” A Gory Blood bath that throws a football game in the middle of all the carnage”

By Nick Hayes

When Mutant Football League “MFL” was originally released in 1993, violence in video games was a very large topic in and out of the gaming world. Mortal Kombat, Doom and Wolfenstein were all released the year before Mutant Football League came out on the Sega Genisis. At the time the public perception was  there was to much violence in video games. I remember my mom telling me she would not buy those violent video games for me and as a young boy this is what drew my interest farther into those, so called violent video games. MFL sparked my interest as a child because I love sports games but I also was a avid Mortal Kombat player. Mutant League Football “MFL” was a fantastic go between Mortal Kombat and John Madden football. Now as an adult I get a chance to relive some of those great gaming moments from my childhood and play the new MFL game that was released on PC,  Xbox One, PS4 and coming to the Nintendo switch in 2018. Now Michael Mendheim and the Developers at Digital Dreams Entertainment have created a new brand of football, that we have not seen since 1993.

The Voice behind  Mutant League Football

First thing that stood out to me at the very beginning of the game was the play by play announcer voiced by Tim Kitzrow. Tim does the Play by Play before, during and after the game and yes that seems excessive but it was not enough for me. He does a fantastic job taking jabs at you as a player, your team as a whole or the opponent. I had to do some research because Tim Kitzrow reminded me of Joe Buck who calls NFL games, that’s how good Tim is in MFL. I laughed several times playing when Tim would deliver one liner after one liner on how bad I was doing and at one point I was kicking a field goal and he shot this one liner out and said “If you miss this kick they will kick the shit out of you in the locker room”. You also might recognize Tims voice from NFL Blitz as he also did the play by play for that game. Tim brings the attitude from blitz and applies it to MFL beautiful, I actually can state enough how well this is done. You can tell the Team at Digital Dreams Entertainment felt that the play by play voice had to be perfect, it ties the game together between the blood bath it is and the actually game of football being played.

The Game inside the Game

Think of MFL as a bloody chainsaw massacre horror game that has a ball involved somehow? The brutality in this game is bar none and makes you wonder if they can take even farther. I called a running play and switched to an audible which allows you to pick a dirty trick play, I chose chainsaw of course and as I hiked that ball to my running back he pulled out a chain saw and cut his was though the defense for a touchdown. That’s just one of the few Dirty tricks plays you can choose, there is shotguns, steroid mode, beast mode and several other options that will keep your opponent on its toes. You can also choose to kill the referees if there making bad calls against you and as a football fan killing the ref holds a special place in my heart, Thank you Michael Mendheim. Besides the awesome dirty trick plays you have to be aware of the field environment, each stadium has three different traps on the field you have to avoid. There are, sand worms that are similar to the movie tremors, spikes you have to dodge and saw blades spikes that will cut you in half. The game play is smooth, the play calling is a lot like Madden football its simple quick to select and easy to understand even if you’re not a football fan. I even tried playing a full game without using a single dirty trick play and I was blown out 21-0 and Tim Kitzrow was smashing me every chance he could with different witty one liner. I really enjoyed trying to play the game straight and losing big, that was even fun for me. The dirty trick plays are a big part of the game and without using them good luck on bringing home the championship. While I could use less of the cut scenes that happen after every big play or a scoring play that seem to slow the pace down for me, the rest of the game play was smooth. At half time there is a mini game where you can rack up points by killing referees, do I have to say thanks again? I didn’t fully the understand the point for the half time mini game, but it was fun and quick and didn’t seem to slow the pace down of the game.

 

The Details in each team and player name, is a cool and fun twist

A couple other cool features are the team and player names, if you love the Denver Broncos you can play as the “Mile High Chronic” or if you love Seattle they have that team also and there owned by a famous cooperation “MicorHard Mutilators”, my personal favorite. Famous player like Cam Newton is under the alias “Wham Neutron” or Russel Wison is “Hustle Killsome”. There are several different game modes that you can enjoy, you can play a quick game or play full season with your favorite team or even jump straight to the playoffs and take your team to the championship if you can survive. I like that idea that you can turn the gore up a notch if you desire or bring it down some if you want a more traditional style football game but, there is nothing traditional about this game and I mean that it the best way possible.

The Nostalgic blood, guts and gore we all missed

Mutant Football League is what it says it is, a gory football game where the winner can win by just killing the other team and there is something simple in that. This game is the 1993 Mortal Kombat wrapped in the 1998 NFL Blitz time traveled into 2018, with the graphics of today and that nostalgic gore that we missed from the 90s. Over all the Mutant Football League is a really fun game made by someone who is truly passionate about what he does and we can all support that.