Developer: Toadman Interactive, Fatshark
Publisher: Fatshark
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Bloodsports.TV – Review
Bloodsports.TV is Farshark’s latest co-op top-down Hero Defense game. It takes place in the world of Krater where you are put inside a gladiator arena and left to your fate with loads of enemies swarming inside of your base. Team up with friends and form your crew so you can become a legendary gladiator!
Story
Simple enough, Bloodsports.TV doesn’t have any story at all. You simply team up with friends or other people to form a crew and fight as gladiators in an arena. You can choose one of 8 playable characters, each with their own unique abilities and styles and become a legendary gladiator.
Graphics
When looking at Bloodsports.TV, you might think that you’ve landed into a weird world where League of Legends and Borderlands have had a child, and you’re partially right. The characters and enemies look pretty cartoony but the environment doesn’t, making for a nice contrast. Effects like explosions and projectiles look pretty nice as well.
The game runs good as well, not dropping a lot of frames unless there are a large amount of projectiles and explosives on screen. Besides that, it’s a very smooth and nice experience.
Sound
When first starting to play, you’ll find that the music is pretty cool and fun. But the lack of soundtracks becomes clear after a while of playing, it’s just the same track looped over and over again. The announcer is pretty funny and cool too at first, but after a while of playing some people might start to find it a bit annoying. Luckily, you have a good volume control in the sound settings, allowing both the music and announcer to be turned off if you’re annoyed by it.
Gameplay
Now let’s have a look at the gameplay. Players will without a doubt recognize the moba setting when playing for their first time. But instead of playing against another team, you play against AI. You can team up with maximum 5 players and fight off waves of enemies and bosses to defend your base.
First off, you’ll have to choose a map, game length, league and class. There are 6 maps in Bloodsports.TV, all unique in layout and spawn gates for enemies. Maps can go from 2 spawn gates where enemies run in a straight line to your base to all kinds of crazy stuff with spiral shapes and up to 4 spawn gates.
The game length and league kinda go hand in hand together. The league varies from Amateur League 1 (easiest) to APOCALYMPICS 5 being the hardest. Upping the league will increase enemy health, attack, ability power, unit speed and stun resistance. Then there’s the game length, games can last for 4 waves including 1 boss, 7 waves with 2 bosses, 10 waves with 3 bosses or endless mode, obviously having no limit to the amount of waves.
Sadly, there are only 3 types of bosses in Bloodsports.TV: The Mad Butcher who focuses on toxins, The Village Hero who’s simply just a huge guy with a huge 2 hander and the final boss is one who likes to shoot rockets. In the endless mode, once you’ve beaten all 3 bosses, the next boss waves will spawn the same bosses but 2 of them, if you beat all of the pairs, you’ll get 3 and so on.
Class wise, you can play as a Slayer (damage), Bruiser (tank), Regulator (CC) and a Medikus (healer). Each class has 2 playable gladiators and 2 unlockable skins for these gladiators. As a Slayer you can play as “Borg MH4 Anders” who focuses on deflect and crit chance or “Gunvald the Mad” who focuses on life steal and attack speed. When playing as a bruiser you can choose between “Lil’ Erik” and “Hardy Klanning”, both of these depend on taunt, health and a lot of damage. The Regulators are “Kati Sagan” and “Buzzer Ingholm” who both focus on long range disruptive attacks. Last but not least we have “Luna Stormare” and “Liesbeth” as Medikus, who of course focus on healing and buffing.
Playing the game itself is pretty straight forward, you right click to move and use QWER to use your abilities and 1 through 6 to use items. You can level up your abilities as you level by killing enemies and you can buy items with the gold you get from them. The shop will remind you of most shops in moba’s, where you have different categories, recommended items etc. The goal of the game is to defend your Missile Silo from incoming waves of enemies, if you do not succeed, you’ll fail your mission.
Another fun feature is the Path to Glory, where you can track achievements and bonuses. Each class has its own path and each step in your path unlocks bonuses, titles or skins. The path to glory also has different tiers to show how known you are. Tier 1 is unknown, tier 2 is challenger, tier 3 is notorious, tier 4 is legendary and finally there’s grandmaster.
Finally, if you like to be competitive, there’s a very good scoreboard in game where you can check how you measure up against the rest of the community.
Conclusion
Bloodsports.TV is a very fun and unique game to play with friends. It features a lot of the aspects you’ll find in moba’s but it doesn’t have the stressful situations where you would be playing against real players. The game is competitive, replayable, fun and relies a lot on teamwork. On low difficulties it’s great for casual players, but once you get up to the harder ones you’ll need a tad of skill as well!
Bloodsports.TV - Review,
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