Getting
Rugby 2005 to flow as smoothly as the regular game of rugby is a bit of a task. Passing is a large element of rugby, and as you can only pass backwards, there aren’t many huge territorial gains in any single game. Instead, the ball usually switches hands down a line of players as the whole team moves forward to support the guy with the ball. Passing is simple enough as you can pass left and right, and a fake pass is available that, with some practice, can usually fake out the opposition. However, setting passes up from rucks and mauls can get a bit messy; randomly missed passes appear to be in effect here, and when a player does miss a pass, everyone runs back in unison towards the ball, but nobody seems to want to pick it up.
If passing is one half of the game, then tackling easily makes up the other half. Unfortunately, tackling is a bit harder than passing. The left-to-right camera view doesn’t lend itself to aiding the player in lining up a tackle. The top-to-bottom view, where you’re looking at the backs of your players, somehow screws up the depth and disorients you more than helps you.
Other smaller problems exist as well. There is no icon to tell you where your selected player is when they are off-screen. This makes lining up a tackle even harder. You can also perform a kind of superman dive that lets you launch yourself almost ten meters towards the try zone, an ability that is difficult to resist yet one that drastically reduces the authenticity of the gameplay.
Rugby 2005 is definitely better than its recent predecessors, though the best Rugby game of all-time still has to be Rugby 95 for the Sega Genesis. The transition to 3D for the franchise has gone over some bumps. Many of the problems are being remedied, and the graphics continue to improve, but the fact remains that Rugby 2005 still isn’t the solid kind of game that one would expect from the EA Sports lineup. However, another fact that remains is that those in love with the sport will undoubtedly get a rise out of this title.