RUGBY Rugby 15

[MattW]

I know a few people have been following along with the release of Rugby 15 - mostly in off topic discussions in threads about DBC14, so I hope to maybe change that...

One thing that @BigAntStudios mentioned was that it was going to be the first retail release of a game made with Unity on the PS3 - something Ashes Cricket 2013 was planning to be,

It doesn't look very nice...

The PC version and new consoles look a bit better, but my impression on reading the comments about it, is that it's very incomplete. Not having online play seems to be a major complaint, as well as the lack of camera angles and replays.

 

[MattW]

I ended up buying it anyway* - I do like seeing how other sports games are - especially to support developers releasing sports games on PC, even if I'm not a huge fan of the sport. I don't know whether it's a good or bad thing that I'm having a lot of fun with the game despite not knowing much about rugby, the gameplay seems to be quite fluid and the controls make a lot of sense.

I've still only ventured on to the Easy difficulty, where I can absolutely run over the AI - hopefully there's a nice difficulty curve there.

It indeed doesn't feel very complete - but from my perspective as a casual player, it's got some nice core mechanics - I'd say it's a pretty solid base to work from, especially if they use being on PC to patch it up. The Unity engine doesn't seem to have been a massive problem, some of the graphics aren't very nice though. There's some weirdness in the physics, with players snapping around a bit and occasionally getting stuck in an animation loop - but nothing that to me seems game breaking.

I've got a video encoding now, so in a few hours I might be able to post some of my gameplay.

Edit: Here we are

I've not played any recent competing rugby games, so don't take this as a recommendation, because it could be an awful rugby game to someone who knows how to play the sport, or who could name a player, or who has heard of the teams that are licensed.

*I got it from Green Man Gaming, the voucher code for 25% off works for the game, and took it down to US$29.93 - so $5 less than the discounted steam price. My referral link if you want two free dollars on your next purchase /spam.

 

[Chief]

I like some of the design decisions (so many games adapt the TV version of the sport, rather than look at how it would be best played in a video game!) but technically it looks very restricted: rather juddery and graphically quite bland. I imagine you've got your settings turned up pretty high as well: would be interested to see what it looks like on console.

It's getting a bit of a kicking from the community from what I've seen. They seem to be presenting everything in French as well (the FB page is dual-language, but the Twitter account is mostly French). Confused by this seeing as they don't seem to have released it there yet.

 

[Deleted member 9102]

HB Studios developing it was a red flag for me - The Golf Club has made me very skeptical about their ability to deliver well built, polished and optimised games. TGC released in a really unfinished state and using the Unity engine doesn't seem to do them any favours. From my experience, games in Unity perform really badly and are poor visually.

I'm not a big fan of Rugby but may be tempted if a top quality rendition of it were released, but it doesn't look like this is it.

 

[MattW]

It doesn't seem to suffer performance issues - that video was recorded at 1080p on 'Fantastic' graphics (the highest option) and I was getting a solid 60fps (I record at 720p30 to save space and time uploading), but obviously doesn't look as nice as it could.

I certainly would have thought given HB are developing so many sports games they would be able to justify investing in building their own engine - or at least working with something that's designed with higher end graphics in mind. The Golf Club looks a bit better, but that comes at a performance cost - and the game certainly doesn't look as good as the graphical power it needs suggests.

The set kicking in Rugby 15 feels exactly like the swing in The Golf Club.

They do seem to have the same broad plan that Big Ant seem to have - make a bunch of sports games and leverage their technology between them. Big Ant are a few product generations down that line already. I have to think the engine differences will always mean Big Ant's games will be better - but whether they end up competing for the same sports is another matter.

 

[SpitfiresKent]

I've just seen a TV ad for this and the graphics look awful, Felt like I was watching an old PS2 game.

 

[weekendroady]

There are a boatload of glitches in this game. Most are laughably bad (like guys getting "stuck" in the field, half their body showing, or getting tackled and magically getting back up and play continuing while the tackler stays down). These glitches only happen a couple times a game, but I wonder how a game like this gets out of the gate, I mean, I run into glitches EVERY game, so how was this thing playtested?

Outside of that, I've had fun with it. I 100% the trophy list (first time I got a platinum trophy!). I'm now playing an Aviva Premiership with Gloucester on hard, lost my first match 14-7 in a real heartbreaker. Yeah, it's a bare bones game, but there is still some fun to be had. Looking forward to Rugby League Live 3, though I will probably have to import it since that won't be out in the States.

 

[Chief]

Hmm.

Looks as bad as we had feared.

Oh dear.

Rugby World Cup 2015 Review - IGN

 

[Deleted member 9102]

Saw this on Steam and it looked dreadful. Almost Ashes levels of garbage... It also released in early September.

Maybe Rugby Challenge 3 will be better? I haven't played or seen any of that series though but on first glance it looks far better than this rubbish.

 

[Chief]

Saw this on Steam and it looked dreadful. Almost Ashes levels of garbage... It also released in early September.

Maybe Rugby Challenge 3 will be better? I haven't played or seen any of that series though but on first glance it looks far better than this rubbish.

I'm a bit worried both will be poor. Wicked Witch's AFL games have been rather sub-par. Would be delighted to be wrong, but it does take a long time to get up to speed: I guess it will largely depend on how long they've had to make it. They've almost certainly had no more than a couple of years *maximum*... I wouldn't have thought that would be enough without a lot of resource behind it to make it any good first time of asking.

 

[Chief]

Ouch. The IGN review wasn't a one-off. Rugby World Cup 2015 for PlayStation 4 Reviews - Metacritic

 

[Gamer Pradosh]

Ouch. The IGN review wasn't a one-off. Rugby World Cup 2015 for PlayStation 4 Reviews - Metacritic

Wow,thats out of 100...

 

[Chief]

Wow,thats out of 100...

Aye. A review is just one person's opinion... but when lots have that same opinion you can probably believe it.

 

[Gamer Pradosh]

Aye. A review is just one person's opinion... but when lots have that same opinion you can probably believe it.

HB studios were the one the created Cricket 04 right?? Why so bad with this game, have you played it??

 

[Chief]

HB studios were the one the created Cricket 04 right?? Why so bad with this game, have you played it??

They made most of the later EA Crickets.

I haven't played it, but they also did "Rugby 15" which was pretty much the same game without the WC license: I gave that a cursory hour - it was pretty terrible.

I wouldn't like to speculate as to why it's so bad, but I notice that they are using Unity - I think this is is the only console game in history to use it that actually made it out to market. As discussed at great length a few Septembers ago...