Take one part NFL Blitz-style football gameplay but make the
teams out of skeletons and monsters and mutants, add in tons of blood and gore
and violence, toss in famed arcade sports announcer Tim Kitzrow, and you pretty
much have Mutant Football League – the spiritual successor to the beloved
Mutant League sports games on SEGA Genesis. I’m not going to beat around the
bush – Mutant Football League is ridiculously fun. It is so over the top and
crazy, but the core football gameplay –with fields covered in land mines and
traps and playbooks full of Dirty Tricks that let you kill the ref, drug your
opponents, and use weapons – is really genuinely solid and surprisingly
strategic. If you’ve grown tired of Madden getting too realistic and boring
over the years like I have, Mutant Football League is right up there as one of
the best and most fun football games since NFL 2K5. Yeah, I went there. See all
of the details in our full Xbox One review of Mutant Football League.Game Details
- Publisher: Digital Dreams Entertainment
- Developer: Digital Dreams Entertainment
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Football
- Pros: Awesomely fun gameplay; dirty tricks add a ton of strategy; nice presentation; mostly clever puns
- Cons: A “lot” of forced humor that falls flat
- MSRP: $20
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I was never a SEGA kid but the siren song of the Mutant
League sports games trying to lure me over to the dark side was ever-present
throughout my school days. Mutants and monsters and skeletons playing
ultra-violent football always definitely sounded like a fun idea yet, somehow,
I always resisted. The purpose of this backstory is just to show that I
approached the modern re-birth of the franchise, Mutant Football League, with
no expectations of what it “should” be based on the past games, but an
eagerness to find out what all of the fuss was about and how it has translated
from 1993 to 2018.
I’m happy to say that I couldn’t be more pleased with how
Mutant Football League has turned out. The teams are made up of parodies and puns
based on real NFL teams and players, most of which are actually pretty clever
and close enough to be recognizable. For example, the Patriots are now the Nuked London
Hatriots and feature players like Bomb Shady and Throb Bronkowski and the Seahawks
are the Microhard Mutilators starring Hustle Killsome and Mouthy Sherminator.
There are currently 18 (19 counting the Killadelphia Evils being added just in
time for the Super Bowl) teams that are all parodies of real teams and players
and the developers hope to keep adding more teams so it is only going to keep
getting better.
While I like the “extreme” makeover of team and player
names, the style of humor doesn’t always work as well in other aspects of the
game. The announcing team of Tim Kitzrow and his color commentators rely on sex
jokes and innuendo, profanity, and general nonsense (that is repeated way too
often) and it just mostly falls flat and isn’t funny. I could also do without
the frequent text-only player quotes when someone makes a big play that are
similarly full of unfunny puns and nonsense. The game tries so hard to be funny
but never really gets past 14-year old potty humor.
Thankfully, the gameplay more than makes up for the annoying
attempts at humor. At its core, MFL is exactly like the last NFL Blitz game on
PS3 / X360. The same chunky player models, the same simple playbooks, the same
simple gameplay, and the same dire defenses. Fun, but undeniably simple. What sets Mutant Football League
apart, however, are the teams of monsters and skeletons (obviously), but other
things like hazards in the field, dirty plays, and ability to keep pounding on
opposing players long after the whistle blows.
You see, Mutant Football League is about more than just
playing bog standard football with funny team names. By utilizing dirty plays
that let you kill the ref, jump the snap and kill the QB, turn your players
gigantic, electrify your players, set your players on fire, and much more –
most of which have counter plays the opposing team can do as well –the game has
an unexpected level of strategy you won’t find in a normal football game. You
can kill players in MFL and they stay dead, so you can actually win games even
if you’re getting blown out on the scoreboard by eliminating all of the other
team’s key players. That’s awesome and a totally valid way to approach the
game. Likewise, you can lose just as easily by not paying close enough
attention and losing your players as well. There is a bit of a learning curve
to figure out how and when to use particular dirty tricks and other things in
the game, but once you do MFL is incredibly fun.
As far as options and modes go, MFL has pretty much
everything you’d expect. You can turn off player deaths if you want (and,
honestly, the game is still plenty strategic even without also worrying about
losing all of your players), set quarter lengths, change difficulty, and all of
the other expected arcade sports game options. Modes include standard single
game, season, and local and online multiplayer. I also think the 19 teams, with
more coming (and other modes potentially being added as well) is plenty for the
$20 MSRP.
Presentation-wise, MFL is very solid all around. With decent
player models for all of the different types of mutants and monsters,
interesting stadium designs, good special effects, and clear and consistent
U.I., it is a nice looking game overall. The sound is also good with mostly
excellent sound effects and decent music and while I don’t always love what Tim
Kitzrow says on commentary, I do love the way he says it.
All in all, Mutant Football League is exactly the sort
of over the top arcade-style sports game we’ve been waiting for. (Along with Bush Hockey League but only for multiplayer) The gameplay
is very well done arcade-style American football that I have no complaints
about, but it is the extra violence and gore and dirty tricks and craziness and
extra strategy that comes from being “Mutant Football” that pushes it over the
top and makes it something special. Even if you’re not a sports fan you’ll
still have a ton of fun with it, too, so I have no qualms about recommending it
to just about anyone and everyone (though some folks may not appreciate the
humor). It's also plenty fun both solo and in multiplayer. Mutant Football League is awesome. Buy it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
