EA Sports might have the NFL license wrapped up for years to come but that's not stopping Midway Games from making a football game. They've just revealed they're making a sequel to 2005's Blitz: The League and it's going to arrive on Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall.

Like the original game, Blitz: The League II is centered around a fictional football league filled with players who will go to any lengths to win. They'll take steroids, land dirty hits on their opponents, and even send prostitutes to the opposing team's hotel rooms before game day (seriously, you can do that in the game). The game is designed to be a faster pace than NFL games, with 30-yard first downs (instead of 10), 8 players on each side (instead of 11) and no meddling referees to call penalties. The sequel will add precision tackling, custom touchdown celebrations and expanded rosters, among other things.

The story mode will be written by Peter Egan, who appropriately enough used to be a writer for "Playmakers," a controversial ESPN show about a fictional football league that was scuttled after complaints by the NFL. The cover athlete for Blitz II will once again be former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, whose likeness and voice is used for one of the league's star players. Fun fact: during his playing days, Taylor actually did send prostitutes to opponent's hotel rooms. He also once showed up to a team meeting in handcuffs, because his own prostitutes apparently forgot the key. Anyway, the point is, you could fill a book with all the wacky crap that guy's done (and he did) so he certainly adds some flavor to the game.

Blitz: The League and its sequel have a bit of a "edgy for the sake of being edgy" vibe to them but I like that Midway is trying to turn their lack of an NFL license into a creative advantage: if the game's not based on a real league, they can make it as depraved as they want. A sports game with real-life player and team names will probably always out-sell a game with a fictional league any day but I'm sure a creative title with solid gameplay could do pretty well for itself.