Hatchy joins the Union
Publisher: Ubisoft
Mon, 13 March 2006
by: Hatchy
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You're the Australian winger and there are 15 seconds remaining in the final of the Tri-Nations cup. Up ahead in the maul Australia gets the ball, Gregan fishes it out and flicks a lightening pass to the Outside Centre. You immediately start sprinting and screaming for the ball, in a second it's in your hands, you're inside the oppositions 22 and you must score to win the series. In front of you a New Zealand back-man is charging straight at you. With no time to duck or weave, you grit your teeth, drop your shoulder and charge. An explosion sounds, you feel your body go light and your legs feel like jelly but they are still moving, still driving forward. Nothing appears to be holding you back, you've beaten the tackle and the try line is in sight! 5 yards to go and all of a sudden out of your peripheral vision another black clad Kiwi is charging, you dive at the line... BANG! Like two planets colliding your bodies crash together, the world goes black and through the ringing in your ears you can hear the screams of the crowd. You open your eyes, you're lying down, the ball is in your hands, you're inside the try line and you've scored, Australia wins the Tri-Nations cup!!! Welcome to the mad, bad world of Rugby Union, a place Rugby Challenge 2006 has tried to capture.
And has it? Well, sort of. Nothing really can come close to the real thing, but if the game-play is anything to go by RC2006 is still a pretty good achievement in that area. Before I get into the game-play let's take a look at the features. For a quick fix of rugby union you can play a Friendly game between any two teams, for a bigger challenge you can partake in 6 competitions ranging from the World Championship, European 6 nation, Tri-Nation and even a host of regular league games between sporting clubs from the UK and Europe.
 | | It is refreshing to see men displaying their affection for each other |
But that's not all. For a real in-depth experience you can take on the career mode. This is one of the game's best features. In this mode you have to craft a fledgling team and raise them to prominence within a league competition. Along the way you can trade and buy players, appoint specialist coaches and even do training drills to give your team the practice needed to succeed. The training drills are important too, if your players don't train, they don't get fit. Nor do they get smart enough and as a consequence will be easily beaten by the competition.
Sound like enough features? Well, there is still more. The game features tutorials on learning the finer points of RC2006 with respect to plays and button controls. Plus you can also do extra training exercises that range from beginner through to expert so you can learn all the different plays and rules that encompass Rugby Union. Still want more? There is a challenge option where you can play games like Hot Potato, Try Survival and even some classic games between teams from bygone eras, complete with different rules from that time. Finally, there are also bonus features with more stadiums, teams, balls and kits to unlock as you progress. About the only thing lacking from this game, from an Australian, South African and New Zealand viewpoint, is that the Super 14 league is not included, but then this game is mainly focused on UK and European audiences. However, if you don't like the leagues presented to you, you can simply create your own.
Okay, so with the exhaustive list of features out of the way the main question is: what is the game-play actually like? Well, to start with, the developers of RC2006 went to a fair bit of trouble to analyse player's movements and did lots of motion capture, ensuring that the game's players moved with the fluidity and style of the real thing. And it has worked admirably, the way players run, flick-pass, tackle, line-out, maul and scrum is extremely realistic. I love the effect of making a weaker player charge head long into a bigger one at full speed, the two bouncing off one another as the ball goes flying. Also, the way in which you operate the scrums and mauls is really clever, you need to be able to pull off a sequence of moves on the controller at the right times to make it go your way. You can't become an expert in the first few games however, you do need to do the tutorials and training to master the plays and button combinations. It is not a straight out of the box easy game to play, but after about 5 to 10 attempts I had no trouble getting a handle on it.
At this point you're probably thinking that for a game with this many features and great game-play surely the bad parts aren't even worth mentioning. Well, sadly, they are. The graphics, especially the lead-in sequences and replays, are just not good enough. Clipping effects on some players on a replay can be bad at times, for one punt sequence I noticed a player looked like he had lost a leg. The stadiums, in particular the crowds, are sterile and lifeless too. When you consider that the PS2 platform has been around for a long time, it is not wrong to expect better graphics quality than this (witness GTA San Andreas and GT4). It's not asking a lot, other sports games like FIFA 2005 are much better presented than RC2006. You do wonder what their benchmark was in this area, certainly nothing released in the last few years.
 | | You better hope you will no longer require your spine |
Another disappointment is that none of the players in the international games look anything like the players in the game today, in fact for the lead-in sequences to a game it always appears to be the same faces. Another gripe is the commentators. They commentate throughout the match and from the first moment a word is uttered the mood shifts from irritating to annoying as you progress. They have a very limited vocabulary and at times they seem to say things that don't make a lot of sense. If anything this feature appears to be a sort of last minute, 2 days to deadline style add-on. It should have been left out, or improved... a lot. The load times are also pretty bad at times, taking far too long.
Graphics and other issues aside, if you're a big fan of the game of Rugby Union you're going to love this game. Certainly it has its faults but the game-play is pretty good and as a fan you probably wont even notice, or care. For the rest of us, with only a passing interest in the game, you'll like the game-play, but will probably be a bit put-off by everything else around it. I do think that a quantity versus quality approach was taken in the final packaging so hopefully this will be rectified for the next instalment of the game. Hopefully Super 14 will be included as well which, if anything, will be sure to win over some more Australian buyers. In the mean-time RC2006, while being the best Rugby Union game available at the moment, is really just for the fans of the game and wont win over your average sporting game aficionado in the cut-throat console market.
by: Hatchy
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