Rugby 2004

"Rugby, something different from all the other sports games, also below the quality of other sports titles."

Rugby 2004 is a rugby game for the ps2. It's the second rugby game released by EA for the ps2. I've never seen, or played the first rugby game they released. Anyways, I saw a game of rugby on TV real late one night, and it looked like an interesting sport. So I had $15 and saw rugby 2004 while I was at the store one day. Needless to say, I picked it up. In case you don't know what kind of sport rugby is, it can best be described as a game of soccer and football mixed together. It makes a lot more sense once you've seen a game of rugby being played.

GAMEPLAY (5/10)
This game really isn't as bad as other people are saying it is. The controls are confusing at first, and looking in the manual doesn't help much at all. The tutorials built into the game aren't very helpful at all either. Honestly, it probably took me about an hour before I knew what I was doing. For anyone just starting out with this game, I recommend changing the camera to “classic” mode.

One thing I found disappointing in this game is the lack of strategy involved. Every time the ball gets into a ruck (from what I understand, that's like a guy getting tackled in American football, and then everyone lining up on the line of scrimmage), all you have to do is start passing it to either the left or right, and just keep passing it till it gets to the last guy, and then keep running. Then once the guy with the ball gets tackled, you do the same thing again. After playing the game longer, I found out that there were more advanced tactics in playing, that probably are useful in real life rugby, but they weren't that useful at all in the game. One of the tactics is where you're supposed to kick the ball out of bounds, but far down the field. This is supposed to get the ball on the other side of the field, that is, to get the ball farther away from your goal, but in the game, running the ball just simply works the best.

There is a career mode (world league is what they call it) which lets you go through the seasons. You can gain points by winning and trade for better players on your team.

There are also various tournaments that you can compete in. I did the world cup tournament, but when I won, there wasn't anything special.

FEATURES
There is a create-a-player feature in this game, although you can't really do much to his appearance, you can set all of his attributes.

GRAPHICS(3/10)
The graphics in this game are just ok. They are definitely below the quality of the other EA sports titles, and any other current sports title, and ps2 quality, but it is above ps1 quality. All these people saying this game has ps1 graphics quality obviously haven't played a ps1 game in awhile. Think somewhere between a ps1 and dreamcast quality.

Probably the best looking thing in this game are the stadiums, and they don't look that great. They look ok, but there nothing that's breathtaking.

The playermodels and animations are pretty bad looking. Jerky animations and disproportionate playermodels are found all throughout this game. However, when you're playing you don't really notice either of these. It's when you score a goal, or during the opening sequence you notice it.

The menu system in this game looks pretty bad. The words are small and hard to read.

SOUND(4/10)
The sound in this game are just like the animations, jerky. The commentary is at a ps1/n64 speaking level. For instance, someone will score a goal, and then afterwards the commentators will say something like, “And COHEN looks happy with that one.” Screaming Cohen. The sound on the field is alright, nothing spectacular.

PLAY TIME
Singleplayer – 3+hours
Multiplayer – 0-5+ hours
The single player aspect of this game gets fun after you figure out what, and how to play the game. If you can get past that first frustrating hour or two where you're just trying to figure out what to do, then the game gets fun. If you're the kind of person who really gets into that career mode thing, then this game is going to last you a long, long time. If not, then this will be good for around 5 or so hours.

The reason I said 0-5+ hours for multiplayer is because you're going to have a hard time finding someone else who will be patient enough to learn how to play the game. With nearly all the other sports games out there, you can ask someone who hardly knows how to play video games to play you and they'll do fine real quick and prove to be a challenge within a few games. The problem with this rugby game is that it takes awhile to learn how the game is played, and then it takes even longer to figure out how to play it.

RENT OR BUY?
Good luck finding a place to rent this game, and good look finding a place to buy it. If you want something different from the other sports games, then I would just go ahead and buy it, I mean, it's only around $15. And if you buy it and don't like it, it will be no problem to sell it on eBay and get back at least $10. I bought it because I buy all my sports games to play them with my friends. And I find that sports games never get old as far as playing them with friends.

RANTS AND SUGGESTIONS
There were some things that could have been done to make this game that much better. The easiest thing to fix would have been the menu system. It's just plain hard to read. A little more time should have been spent in the gameplay aspect of the game as well. More refined graphics and commentary really would have put the icing on the cake.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/04