Rugby World Cup 2011

It’s been a while since we had a decent rugby game so I was looking forward to checking this year’s rugby world cup out. First impressions were good, the presentation is decent and all of the teams and stadiums from this years tournament are in place. Graphically too the game looks pretty good, things can look a bit ropey up close and the player likenesses aren’t great but zoomed out in the middle of the action things run smoothly and the game has the same kind of appearance and flow as an actual game of rugby.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward, you use the L and R bumper buttons to pass left or right and use the A button to punt or dive for a try. The plus side of such a simple control scheme is that pretty much anyone with a passing interest in the rules of the game can pick up a pad and have a game. So if you were having your friends round to watch the game you could quite happily put this game on afterwards and have a mini tournament of your own without worrying about people struggling to get their head around the game. The downside of it is that once you have mastered the basic control scheme (which takes about 2 minutes) you aren’t left with anything further to progress your game. The best sports games of this generation always fall under the category of easy to learn, difficult to master. Rugby World Cup 2011 definitely falls under the category of easy to master! Another niggle with this control scheme is to have the controls for ‘Punt’ and ‘Try’ on the same button. There is no real reason for this with so many buttons spare and it can lead to some rather embarrassing moments where if it is pressed a second too soon your player simply punts the ball out of play rather than diving for a try!

There are a few other aspects to the control scheme, when a ruck occours you need to hold down the A button to fill an onscreen meter, except that if you fill it completely you give away a foul, I only worked this out through trial and error it isn’t explained anywhere, and there is an element of tactical selection before making a play using the left stick. It isn’t very detailed but it does allow play to continue quickly and adds an element of variety
The meat of the game is the world cup mode where you pick a team and try to guide them to world cup glory. This mode is well put together and gives you the option of using the official groups or randomising them which will add some replay value. Aside from this the only options are to do a one off test match or to complete a warm up tour. A few more modes would have been nice but this is after all a world cup game so keeping the focus on the world cup is understandable, but essentially once you have completed a warm up tour and the world cup competition there isn’t anything left to do.

The main problem with the game lies in the difficulty levels, on the lower difficulty levels the game is incredibly easy to beat, within my first game I worked out that if I simply passed the ball one way I would eventually have enough space to run clear and run for a try, and this tactic works every time, as you play more games you develop a few more tricks to get past the opposition which makes it even easier. This does make for exciting games as the AI opponent is able to do exactly the same to you leading to some open games which initially make the game seem exciting and fun but when every game plays out the same way it does begin to get tiresome. However when you ramp the difficulty up the game pretty much becomes impossible, there is no middle ground.

There are a few other niggles too like some dodgy player animations and more seriously a lack of real player names for Australia and New Zealand this is a real shame considering the amount of time and effort that has gone into making other areas such as the stadiums so accurate.
Achievement wise we have a bit of a mixed bag a lot of them are based on doing certain things in a match such as scoring a try after catching a grubber kick or scoring a try with a prop etc.. if you were lucky and managed to get all of these you could pick up around 490 achievements by playing through the world cup mode on medium difficulty which takes around two hours, if you are less lucky (like me) you will come out with around 100, nevertheless you should be able to get them all with a couple of play throughs. The most difficult achievements require you to complete the various pre season tours on the hard difficulty, I can see this being a grind but with a bit of ‘creative’ use of the stats editor you could make things a bit easier, overall I think that 1000 points on this game would be an achievable but fairly boring task.

So overall it seems to me that this game is pitched more at the post-pub casual gamer who wants an arcadey rugby game to play with alongside the tournament, rather than the hardcore rugby game fans if this is the case then HB Studios have succeeded but unfortunately it doesn’t have enough depth or content to keep you interested for very long past this years tournament.

Overall
6 / 10

Well done Bertie, another good honest GSA review.

Rep given

Good honest review matey.

Not a game i'm particularly interested in, as i usually avoid sports titles (except for the occasional easy cheevo ones).

nice one mate good work.

I played the demo and struggled to even score a try

stubbymite wrote:nice one mate good work.

I played the demo and struggled to even score a try

Lol me 2..

Nice review mate, Rep given

Good work mate. Well thought out review!! Have some reppage-ness!!