Game Reviews

Rugby Kicks

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Rugby Kicks
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| Rugby Kicks

Rugby Kicks would really like for you to stop playing it and go and pay £2.99 for Rugby Nations 2011 instead.

Feeling like little more than an opportunity to advertise other products and services while trying to fleece you for a few pence itself, Rugby Kicks is an ultra simple game that will have you rapidly reaching for the Home button.

It's technically decent, and the controls work perfectly well, but the lack of variety during the long shuffle towards unlocking all the content makes for a dull experience.

Sin bin

If you've ever played Backflip Studios's Paper Toss then you'll instantly know how this plays out. You flick on the screen in the direction you want to kick the ball, with the aim of getting it between the posts above the crossbar. It's a game full of conversions and penalty kicks, essentially.

You need to account for wind, which is indicated at the top of the screen by an arrow with a number in it. The starting position of each kick is also a factor - the game changes up your starting point with almost every shot, from right in front of the posts to right at the edge of the pitch.

There are four different modes on offer: Beat The Clock lets you try and score as many times as possible within a time limit, while Hit The Target asks you to hit specific targets between the goalposts.

Ball back

The other two are called Break The Wall and Thru The Hole, but I didn't see these, and for good reason: to unlock them all takes an achingly long time, as you need Coins to do so. In the first mode I regularly chalked up 200 coins per game, but this took five minutes a pop. To unlock the second mode took me about half an hour.

30 minutes of the same mode, with no change in the gameplay - just flick, goal, flick, goal, flick, miss, flick, goal, flick, miss, done.

When I unlocked the second, much more challenging task of hitting smaller targets - which rewards you with a greater number of Coins - I spent 15 minutes getting frustrated and then headed back to the first mode to get more money to hopefully see the third.

Your player's animations are robotic, cheers from the crowd are the same each time, and although you can upgrade your kit with different facial features, hair, shirt and so on this has no bearing on play.

These personalisation options are also criminally expensive, and they don't offer much in the way of variety. You can also purchase access to three different stadia, with better locations offering more Coins for your troubles, but - again - this doesn't add much variety, and further highlights how much of a slog getting the currency is in the first place.

You'll tire of Rugby Kicks quickly - not because it's bad at what it does, but because it does so very little, offering minimal reward for a massive investment of time.

Rugby Kicks

Paper Toss with an oddly shaped ball, Rugby Kicks is simple fun for the first ten minutes, and simply dull thereafter
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.