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Midway brought back the Blitz style play by launching in 2005 Blitz: The League. The celebrations and the violent aspects were back and have been ramped up to levels that the NFL never allowed. In place of real NFL teams are fictional teams such as the New York Nightmare and the Minnesota Reapers. One team roster even has a speedy quarterback named "Mike Mexico," which is similar to the "Ron Mexico" alias allegedly used by Michael Vick. In Blitz: The League II, the character participates in a prison football match, and injuring him in both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions will unlock the achievement/trophy "Pitbull Payback", referring to his illegal dog fighting ring and subsequent arrest. Another notable feature of the game is that, when a player gets injured, what the game terms as "juicing" him with what seems to be the equivalent of a cortisone shot is a choice.
Blitz: The League was created with the help of one of the writers from ESPN's Playmakers. Notorious former linebacker Lawrence Taylor was recruited to promote the game as well as add voice talents as linebacker Quentin Sands, one of the game's main characters. A second release of Blitz: The League was released in 2006 for the Xbox 360 which added Bill Romanowski voicing linebacker Bruno Battaglia and changing Battaglia's number to 53 which was Romanowski's number during his playing days. Also, gameplay was much smoother and less loading times than the PS2 and Xbox versions.
Other notable celebrity promotion for the game include Blaze from American Gladiators saying in an interview in the April 2002 issue of Men's Health that every time he gets sacked in NFL Blitz he does 100 push-ups and 100 squat-thrusts.
Critical reception for Blitz: The League was mostly positive. Gamerankings.com gives the PlayStation 2 release a score of 75% and the Xbox release a score of 77%. GameSpot.com gave both PS2 and Xbox versions an 8.6/10. The 2008 sequel Blitz: The League II was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 13, 2008.
Read more about this topic: NFL Blitz
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