Photo gallery: Rugby 2004EA's best known line of games fall under its EA Sports games brand, and by and large these tend to be US-centric sports. Given the world market for such games, it's understandable, but it can be frustrating for Aussie gamers who generally gravitate towards other sports such as AFL, Rugby League and Rugby Union. EA has held the Union licence for some time, and its previous release effort suffered from being a late PSOne conversion. Can EA score a real try with Rugby 2004?
The first thing you'll notice about Rugby 2004 are the ingame graphics. This epitomises the good and bad in this title; within the action part of the game players move fluidly and actively. Zoom in on the action, or view a replay, and you'll be presented with images likely to terrorize small children. The models used for animating the players after a try or as they come on to the field are sub-par. Matters are not helped by the instant replay you get after each try, which for reasons that totally escape us is jerky and unrealistic, even through when you run the try in, it's smooth and fluid.
EA Sports games usually have top-notch commentary, and while commentators John Inverdale and Gordon Bray have recorded all the right things, the speech engine just doesn't present them in the best possible way. If they're screaming "He must score!" you can expect to be brought down in short order. Commentary often lags behind the action by a second or so, making some clever moves sound less impressive in hindsight. Moreover, the game suffers from the classic problem of patched-together voice samples, where the commentators pause for a split second inbetween announcing team and player names. It's not a big problem, but it's a noticeable break in realism. You can switch commentary off, but that leaves the game sounding quite empty and unrealistic.
Rugby 2004 does redeem itself in the gameplay area, although even here it still has its flaws. There are times when the game is rolling along and it feels like a genuine game of Rugby. However just as quickly something will happen that will leave you perplexed. The worst part of the game is undoubtably the breakdown, which some may believe is true in real life as well. You've got no real control over the breakdown and so whenever someone is tackled you simply wait to see who gets the ball.
When you make a break you will always be run down unless you're close enough to the tryline to get over. Now, if you're silly enough to have made a break with a forward this is understandable. Being run down by the entire opposition team when you've got on the outside with a flyer like Doug Howlett is just wrong. It can also be very hard to get away a kick in general play. You are almost always cut down before you can kick it, leading to a knock on. While these sorts of things can make it frustrating to play there are areas where the creators have gotten things just right.
Scrums and lineouts are both very well executed. Picking who to throw to and timing the throw are crucial. You can also win against the throw by timing your jump well. In scrums you are rewarded for pushing and hooking at the right time. If you have just read that and have no idea what those terms mean don't despair. The scrums and lineouts are easy to master for the uninitiated, and the training mode will take you through the game's complexities, although we can't see too many non-Union fans picking up Rugby 2004 in any case.
The controls for general play are also simple to understand. Controlling play from the breakdown is a simple matter of passing short, or long, or picking it up and running it. The passing game is easy to handle with the shoulder buttons used for passing the ball in whichever direction you want. This ease of control translates into a game that performs very well in multiplayer modes, and with the range of teams on offer, it's easy enough to compensate for different skill levels.
To test this out we gave control of the Australian squad to a complete Rugby novice, while handing over the mighty Bulgarian squad to a veteran Rugby player. Once the novice got to grips with the controls, the result was a foregone conclusion, with the Aussies walking all over the hapless Bulgarians. Switching things up to a Bledisloe cup-like AU vs NZ game saw the veteran player hand out a very solid thrashing.
Ultimately Rugby 2004 is a frustrating game. We'd really like to be able to give it a massive thumbs up, but unfortunately we can only give it a mild recommendation. The basic gameplay model is solid enough, but small errors in accuracy and a sub-par visual presentation model drag the game down into being a decent game rather than a great one. No doubt Union devotees will buy copies en masse, and hopefully that'll lead to the development of a future version that's accessible to everyone.
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