Rugby Challenge 3 Review
Griselda Humbarger
Rugby: it's a lot better than football, isn't it? You can drink in the stands, play doesn't halt every five seconds for a petulant team riot against the referee and England are still World Champions (just about). If you don't agree with that then you're a) stupid, b) a hooligan, or c) probably both. (And if that doesn't kick off some healthy debate in the forums then we've pretty much proved that porn really is all the internet's good for.)
The other thing about rugby is that it's clearly nowhere near as popular as football, mostly because it's about a million times more complicated. So the fact that we've got not one but two new rugby games to coincide with this year's Six Nations tournament could be seen as something of overkill. After all, the population of rugby fans who also own consoles is going to be marginal at best.
Still, if you ARE a rugby fan - and this particular correspondent is - you've probably gone orgasmic over the current crop of digital egg chasing. So much so that it's now less of a case of "is Rugby Challenge 2006 any good?" and more a question of "is it any better than EA's Rugby 06?" And the answer to that is a crushingly emphatic no.
On the plus side, at least they've made Rugby Challenge 2006 easy to play. If you're going to give developer Swordfish Studios credit for anything, it's that it's taken the most convoluted ball sport known to man and turned it into a videogame that just about anybody can pick up and play.
You pick up the ball, you pass down the wings using the trigger buttons, you dodge the incoming tackles and you cross the line for a try. It's literally as simple as that. There are a few handy tutorials to get you into the swing of things, but providing you know how to hold a joypad the right way up you'll get a good, flowing game of rugby in no time at all.
Given Swordfish's long and impressive rugby heritage (this is the development team responsible for the legendary Jonah Lomu Rugby on PSone) you'd expect a fun, easy game, and that's what you get. The issue here is that it's too simple and as a result totally lacking in the depth.
The fact is, very little has been done to improve things since Swordfish's last rugby effort (the reasonably entertaining World Championship Rugby, released nearly two years ago just in time to miss the whole England World Cup furore). By altering the scrum and maul controls from button-bashing to reaction tests Swordfish thought it must have made things infinitely more tactical, but it's completely missed the point. It's not the technical rugby aspects that needed improving (they're far too involved to properly recreate in a game); it's the running, passing and kicking areas that needed work and virtually nothing has been done to better them. Where are the shimmying runs, the hand offs, the tactical kicks into touch and the up-and-unders? Yeah, you can kick the ball in Rugby Challenge 2006, but next to just recycling the ball out to the wings it's virtually redundant.
The other big problem with Rugby Challenge 2006 is that it's hands-down one of the ugliest sports game ever to appear on this generation of consoles. Getting thirty-plus men to move smoothly on screen at once is always going to be a challenge, but did it have to be at the expense of so much player detail? Seriously, it looks like half the players were baptised in the chip shop by mistake. The audio isn't much better either, John Inverdale's commentary amounting to nothing more than a few perfunctory observations at best. This really is aesthetics by the numbers.
At least there's plenty of content to Rugby Challenge 2006, far more so than ever appeared in World Championship Rugby. The World and European club competitions are still there, obviously, but it's the addition of the Premiership, Celtic and Super 14 teams to the scrum that really add weight to the package, especially if you're a regular rugby watcher (it's like FIFA suddenly remembering to include Arsenal if you're after a football analogy). There's a decent range of cups and leagues to plough through, a throwaway "classic match" mode and a passable take off of PES's Master League for those looking to indulge in some long-term gaming. Not groundbreaking, but you gets your money's worth, certainly.
Whether you'll want to physically play it all depends. Once you've figured that the best way to score is still simply a case of getting the ball out to your fastest winger it kind of takes the 'challenge' out of Rugby Challenge 2006. Even two-player games are a let down, with most matches decided by a combination of who has the stronger pack and the swifter backs. It might be a great title for those who never played a console game before, let alone a rugby console game, but this lacks too much of the real sport's depth and complexity to be anything other than a five minute distraction. If I were a rugby bore, I'd probably finish with some pithy comment about kicking this one into touch.
Going into the gameplay side of things, there are a few welcomed additions. The gameplay is exactly the same with proper interceptions, No. 8 pick-up from the back of the scrum, quick throw-ins, contesting at rucks and a few new animations having been added to make the game feel a lot more like a rugby game. The No. 8 pick-up seems rather shoddy as he picks the ball up and stands there, upright for a second, before responding to your button bashing. Other than that, I feel the new additions were well done.
Many glitches and bugs have been reported which has left many gamers furious and stating that the game is simply unplayable. Reading the comments on the forum, some gamers have let their sharp tongues wag and demanded an immediate release of a patch to fix the issues, with some even demanding their money back from the developers!
Overall, I was left a bit disappointed with the game. I was expecting a much more polished game but left feeling it was a little rushed. With that said, I will definitely do a follow up review once the patch (if one is made) is available and I have gone through a proper career mode. Please note that I have not played the game online, so cannot comment on that.
As some who has played just about every sports video game I possibly could since around 1997, Rugby 18 is the first I have experienced where having a knowledge of the sport in question is a disadvantage.
It sounds harsh, but it really is that bad. The game you play when you start a game is just not rugby. Players have no sense of their position, they roam freely around the pitch like they have no clue what is going on. This means you will, at every breakdown, find props on the wing, scrum halves nowhere to be found, and - with infuriating regularity - all of your players standing within five meters of the ruck.
Here's an exmaple; I've picked the ball from the base of the ruck, and all 30 players are within close enough range that they could talk without raising their voices. The opposition looks as if they are about to do a haka.
The passing is absolutely wild and unpredictable, thanks largely to the embarrassing positional play of the players around you. On the rare occasion that you do make more than five yards on a carry, something that seems only possible when a tackle is missed (again, this seems to be totally random) opposition forwards will effortlessly track you down and catch you no matter who they are.
Rugby 18 is built on the same engine that the awful Rugby 15 game utilised, only somehow things are now worse, and further from the sport than ever before. They do not have the budget to rebuild this game from the very bottom up, something that desperately needs to happen before another rugby game is made.
Big Ben Interactive is a small studio that cared enough about the sport to at least attempt to give the fans a game to play, and I respect that, but there is no way this game should have made it past testing. It either should have been scrapped, or shelved until they found a way to make it somewhat playable.
Visually, this is an early Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 title at best. The players look absolutely nothing like their real-life counterparts, the animations are clunky and awkward, and the cut-scenes - of which there are a baffling amount of in a single match - are robotic and cheesy.
The commentary reminds me of International Superstar Soccer on the Nintendo 64 where the commentator says the team's name clearly differently to the rest of the sentence, such as; 'This is an exhibition match, between... Wales? And... NIGERIA!'
The licensing in terms of teams and leagues are impressive for the European clubs. You'll find the Aviva Premiership, Top 14 and D2, and Pro 14 all fully licenced in terms of kits and player rosters, but that is about it. The game should be called European Club Rugby 18, it would be fairer to the consumer. I can't imagine too many Aussies or Kiwi's are dying to play out a Pro 14 season, which has to be a massive chunk of potential buyers.
There are international teams available, 8 of them to be exact, meaning you can't do a World Cup, and you can't even do a Six Nations campaign because Ireland just aren't there. We don't exist. The 4th ranked international side in the world at time of writing isn't in the game.
The player ratings - as we discussed recently - are a total shambles. Owen Farrel and, comically, Finn Russell are 97 overall. Maybe I haven't been paying attention put I'm quite sure Finn Russell is not the best Scottish player who ever lived. Conor Murray, meanwhile, is an 89.
It sounds like a good idea, and it is, but once again the execution is lacking. You are giveN so little in terms of budget at the start that you can only afford the absolute worst players in the game, therefore making it nearly impossible to win games and improve your squad.
I tried to build the cheapest squad I could, and add in Craig Gilroy - who is a 65 overall rated player inexplicably blessed with 99 pace - so I had one player to try and attack with, but I started the season 50,000 credits over budget. You earn credits from each game, but not enough to pay back the crippling debt of having 23 players.
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