Blood Bowl does come with a tutorial which is interactive and teaches you the very basics of the game, but when we say basics we really mean it, there is so much more that you'll need to know to become a good player. While you can easily get by without knowing the full rules and still have fun while knowing what the tutorial teaches you, to actually get anywhere and learn how certain factors are decided such as why you get knocked down or fail picking up a ball you'll need to read the Living Rulebook 5 which is free to download on the internet. While this deep level of intricacy is great, and Blood Bowl table-top players will hail the true-to-the-rulebook rules, it can easily put new players off once they realize exactly what they need to read and learn (What other video game uses a 61 page rulebook?).
The representation of the game is certainly nice to look at, you won't find many dark and depressing colours here and while the game isn't as sharp as its PC counter-part it certainly shows off the various players, teams and pitches to their full extent. Cyanide have done a fantastic job translating the table-top board game into a full 3D video game, it isn't however without its problems. While only minor, the camera allows you to move around the pitch a full 360 degrees also allowing you to zoom right up close to the players or very far out, once zoomed in however the shadows which cast on the ground and on the characters look terrible, they aren't consistent when cast and often look like they are glitching, you'll also find the odd instance where arms will go through heads when performing certain actions, though not very often. You'll rarely find you actually use the zooming in feature after a while anyway since once you become accustomed to the game, you'll find you will like to keep the camera as far back so you can see the full pitch and exactly what is going on.
What sports game would be complete without some commentators? None. Thankfully Blood Bowl does come with some, while the commentary isn't as good as some other games (MadWorld springs to mind) and isn't very consistent with what's happening on screen, some of the things they come out with can be quite amusing especially when a player gets knocked down (You'll soon find out about the lovely extract of Nurgle). There is no music while playing a match but you do have the menu music which has an extremely catchy tune and all the actions you can do throughout the menus and the game itself all have there own sound effects to complement one another.
While there is no denying Blood Bowl is a good game for a certain audience, it does miss certain features which were in the PC version. These include the leagues as previously mentioned, while the game does come with leaderboards, all experience has to be earned in offline matches. You'll also find the deep level of customisation missing such as the armour and colour options, you can still name your team and characters and give them one of a number of select logos but it is disappointing to find these features absent. Cyanide have commented regarding some of the missing features due to Microsoft not allowing dedicated servers for the game because it isn't "a leading game franchise or studio" plus with some of the extra features the loading times were longer than is acceptable for Microsoft, you can make your own opinion up on that one. However, Cyanide have said certain features may come back in the form of patches, true to their word they will be releasing the recent Dark Elves race on Xbox Live but again, Microsoft will most likely make users pay for it even when it's free on the PC.
Overall Blood Bowl offers an experience like no other, Cyanide have done a great job at bringing the table-top game into a 3D video game while keeping the same rules and gameplay. There are problems of course, features missing, which are disappointing but these certainly don't distract from the main gameplay itself and aren't reason enough not to get your hands on a copy. Blood Bowl however isn't for everyone, you'll need a lot of time if you intend to truly learn and understand the game to its full potential, the developers have tried to combat this with a tutorial and real-time gameplay instead of turn-based but it really doesn't do the game justice, Blood Bowl is aimed more towards the table-top players looking to move into the video game era. If you are a new player looking to get in on the game then you certainly won't regret it once you know the rules, but you'll need to keep read through the Living Rulebook 5 to fully understand everything however. If you have the option of going for either the Xbox 360 or the PC version though, you would be silly not to take the PC one.
