EA Sports Rugby for Playstation 2 MODEL- 14690 VENDOR- ELECTRONICS ARTS FEATURES- Rugby 2004 Lead your team tovictory in the fast-paced action of World Cup Rugby. Hone your skills in the Super 12 and European Domestic Leagues with an all-new control system that is intuitive and user friendly you will be rucking, mauling, and kicking for touch like a champion in no time. An all-new game engine captures every bone- crunching tackle, scrum, and lineout. With new motion capture, animations, and character models, EA SPORTS Rugby 2004 offers the most in-your-face rugby experience ever. Strap on your boots, this is World Cup Rugby at its body-ramming, bullet-passing, try-scoring best! — SPECIFICATIONs ————————————- ESRB Rating : E for Everyone Genre/Category : Sports/Rugby System : PlayStation 2 System Number of Players : Compatible Peripherals: MANUFACTURER WARRANTY:andnbsp;andnbsp;90 DAYS
- ESRB Rating: Everyone
- Genre: Sports
- Mission: Plunge in thescrum in hardcore, bone-crushing rugby action
List Price: $ 19.99
Price: $ 3.99
Great game – poor graphics – missing features,
I am from one of the Tri-Nation countries and have played, coached and watched more Rugby than any other sport. This is the first electronic Rugby game that I have ever bought.
I am very impressed with the game engine. It works really well and the game is very true to the real sport.
The scrums, rucks and mauls are awesome and once you get the hang of the orientation of the players, it is a lot of fun to feed the ball all the way down the line and play a really expansive running game.
It is generally pretty difficult to turnover the ball, but then that is pretty representative of the real game.
The training pitch is also pretty good for teaching you how to play, although it doesn’t teach you strategy. For that you should read the manual and the on-line Rugby 101 guide on the EASports site.
The game is a lot of fun and I think that it must be awesome in a multi-player environment — I live in the US now so I have to find someone who knows how to play Rugby to compete with.
That brings me to the negatives:
1) For the most part, the graphics are terrible. I think part of it is that the graphics were done in PAL format and converted to NTSC which never works well. It creates a fuzzy picture. But more than that, the players all seem short and fat. I disagree that you can recognize individual players. George Gregan looks nothing like the real person. Same with Corne Krige and Jonah Lomu. I may be setting the bar very high, but in Madden 2004 (and even 2003) the players and coaches are recognizable. I don’t see why EA Rugby could not have used the same techniques to build the characters. On the positive side, the Rugby stadiums are very realistic. Newlands in Cape Town looks like the real thing. So does Murrayfield (the two that I tried playing at).
2) Character movement. The way the characters move is very unrealistic and creates problems with depth of field. In other words, you have no way of knowing whether you are running in the same lane as another player. It also makes kicking drop goals very difficult.
3) Can you say “ON-LINE?” I was really disappointed that the game does not support an on-line mode. I figured that given the World Cup starting in October, they would at least have provided that.
4) Why no EA Sports Bio hookup? This is a feature that all the American sports games are coming out with and I don’t understand why they were not added to EA Rugby.
5) Stats!!!! The statistics are terrible. There’s no time of possession, scrums for and against won and lost, rucks, mauls, kicking stats, etc at the end of the match. There is just a summary of players and and the number of tries, penalties, etc. Go look at Madden for ideas on how to present the stats.
6) Support for Widescreen TVs. I have a 53″ projection HD Widescreen TV that I use to play the game. With Madden I can set the game to display in this format. It is really disappointing that I can’t do that with Rugby because you need to be able to see as much of the field as possible.
Having said all that, this is still a really good game and I hope that EA will take it and grow it now. They have the technology in other games. I would strongly recommend it.
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|Offendingly awful and despicable game!,
This game is trash. I am a huge fan of rugby, an ex-player, and a current coach. This game is so terrible I gave mine away as a joke to a friend of mine and he thanked me over and over because he had considered buying this electronic heap of poor intentions.
I don’t know what other people are talking about who say the gameplay is fantastic–it’s utterly awful. If you have ever played a game like “Winning Eleven 6,” you know how smoothly games can flow that are supposed to. Sports like football and golf do not apply because they are supposed to have constant stoppages anyway. This game is embarrassingly piss-poor.
Who cares how many teams there are or what players it includes? The game is so boring to play that it could have aliens with frogs hopping out of their backsides and it would be more interesting to play. The rucks are slow, the lineout and scrum calls take forever, and there is no opportunity to call plays in the loose, which is the way the game should be played. Everything about this game is nauseatingly pathetic, especially given that EA Sports was behind it. They should hang their heads in shame.
Save your money and buy yourself anything else. I’m trying to think of a game that was a greater disappointment or waste of money, but I cannot. If you own this game, send it to anyone who is thinking about buying it–they will thank you.
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|Bitter disappointment…,
Despite looking forward to this game’s release for a long time (like many rugby fans), this is, with the best will in the world, a total waste of time.
My primary reaction is that this is unlike any other EA Sports game I can think of. The basic hallmarks of an EA game are not there – graphics, animation, gameplay.
It’s a pity because the game had promised so much – and in terms of having the licenses, teams, players etc it is a fantastic update of the first rugby game. Unfortunately it is unbearable to play. The players look wrong and move unnaturally. The control system is frustrating. It is hard to co-ordinate your team. I could go on.
I’m sure with some more time, this could have been an excellent rugby game. My view is that it has probably been rushed through to be in the shops in time for the world cup.
Here’s hoping that EA will be back with a decent stab at a rugby game in the not too distant future. My advice would be to wait, and not waste your cash on this.
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