The concept behind Deathrow is simple enough, the year is 2219 and we're addicted to violence. The world is watching the sport of Blitz, a cross between rugby, ultimate frisbee, hockey, and ultimate fighting. Once an underground sport, Blitz is now played on international television between the remaining 14 teams. It's bloody, it's fast, and I'm here to tell you, it makes for one heck of a great time on the Xbox.

Gameplay
The gameplay in Deathrow is obvious on the surface, just kick the tar out of anyone who's not on your team, grab the Blitz disk, and shoot it into the other team's goal. Easy enough, right ?

Sure it's easy if you consider four-on-four no-rules combat easy. When you only have four periods of play and only four players on the floor, you need to think fast and move even faster. Strategies must be formed on the fly, and modified at lightning speed. Quickly substituting players becomes necessary as the violence cranks up along with the body count.

Blitz arenas come in all shapes and sizes with features like low-ceilings, banked walls and insane dips. All these variations in arena layouts force you to quickly adapt your gameplay style during high-speed high-action combat rounds..

Each team has its own skill rankings to ensure a solid variety of gameplay. Some teams are fast, some are hellacious fighters, others are better at getting the Blitz disk into the goal. Once you choose a team, you'll need to learn all their quirks to ensure you can deliver maximum damage and earn maximum points. Just like the teams they belong to, individual players have specific skill ratings which help differentiate them and make them more useful in various situations. So be sure to substitute your second best disk thrower when your first one is blown out of the arena by injuries.

The controls are simple enough to pick up after a few matches, but it is well worth going through the tutorial before jumping into your first match. The left stick moves your player around, face buttons handle punching, kicking, passing and goal shooting. The black button changes players (get used to using this a lot), the white button issues a verbal taunt, usually in the form of some obsenity your mom would never imagine you saying. You'll need to learn to use every button and every stick combo to activate sliding moves, dives and rolls during gameplay. The right trigger allows you to obtain a visual lock onto the disk's position, which is helpful during the fast-paced chaos of a Blitz match. If your player is holding the disk, a quick pull of the right trigger locks his sights on the goal, making it easier to shoot a scoring shot.

During a game, you'll need to create a strategy quickly, and modify it even more quickly. You can actually set the overall level of aggression/defensiveness of your team by a quick tap on the thumbpad. But be warned, the AI will quickly adapt to your battle plan, so expect to change up your strategies frequently. Guarding your goal for most of the game ? Expect the AI to send some enforcers down the arena floor to beat your guards/goalies senseless, thus opening you up to some real easy shots. Set your team to a more aggressive stance, and the opposition might just back off and wait you out.

Multiplayer is where Deathrow really shines, as you can do a four-player split screen, or use system link to create a Blitz game with your friends. Players can play on the same team, or go head-to-head. I found that myself and other players got the most enjoyment out of the multiplayer games when we played on the same team and delivered plenty of hurt to the AI.

The only problem you might have with Deathrow's gameplay is that it's fast... blazingly fast. First time players will have a heck of a time adapting to the high-paced action which is non-stop (no timeouts !). The camera is constantly on the move, making it sometimes difficult to keep up with the game. A lot of times you'll find yourself screaming "where's that @#$ disk !" To combat these speed and camera issues, Deathrow offers two camera views. One  view is right at the player level, giving you a close-up view of the action, while another gives you an overview of most of the arena, allowing you to plan out your plays a little more in advance than when you use the close-up view. Once you've sunk an hour or more into the game, you get a feel for the action and can enjoy the speed, but new players may become frustrated easily as the Blitz disk isn't going to wait for anyone. Expect absolutely no mercy from Deathrow, if you're too slow, the AI will pound you into the dirt.

Graphics
Deathrow comes packed with some great textures and arena art. The players themselves wear a variety of uniforms, though it can be difficult to tell players apart when they are on the same team. The only quick way to figure out who you're controlling is to keep an eye on the name that appears in the lower corner of the screen.

Both the arenas and the players are well detailed, from the grimace on the face of a player who just took a solid beating, to the textured floors and walls of the battle arenas.

The animation in Deathrow is amazingly fluid, you'll find no choppyness or clipping to be found. Players move as you'd expect them to, they don't have any of that preternatural "float" you see in other high-speed games.

Sound
The sound in Deathrow is great, making full use of the Xbox's Dolby 5.1 capabilities. You really feel the cheering crowd all around you, along with the slap of a foot finding its home in another player's gut, and the disk bouncing around the arena.

Players in Deathrow are some foul-mouthed fighting machines. Expect to hear plenty of four-letter words flying about during a match, all in clear Dolby sound. Parents should be warned that their children might pick up some real colorful language if they're allowed to play Deathrow for any amount of time. It's a shame they don't have a way to turn off the swearing, since it does tend to get old after awhile. Once the novelty wears off, you really wish you could mute the players. I'm sure parents would have enjoyed a no-swearing option, too.

Replayability
The developers must have worked long and hard giving Deathrow enough depth to make it playable again and again. They did a great job of jacking up the replayability through the use of the clever unlock system. Instead of just unlocking levels by finishing tasks (as it is in so many other games), each win earns you unlock credits. Play on the more difficult settings and you increase the credit value of each win.

Once you have enough replay credits, you can go shopping. Unlockables include extra teams, players and arenas. Spend your unlock credits wisely and you'll have plenty of new players and arenas to enjoy.

It's unfortunate that Deathrow has no Xbox Live support, which would have boosted its replayability immensely.The multiplayer modes,however, make up for this lack of online options. Being able to play head to head or co-op makes Deathrow a lot of fun, while system link support allows you to create insanely action packed games with your friends. Get a few friends hooked on Deathrow, and you'll be playing this game for weeks and months to come.

Overall, you can't do much better than Deathrow for a combination of sports and fighting games. Plenty of action, humor and unlockable options make for a game that's fun to pick up again and again.

See screenshots on the Deathrow media page