Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

[Anners]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Got this myself, and seem to have stumbled onto a massive bug. When going for goal, if the ball bounces then goes over the cross bar, it still counts from a penalty.

I am quite enjoying it though. I am struggling a little but that is more due to the fact Rugby League is my sport, so trying to adapt is taking a while!

[jb12780]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Got this myself, and seem to have stumbled onto a massive bug. When going for goal, if the ball bounces then goes over the cross bar, it still counts from a penalty.

I am quite enjoying it though. I am struggling a little but that is more due to the fact Rugby League is my sport, so trying to adapt is taking a while!

Here's a hint: You get more than 6 tackles to score.

[Anners]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Here's a hint: You get more than 6 tackles to score.

Haha, thanks! The only thing that's really troublesome at the moment is the fact I keep running away from my forwards so keep turning the ball over. When I make a break I forget which sport I'm playing and get all excited!

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Haha, thanks! The only thing that's really troublesome at the moment is the fact I keep running away from my forwards so keep turning the ball over. When I make a break I forget which sport I'm playing and get all excited!

It's tempting to run away from support. A lot of the videos I've watched online seem to reflect this common tendency as well. It's tough to find success playing like the Reds every match. Kicking really is your friend. I find it gets the cpu a bit disorganized and you can get a few more phases on average out of each possession.

[Anners]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

It's tempting to run away from support. A lot of the videos I've watched online seem to reflect this common tendency as well. It's tough to find success playing like the Reds every match. Kicking really is your friend. I find it gets the cpu a bit disorganized and you can get a few more phases on average out of each possession.

It's more just trying to get out of the "bad" habits that are essentially good in League. The majority of the time I'm fine, particularly with kicking (seems quite a similar system to those involved in the previous Rugby League games, same developer anyway), but I think that's a lot more from real life experience than anything else!

Few things are bothering me at the minute, particularly players running out when getting the ball near the touchline. Another is the attacking lines some of the centres and wingers run if you're running diagonally or laterally at the line. They don't seem to give you angles to either go back inside or they seem to be miles away and the pass won't go near.

[MattyEdgeworth]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

I'm not going to make the mistake I did last time and buy it day one. The first game was decent at best and I'm not sure how improved the game is. To me it still doesn't look particularly realistic.

[MattyEdgeworth]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Got my copy this afternoon, and have played a few games.

Some observations:

-Control and player movement is much better. Players feel heavier, and this leads to fewer large breaks and swerving type runs on higher difficulties.

-organization of players in open play and breakdowns is improved, thankfully

-cpu ai seems pretty decent attacking and defending, but I'll need to gather a larger sample size.

-Rucking is well improved, and the addition of removing players from the ruck is welcome

-tactics seem well implemented, but I need to spend more time exploring this aspect of the game.

-The visuals look great, but how come kits don't get dirty? This was in the last game and it looked great. If I'm playing in the rain I want to see my guys get covered in muck.

-So far this better resembles the game I wanted out of RC1. I'll definitely be playing this for a while.

The main problem for me was always the passing, what is it like this time around?

[stizz]

Passing's pretty much the same. Back line is usually very unorganised so you see passes to the man standing right beside you, especially from the AI.

Way too many turnovers. You can barely get multiple phases on one possession and even using the send runner right and left (cool addition) seems to increase the chances of a turnover rather the opposite.

Still a pretty fun game though but the restrictions are killing me. Sucks that I can't use players for the international teams with likeness in some leagues due to the restriction.

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Passing's pretty much the same. Back line is usually very unorganised so you see passes to the man standing right beside you, especially from the AI.

Way too many turnovers. You can barely get multiple phases on one possession and even using the send runner right and left (cool addition) seems to increase the chances of a turnover rather the opposite.

Still a pretty fun game though but the restrictions are killing me. Sucks that I can't use players for the international teams with likeness in some leagues due to the restriction.

Agree with all of this. The ball should be turned over more often on the tackle, through handling errors, or most of all more phases rather than two phases and then the defending team overpowers in the ruck.
I haven't experimented with sliders yet, but I will shortly. After that I'll hopefully get a Lions tour up in the dynasty forum.

I'm enjoying the game though. A couple of things that I'd like to see fixed in a patch (excluding the player restrictions which I know is the licensor's prerogative rather than Sidhe's). Note I'm playing on PS3

-a few rules glitches: Sometimes balls kicked into touch are are awarded to the wrong team, and some instances 22 drops are called when there should be a scrum.

-number of balls turned over in the ruck. Already explained above. I'm not asking for pure sim gameplay in the breakdowns, but I think a few changes could go a long way to improving gameplay.

-progression/regression in career mode. This is a big one I'd like to see young players progress more than 1 point overall every three years or so. Would like to see older players regress by the time they reach late 20's/early 30's.

-I'd like long passes and passes by forwards to feel riskier/less accurate.

-maybe slow the game down a bit (though I'm sure the game speed is a well-deliberated design decision.)

-Painfully slow menus. Probably due to the design style, and how much is rendered. See NCAA Football 14. They had the same problem with overly elaborate menus in previous year being slow and unresponsive—this year they went with simple and responsive.
-cosmetic: I'd like to see dirty uniforms back int he game. It looks like player limbs still get dirty, but kits are perfectly clean even in rain games.

It's the best rugby game I've played (and I loved JLR on PSX, and Rugby 06), but there are some really annoying niggles detracting from a game that would otherwise be an all-timer for me.

[Anners]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

It's good (if that's even the right word?) to see that some of the things I've noticed are actually problems rather than me being frustrated. The rucks are particularly killing me at the moment.

Finally got to the 6 Nations in my first career (chose Ireland as my International team) and I've just come up against those player restrictions. Is there no way to get around it? I might have to start a new career and pick a minnow possibly.

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

One terrible thing I noticed. In a career test of Super Rugby, players made unavailable due to international duty actually show up on your bench and you can sub them in. Imagine my surprise to see Dan Carter doing double duty for the All Blacks and Crusaders at the same time.

And about rucking. I would simply like to know if I'm doing it wrong or if there is an issue. It seems like I often have guys at the tackle, and I quick bind, but get blown off the ball by no apparent opponents. I'm just not sure if I don't understand the rucking mechanic or if this is how it's supposed to be.

[stizz]

I think if you contest (X or []) then the ruck bar increases a fair bit, but after you do and you get a warning by the ref you can't add more players to the ruck (I don't seem to be able to anyways).

[MattyEdgeworth]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

I don't like the sound of it to be honest. I mean it sounds like it is an improvement, but still not sim enough for me. I'm usually pretty lax with wanting pure sim, such as with Madden and FIFA(which isn't a sim despite what some say) but Rugby is by far my number one sport. I live and breath rugby hehe

[Anners]

Re: Rugby Challenge 2: The Lions Tour Edition Gameplay Videos, Ships June 13th

Finally bumped it up to hard and I'm noticing more things, some of which have already been mentioned:

- The long passes are quite ridiculous, particularly by forwards who can seemingly throw a 30m pass to perfection consistently.

- The amount of offloads by the CPU is far too much, I know you can adjust this by sliders but I haven't touched any of them yet.

- A lot of the time there isn't any sort of defensive structure and when an attacker breaks free, defenders occasionally stand there and watch them go by.

Have noticed a few glitches as well. Latest one is if you knock on and keep kicking the ball along the floor, the game carries on. Theoretically, if you knock-on inside your own 10, you could kick it 80m for example, let the CPU recover and carry on there if you let the ruck play out.

And about rucking. I would simply like to know if I'm doing it wrong or if there is an issue. It seems like I often have guys at the tackle, and I quick bind, but get blown off the ball by no apparent opponents. I'm just not sure if I don't understand the rucking mechanic or if this is how it's supposed to be.

I've noticed this as well. I've resorted to just doing heavy bind and it seems to work a bit better but it's still an issue.

[stizz]

Here's a quote from Milla.

There are people who want a sim. They won't get one from us. We never set out to make one, and don't plan to do so.

Pretty disappointing really.