them pummel him into the ground, and maybe I don't quite get it, but in my opinion, the game really does suffer from not being a 'pure' sports game.
I like the idea of setting up your own team, buying the players, and bribing the ref, its good fun. I like the idea of being able to beat up the opposition. What I don't really like is the way that you have to control each and every player, all the time hoping that your ball-carrier isn't going to get the living daylights kicked out of him. And here is the second downfall of the game. There is a distinct lack of AI amongst the players in your team if you are not controlling them. In fact, the only AI from your players that you will see in the game, is when they fight back after the opposition starts to beat them up. You have to switch from player to player, which of course leaves your ball-carrier extremely vulnerable to attack. The result of this, is that you spend most of your time setting up the rest of your team as protection around your ball-carrier as possible, before starting an all-team break for the touchdown area.
I tried to play the game as it was meant to be played, using one of the preset team formations. I decided who was going to be my primary ball-carrier and set up some protection for him, and lost 9-1 to a team of pint-sized green Goblins! The only way that I could get remotely close to winning a game was to take a mass rampage strategy and try to barge my way through to score. As the opposition put more points on the board, you start to become increasingly agitated, not because of the scoreline, but because the commentary team start to taunt you! Cue Option screen, commentary volume set to zero.
The game also features a few nice details. These include the option to get your players to gee-up the crowd, which results in the noise levels of the stadium to increase for a short period. Another nice touch in the game is that when one of the players gets knocked unconscious, they have a countdown next to them so that you have an idea as to when they might recover. This of course leaves you in a vulnerable position if your defense gets slaughtered by the opposition and your ball-carrier has no support.
The graphics of the game aren't exactly going to set the world on fire, but at the same time, it plays on the RPG style of graphics, rather than clean super-rendered visuals of 'official' sports games. The graphics, coupled with the original gameplay, gives the game the overall feel of nostalgia. It feels 'Amiga-ish', and I don't mean that in a negative way. It harks back to a time when new ideas were tested, and developers weren't scared of trying new ideas.
