Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8197 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-07-25
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Rugby 08 captures all the emotion and passion of the world’s fiercest national rivalries. Experience all the excitement of the Rugby World Cup 2007 as you challenge the best teams and players ever assembled for global supremacy. A nation’s destiny is in your hands when you take control of one of the officially licensed national teams and power your way through a grueling six-week campaign for the sport’s ultimate prize: the Webb Ellis Cup.

Play as your home nation and control your favourite players as you battle from qualification right through to a virtual re-creation of the championship final.

Take complete control of your favourite squad, emulating its style on offencand, for the first time ever on defence, using new authentic formations. Adjust your defence on the fly to keep momentum on your side or counter your opponent’s attacking style by changing your defensive strategy based on score, field position, and more.

Rugby 08 also introduces the Rugby World Cup Challenge mode which will test even the most hardcore gamer. Recreate 30 classic moments in Rugby World Cup history using modern teams, and unlock exclusive Rugby World Cup highlight videos. Compare your results with history, and measure yourself against the world’s best.

Rugby 08 also introduces a layered pick-up-and-play control system for set pieces and drop kicks. Take full command over every scrum and maul with enhcnaced push and rotation controls, make lineout throw-ins look easy with a simplified control scheme, and master the new kicking meter to score those key penalties and converts. New truck and zoom camera angles zero in on all the key action on the field during the game’s biggest moments.

Customer Reviews

I Love It!
Having not bought a rugby game for about 4 years (as the ones I have tried have been very poor) I was very impressed. The gameplay is fairly realistic, and at least penalties are given away by both sides (not just against you). Graphically it is excellent, and runs very smoothly (Windows XP, AMD X2 4600, GeForce 8800 GTS 640). I have had no lock ups or crashes as experienced by other reviewers. It lets you pick your international team from a huge pool of players (England at least) and has enough variety in the tournaments. The club rugby side of things is excellent if you are wanting to play the Guinness premiership, with most grounds accurately represented. My only criticisms are - it is too easy to score penalties, drop goals and conversions if you have a half decent kicker. It is fairly hard to defend against running rugby, and occasionally the AI lacks a little. Oh, and some of the 'superman' dives to score tries are OTT. Looking at the other reviews, this is definately worth buying if you don't own Rugby 06. It sounds like this game may suffer like the FIFA series, when slight refinement is not enough...

Aint much different
Good game,better graphics and some new players like James Hook.Only problems are liberty stadium isent there still has this imaginary glamorgan pitch and the game is basically the same its missing 10 nations has not got celtic league and seems to be not much different.We have waited a long time for this and to be honest i feel let down they havent done much to make this game better its like they rushed it to get it out before world cup.Also not much selection for Internationals there was more in 06 version.They do also actually give you cards and free kicks for anything illegal in the game like early or late tackles and tackles while player is in air.The world League is basically the same too.
If EA dont make the effort next time Rugby games wont be selling at all.Big let down EA for shame they had enough time to make this more advanced and dident bother its a good game but they could have done so much more to better the game.The Big Question is why did they miss a year then bring out this half done game?

Disappointing
I had big hopes for this title but the result is barely an improvement on the 06 version. Game play has been tweaked slightly but if this is a good thing or not is up for debate. The main differences seem to be an increased ammount of penalties given for dangerous tackles. Some of these are not illegal in my book and certainly don't require the red cards so often dished out to them. I've also found the game to be quite unstable and will crash if played for a sustained period. The graphics are slightly nicer and a couple of the camera angles that get switched to when kicking are good additions. Outside of matches the interface is still quite clunky with little advantage taken of having a mouse to navigate. The major dissapointment is the inaccuracy of the players stats. For instance Dan Hipkiss is a below average New Zealander.

In conclusion the backbone of this game is great unfortunately I already owned this backbone(Rugby 06). I wouldn't mind that had they spent some time updating the player databases. If you own Rugby 06 this game is probably not worth your money it's sad to say but this is a rush job intended to cash in on the world cup.