Previous Next

When William Webb Ellis first picked up the ball and ran with it during a game of football at the famous Rugby public school in 1823, he couldn't have known that he had just invented a sport which would still be going strong more than 150 years later.

The international Rugby Union was constituted in 1871 and hosted its first international championship in 1884 (a competition which has now developed into the annual five-nations championship between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France). Since then a parallel sport has grown popular in northern England (Rugby League), but it's the international sport of Rugby Union which Audiogenic is concerned with in this simulation.

An unsurprising situation really, as the World Cup is just around the corner and the sport is no doubt going to grow massively in popularity over the coming months.

The game itself is a simple affair, where a 15-man team attempts to carry an oval ball over the opposition's end line. The only trouble is that there are 15 equally well-built characters on the other team only too willing to prevent just that from happening. And although there is a very stringent rule book governing both how to get the ball over the line and how to stop it, this is certainly not a sport for the faint hearted.

Maybe it's a good thing that you can now do it all with a joystick.

It's difficult to tell whether rugby is actually a very complex sport played by master tacticians, or an unruly free-for-all with unsophisticated louts using a ball and pitch as an excuse to work out their aggression. Bearing that in mind, it's also hard to tell whether bringing the sport to computer was a real nightmare or a piece of cake.

Whatever the truth, Audiogenic has made it look simple. Although there are a number of elements 'borrowed' from previous sports games (Kick Off's scanner and the TV Sports Football options display to name but two), these have been incorporated seamlessly into the flow and, after all, are only here because they were good ideas in the first place.

The control method is completely instinctive - push forward to kick the ball, sideways or back to pass it - and the action is non-stop.

Which brings us neatly to the one and only problem - the joystick waggling. Rucks and mauls are an integral part of the game of rugby and so, quite rightly, they play a very important part here.

The only trouble with that is, if the ball gets bogged down in the middle of the park, you can go from one bout of waggling to the next and the next without having a chance to pause for rest, which gives the computer player an annoying advantage.

But that's about the only problem, otherwise World Class Rugby is without doubt the definitive rugby game. A must for devotees of the sport and well recommended to the rest of you into the bargain.