Rugby League 2

Overview

Rugby League 2 was the much anticipated sequel to Sidhe Interactive's Rugby League. With both games being based on the sport of Rugby League (most notably popular in Australia and the UK), Rugby League 2 contained updated rosters, new gameplay mechanics and an all new franchise mode that allowed players to manage their favourite teams. Rugby League 2 was a multi platform release for the PS2, Xbox and PC.
Rugby League 2 featured different box art depending on the region. The Australian release featured an image of Steven Price. The UK edition featured an image of Stacey Jones

Gameplay features

• New ball stripping ability

  

  • Shoulder charge for attacking players
  • Diving on and kicking a loose ball
  • Improved kicking in play mechanics
  • Two man tackles
  • Ability to assign two players as 'playmakers' and a quick pass to playmaker button added
  • Video referee decisions
• Franchise mode with the ability to buy and sell players, staying within the salary cap, play as your favourite club side, state of origin team and international team

Visuals

In an unusual decision, in order to boost the framerate of the game, there was no on field referee to be seen in Rugby League 2. This was a change and omission from the games predecessor. However, Rugby League 2 featured lifelike closeups of individual players during in game 'cut-scenes' that would occur between significant events that paused play such as any point scored, a knock on, a penalty etc. The games visuals also made use of motion capture, employing WETA digitial, the team who did the motion capture for the Lord of the Rings trilogy films. This made for a more fluid motion and believable action from the players compared to Rugby League.

Realism

The Rugby League games have the full licence of the NRL, ARL, English Super League, CRL, NZRL and the International Rugby League board. This meant that every ground and stadium in the game were modelled on real life stadia, with many of the models being very accurate representations of the grounds they were depicting. The game also featured an accurate playing roster for every team in each of the competitions.

Create a player

Rugby League 2 featured a create a player mode that gave users the option to create their own rugby league player based on their own appearance of attempt a recreation of a former rugby league great. This mode featured the usual alterations that could be made to appearance, and also allowed players to assign their player a position, specific attribute skills, as well as assign them to any club team. The ability was also given to select what State of Origin or International team their player could possibly represent, based on their performance in game.