Rugby is a sport that almost everyone in America has heard about, yet most have only a vague notion of it having all the violence of football with none of the padding. When you tell the average football fan that not only is Rugby the direct ancestor of one of their favorite American pastimes but that it has far less stoppages of play and more free-form craziness, they might be intrigued. If you then told them, using U.S. football terminology, that there are no downs, you can only use laterals to pass, and anyone can try to drop kick a field goal at anytime, they might say that it seems weird but that it also sounds pretty fun and exciting. EA’s Rugby 06 strives to bring that promise of action to the Playstation 2 and Xbox and at a very reasonable reduced price at that.
One thing Rugby 06 does a excellent job with is presenting the atmosphere of being there at an actual game. The waxing and waning roar of the crowd along with the players’ expressions in the cut scenes skillfully establishes the emotional side of the game. It’s especially funny to see the uncomfortable looks on the opposing team’s faces when the All Blacks perform their famous Haka ritual. The animation quality is quite high, and given all the various kinds of painful interactions between the players at different speeds and relative positions, they did a great job with it. The camera angle during actual game play, however, drains away the feeling a bit, as it seems like there is too much distance separating you from the up-close-and-personal action. In many cases, it makes it hard to tell what’s going on when the players get bunched up. Another problem is the commentary, which is very repetitive and could definitely use a lot more lines of dialog; it does take you out of the action a bit to hear the same thing over and over again.
The game’s controls are generally a poor match for the notorious physicality of the real-life sport. While this year’s version added ways to call more plays and to pass out of tackles, there is a general feeling of detachment from the control set.
"there is a general feeling of detachment from the control set"
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In scrums and rucks, which are titanic clashes of many players clawing and clamoring to get at the ball, your maximum involvement as a gamer is to passively tap a button from a very impersonal camera angle and perhaps nudge a directional button to set a strategy. For a while, you can’t tell what’s going on and who’s winning the scramble or why, and if you’re lucky, maybe you eventually win the ball, but what’s the fun in that? Where is that necessary feeling of applying skill and timing to defeat your opponent, the very core competency of a sports game? It’s a shame that rugby’s calling-card moments of chaos are straight-jacketed by a lack of imagination in the controls department, which is strange coming from the publisher that gave us so many control innovations for other sports games.
There are several juking moves mapped to the right analog stick, but these moves usually require a strange "preloading" of the juke far before you want it to be executed, which greatly impairs their usefulness. Tackles in the open field of streaking flankers can be rather hard to pull off, and often it seems like the best defense is to switch to a different defender and just let the computer handle it. There is also a problem when trying to boot goal kicks, as the camera really doesn’t give you any way to competently aim at something that is totally off-screen. If you haven’t got the idea by now, the unpolished controls are the major issue in this game.
Most people in the U.S. do not know much about rugby, so it’s a good thing EA included a tutorial mode to teach the game to newcomers. While it’s linear and slow-paced, the tutorial runs down all the basic controls you need to master. One problem is that the narrator’s accent is somewhat thick and he uses rugby lingo that is not really explained anywhere, nor are penalties like offside detailed, which means many players are going to need to do some web research on their own to even fully understand the tutorial, let alone the regular game. Basically, if you don’t understand rugby, don’t expect this game to fully teach it.
"if you don’t understand rugby, don’t expect this game to fully teach it"
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One good thing is that the more skilled players on each team are highlighted on the field along with their roles, so even those who are not familiar with rugby union’s teams and players will know who to give the ball to at crunch time.
There are a few technical quirks in the game. The frame rate can be uneven at times, and the player collisions occasionally cause them to "pop" to a new location if too many people are clustered together. The AI has some noticeable flaws; occasionally, as you run into the open field past the pack, the last defender back will run toward you and then suddenly run away from you, allowing you to score easily. The same defenders also seem to have problems getting to you if you "work the angles" on them, cris-crossing diagonally just beyond their grasp. However, the representation of this sport is still young, and we can all remember AI deficiencies in earlier, or even current, editions of more popular sports games, so it would be a bit unfair to hold this against the game to a high degree. The AI’s competition does improve a bit on the highest difficulty levels, but the best fun to be had is still with the regular two-player mode against a friend.
Concerning matters off the field of play, EA got their ducks in a row on the licensing front, sewing up the Guinness Premiership license amongst others. Also, the music in the game is unusually competent for the habitually dismal EA Trax. EA included a surprisingly detailed player creation mode as well, which is a nice surprise.
While there are many flaws in the execution of this game, the fact is that it is pretty fun to play once you muddle through several confusing matches and start to get used to the clunky controls.
"it is pretty fun to play once you ... get used to the clunky controls"
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The problem is that most people who aren’t rugby fans already probably won’t be able to get to that point before giving up on the game. In many cases, it will feel more to them like they are a spectator wiring in orders to some guys on a screen rather than an actual player on the pitch, and that just doesn’t quite fit the soul of rugby or the soul of a sports video game.
