I have only just started playing Rugby Challenge 2 but I can immediately tell it is a vast improvement over their first effort. While the first All Blacks Rugby Challenge game was fun it was more or less offloads galore and the gameplay was more like 7s than 15 a side rugby. This new game has far better structure and so far about the only negatives I can think of are the lack of player and team licensing (this is probably the result of HB Studios gaining the licenses for many teams for the underwhelming Rugby World Cup game from 2011), and the inability to pick players from the Top 14 competition in custom squads (again due to licensing restrictions). Overall a very decent effort at a rugby game which I'll guess many rugby fans have craved for since EA Sports last rugby effort in 2008.

It went from extreme excitement waiting for release to extreme disappointment. The new game seems like they hastily threw additional content on it without taking the care they did in developing the first one. The new voice overs echo as if the referee and scrum is a bunch of guys standing in a shipping container. Every team has been stretched to 23 players (with an additional reserve) which does not apply to most formats of the current game & means that you cannot emulate the real thing. All teams have large squads but are left with unfilled rosters so what is the point- There also seems to be random players added to rosters, for example the Crusaders team has a random halfback who is rated higher than both Willi Heinz & Andrew Ellis. I played this game for a couple of hours on the day I got it but have not given it a second thought since. Waste of time & money.

Not sure why my review was denied, so I'll give it another go…

Please don't buy this game. The gameplay is atrocious, so many errors and glitches that make you shout at the console.

I'm amazed the developers thought this was a playable game. If I was one of them, frankly I'd be embarrassed. I'd love to sit down and play a game against one of them and point out everything that is so terrible about this game.

If you get it for free, sure. But At $90 this is definitely not worth it – but this is not Mighty Ape's fault :)