Genesis ~ Rugby World Cup 95 Review

Overview

I was at the mall one day and as usual, I made my stop by the video games store. The demonstration game on was Rugby for Playstation 2 and I was highly impressed by the visuals and realism. A week later, I am at home playing Rugby World Cup 95, the predecessor to Rugby. Rugby World Cup 95 is the officially licensed game of the Rugby World Cup 95. So was it any good as the Rugby's predecessor?

Read on to find out.

Gameplay and Realism

In this game, you control one team playing rugby with another. The game of rugby in real life seems quite complicated, but EA Sports have managed to greatly simplify it in this game through 3 buttons. Kick, pass, and sprint. As long as you have these 3 functions in mind, you've pretty much figured out how to play the game. Now all you need to do now is figure out how to score tries. And this is where the major problem comes in. Unless you're using a team that is better than the opposition, it's very difficult to even score the simplest of tries. Alot of the time, you'll be stuck in rucks and when time comes to take the ball out to pass it, the computer gives you little to no time at all to clear it. They're like onto you within a second.

So it is difficult to play a smooth flowing game of rugby, bringing the realism a down a bit. Scoring tries involves intelligently passing the ball around, making the correct runs up the field. Most of the time, I start on one side of the field, then keep passing the ball wide until it reaches the wing, then run like hell! And if you're lucky, you'll score a well deserved try.

In real life, rugby is fast, which makes it an exciting sport to both play and watch.

In this game, it is a problem. There is little sensation of speed. The players running around the field is slow, even when they're on sprint. Especially when you're running directly up or down the screen.

On the whole, the game is quite fun once you get used to it. It certainly took me a while. Like most other sport games, it's even more fun in 2-player mode.

7 out of 10

Graphics

Excellent quality all around.

Nice looking field, detailed looking crowd, all pretty and colourful.

Some of the animations are good, but not completely realistic. Like when a player kicks off, it is only a two cell animation which I say is rather cheap.

Oh no! This next bit puts me right off. Are all Australians tanned? Are all New Zealanders black? NO! For any team, the entire team has the same colour skin and looks! Sure the All Blacks have a few Pacific Islanders, but in real life the majority of the team are white! Surely for the officially licensed game of the Rugby World Cup 95, EA Sports could have given all players different skin colours, like in Sensible Soccer and real life.

4 out of 5

Sound and Music

As strange as the menu music sounds, it's got a cool beat and rhythm.

The ingame sound effects are OK and I'm saying that because the sound could and should have been a whole lot better. Sound effects such as the kicks and the ball being caught after a pass are just beeps and toots. Nothing more.

The crowd sound effects are realistic, but after playing it for a while, they don't sound excited at all. And when you score a try, they do cheer, but it's just the same old boring "yaay" being played over and over again.

2.75 out of 5

Playability and Versatility

The game isn't entirely playable. As mentioned in the Gameplay, you're always stuck in these rucks where it can get messy, making it difficult to play a smooth flowing game of rugby. Mainly the problem is how it is so hard to clear the ball without running backwards.

I figured that it is generally easy playing against a team much worse than yours and quite challenging to play a team of equal strength. But when you're using one of the bad teams like Uruguay going up against the best teams like Australia, I recommend you don't even bother with it.

I was extremely disappointed with the valuation of the teams. New Zealand should have been ranked much higher. Teams such as Canada aren't suppose to be that good, because in real life they're rather useless.

The game is poor in the versatility department. You can't change the formations of positioning of the players. There are no strategic options like what there is in the Fifa games. You can't sub players, because there are no subs anyway. But what really annoys me is how there are no real players! For the officially licensed game of the Rugby World Cup 95, this just makes me sick! Why do EA Sports even bother having the license if they're not going to use it?

2 out of 5

Options

The game has a fair amount of game options.

This includes friendlies, league, World Cup 95 and World Cup where you can play the World Cup with any of the teams. Along with this includes 30 international teams and 2 custom made teams which are the EA Barbarians and the EA Maulers. However, the large amount of international teams counts for little, because there aren't any real players anyway. Something missing in the game is a practice mode, but then again you don't really need it.

3 out of 5

For: quite fun and simple to play, a good amount of international squads, excellent graphics, funky menu music

Against: not given enough time or space to clear the ball in rucks, too many messy rucks, playability hard to get grips with for the novice, little sensation of speed, some cheap animations, cheap sound effects, boring crowd noises, no real players, entire squad look the same, poor valuation of teams, no practice mode

Conclusion

So was this game a worthy predecessor to EA Sports Rugby?

In my opinion I'd say it is considering it's an old 16-bit game.

Very small improvements like more speed could have made this game so much more better though.