2-4-1 Sport

Do rugby fans like football? Can football aficionados stand watching big burly men play around with a slightly different shaped ball?

It might just be me, but I've always assumed the two sets of fans were like chalk and cheese, more likely to have a bust-up in the pub than share Beckham anecdotes or recall that World Cup winning kick from Jonny Wilkinson.

Regardless, I-play has decided to lump the two sports together in this 2-4-1 value pack. RBS Six Nations 2009 has here been joined by management sim Football Tycoon.

As you might expect, the two games don't exactly make the most logical of bedfellows, but they do at least offer up a fair chunk of variety for your money.

RBS Six Nations 2009, for instance, lets you play out the yearly tournament as the nation of your choice. Sadly, however, the game suffers from a dodgy button-mashing control setup that really hampers its attempt to convey the sport with any sense of realism.

As Andrew Williams said in the game's original review, “It's often clear that the game has already pre-determined whether you're able to win or not, making the thumb ache-inducing hammering away little more than a maintaining of the status quo rather than something you have real control over.

“The sense that the game occasionally verges on an interactive movie is never clearer than when your opponent gains possession of the ball. At the best of times, RBS Six Nations 2009 has trouble convincing you that you're in control, but once you've lost the ball, you feel virtually powerless.”

Controls, naturally, aren't the issue when it comes to Football Tycoon, which – to its credit – does a good job of conveying the competitive nature of the sport.

Rather than simply offering standard poor-man's Football Manager type play, Football Tycoon makes it its business to place your actions in a wide arena. Constant updates let you know just how well your rivals are going, while the game also delves into the supposedly seedy world of courting player agents.

“It's a novel system that sees you making contact with said agents while frittering money away at the casino or betting on the horses - a depiction of football business that, for all we know, could be entirely on the money,” I said in the original review.

“But it's this haphazard nature of earning cash that highlights Football Tycoon's most frustrating facet. There's no way of guaranteeing that the horse you bet on is going to win you any cash and, in much the same way, having a solid team with a full fanbase is no promise of picking up three points match after match.”

As such, 2-4-1 Sport – despite its obvious value – makes something of an unconvincing football and (ahem) rugby union, and is probably only worth picking up for Football Tycoon's few moments of glory rather than RBS Six Nations 2009's faulty, fumbling structure.