Review by: William Abner

If you’re looking for an in-depth analysis of how Jonah Lomu Rugby Challenge compares to the real sport of rugby then you are reading the wrong review. As an American, I grew up on the tenants of baseball, football, and basketball. Videogames got me interested in hockey and soccer. Rugby? That was that weird sport ESPN used to show back before the network became relevant. If you wanted live sports action on ESPN you were going to watch synchronized swimming, rugby, or maybe Australian Rules Football. So if you want a breakdown of the pros and cons of the game from an experienced rugby aficionado’s perspective you’re better off reading a review from Eurogamer.

However, if you’re a novice to the sport, like me, I’m confident in saying that Rugby Challenge is worth your time.

First and foremost Rugby Challenge offers a brilliant set of tutorials. If you don’t know a scrum from a grubber kick, these tutorials will at the very least get you up and playing and not just haphazardly chucking the ball around. In fact, they are absolutely required for novice players – you should even go through them a few times until you get the hang of the controls and the rules.

Players are rated in a slew of categories on a 100 point scale and one of the best aspects of the game is that you can clearly tell the difference between a good team like England and a bad team like Russia (or the USA for that matter). Being able to differentiate the players based on skill is the hallmark of a solid sports game and Rugby Challenge passes that test with flying colors. I felt constantly on my heels when playing as the United States.

Additionally, there is a great tackling engine at work here. Not so much in the actual tackling animations, which are admittedly pretty simple, but the fact that players slip out of a tackler’s grasp if a bad angle is taken is a refreshing way to approach this aspect of the sport – and this is something a game like Madden could learn a thing or two from as this level of interactivity between the players is wonderfully executed. If you try to engage a ball carrier from the side there’s a good chance you’ll get brushed aside.

I was also surprised to find a fairly decent amount of in game sliders which allow you to tweak the game to your liking. This is the type of stuff you see in a bigger budget game so finding gameplay sliders in a rugby game is a nice touch and shows developer Sidhe Interactive is serious about trying to please its fans. Better still, the sliders clearly make a difference in how the game plays and you’ll want to experiment with these as playing on Easy is terribly simple but on the harder difficult levels scoring points on the AI is very difficult.