Continued...
Passing
While most passing is fine, there is a pass that seems to be done when you tap too much which causes the player recieving to be flat footed and back quite far. Obviously intended for kicking, but even if you're careful you sometimes end up doing it, which is annoying. Offloads can be a bit dodgey but I spose that's the risk you take by offloading. Deliberate forward passes piss me off, because until this game I'd never heard of them, and no time have I ever deliberately wanted a pass to go forward...
Dummy Half running
Again, I have a problem with the flat footed ness and extreme slowness to get moving with the dummy half. If you're caught 1/2m out from your line, it can be extremely hard to get going forward, as the dummy half is often too slow and is caught, and any passes are likely to go forward, or too far deep. Occasionally when you can get a decent build up dummy half running is very effective.
Kicking Continued
One problem I had with this was a forward with general kick rating of 4(out of 10), managed to get a 40/20.
Game modes continued
Customizing tournaments is quite good, with a great range of no. of teams and format. You can have up to 32 teams participating, which means you can have a NRL+ESL+5 other teams. Creating teams is pretty good, although if you're creating players it can take a damn long time, as there is no keypad, you have to scroll through each letter of the alphabet, and worse still, to get to capitals and back you have to scroll right through littles and through capitals to find your letter. This can make creating a team a very long procedure. There is a good range of fictional logos to use, including some real cities such as the Wellington ??? and the Adelelaide Oilers. There are heaps of other non city ones like Jets, Volcanoes, Aces, All Stars etc etc etc.
Game customization is very impressive, the only thing lacking is the keypad thing (and perhaps stadia but hey, Madden only got it this year).
Funness to play
It is fun. :lol:
Defence
Fun and frustating. Fun is chucking your opponent over the sideline, driving them back over their line, dragging them back up to 10m. Frustating is the fact you basically have to use aggressive tackles on some difficulties, and that results in many a head high. Frustrating is also the bad bad fullback positioning. Too many times have I or the opposition ran up to the full field because the full back was only back at the 20-30m line.
Commentory
Generally good. Nice and flowing. Varying enough. Could've been a lot better with a second commentator.
Referee
Seems to rule most things correctly, except some things. eg very strange offside rule at kickoff. eg I kickoff, the ball goes about 9m on the full, and their guy comes forward to catch it, he is ruled offside. Ref uses sin bin in excess in my opinion. While the tackles may be dangerous, a send off isn't neccessary. A report system is basically essential in the next version.
Unlockables
Definitely a nice touch. There's no way I'd be doing the ESL yet with out the incentive of unlocking stuff.
Anywho, maybe more to come, maybe not, you guys will have it soon enough, so its hardly worth me telling you stuff you already know.
Cheers.