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Rugby 2005
Score: 72%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: HB Studios
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1 - 4
Genre: Sports (Rugby)

Graphics & Sound:
Slowly but surely, the Rugby franchise is catching up with the standards of other EA Sports games. Though it isn’t the best looking EA game out there, it does have its moments. What Rugby 2005 is lacking is polish. The models, textures, and animations all look great, but are hindered by some glitches, mainly when dealing with animations and shadows. Players tend to run in place in order to receive a pass, and at other times, the ball will deny physics and “warp” to where it is supposed to go.

The audio side of the coin is much worse. The crowd effects are chopped together poorly, as is the play by play commentary. The announcers are good at what they do, but the execution of the clips is rough, to say the least. What really sounds good are the hitting effects. When players collide, you don’t hear a crash or crushing sound. Instead, you are treated to something that sounds similar to that of hitting a dead pig with a baseball bat. The soundtrack is an eclectic cross between Euro Pop and Emo, not quite the fitting tunes for a rugby game. But, then again, if traditional rugby songs had been included, the ESRB rating would have been bumped up to Mature.


Gameplay:
Rugby is not an easy sport to learn. To call it a cross between soccer and football is to do it an injustice. The sport of rugby has a very unique set of rules that EA thought were difficult enough to force players to learn them before they could even play an Exhibition match. When you load up the main menu, you are forced to go through a sort of rugby boot camp where you learn the controls and basic rules of the game. There are also some videos you can access from the menu that go through some of the more intricate rules.

For one reason or another, not every rule of rugby is taught here. Most of the general rules are covered, but things like kicking for touch and penalties are not covered in length, and these are the some of the more difficult rules to learn. There is also no explanation of what the different set plays do from rucks and scrums. They are labeled with obscure names like “pocket” and “dummy switch” that only veterans of the sport are likely to pick up on.

Rugby 2005 again proves that it is appealing mostly to the hard-core rugby player with the various game venues that you can take part in. There are tons of tournaments and leagues full of not-so-well known teams that not many American players are likely to have heard of. Of all the League options, only one gives the ability to trade players during the season, and trades are limited to a small handful with no bargaining or bidding to speak of.

Things get even thinner when you look at the extra stuff. There’s the My Rugby mode that keeps a poorly detailed record of all your rugby endeavors. There is also a Create-a-Player mode that has some decent options in terms of customizing players. On the down side, Multiplayer mode only supports up to four players via the multitap. But when you think about it, you’re going to be hard pressed to find eight people who want to really sit down to play Rugby 2005.


Difficulty:
Rugby 2005, despite all its efforts, is not going to be easy to pick up by someone who has never played the sport before. The rules come off in a vague manner, and the gameplay is fast enough to leave even someone moderately learned in the sport behind. There are some issues with the controls, so learning those and wielding them effectively won’t be so easy either. However, with some determination, learning to charge the ball down the pitch isn’t impossible.

Game Mechanics:
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.


-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications
AKA Andrew Horwitz

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