Rugby World Cup 2011

Xbox 360, PS3
HB/505 Games

The wonderful world of rugby! Fabled as one of the more violent competitive sports, the world unites to compete in this exotic ball-tossing past time. Here you get a pretty standard introduction, you hit "start," you select your game type, you edit game settings (difficulty, length, etc.) and — my personal favorite feature — you select the color of your team's jerseys. And then you pick your favorite rugby team because they rock, and take them onto the field to compete against some good old "bots" or CPU enemies. 

As far as gameplay, Rugby WC 11 doesn't live up to the standards of 2011's visuals. A team of dudes in jerseys in a stadium can only look so good, but come on, man; I think we could've stepped up our game a bit. For a single-player game to consist of as many CPU-controlled allies and opponents as this does, it still gets a very smooth run. When there are too many CPUs for our mortal consoles to control, we're robbed of our oh-so-dear frame-rate. But to end my visual rant I'll say that actions were done well; when your team members are running, kicking and throwing, you get a very natural-looking motion, as though visual beauty was traded for the physical action. 

Oh, well. I never really loved the sports titles. To truly love a rugby game you should be a rugby person.>

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