My ‘S’ plays all movies as quiet as a lamb, almost no noise whatsoever. 805 of the games play extremely quite, yet there’s a number that no matter what I do, be that running it horizontal or vertically, or making sure that it is stable, nothing touching it etc, some games get a substancial noise about them.

A grinding noise, not an actual grinding per-se, but a noise, almost as if the disc is unbalanced. When checking, I can see that the art on the disc is generally heavier on one side than the other, and seeing that a game disc is played, read, played, read and grabbing content from different section all the time, you can see why it ‘could’ develop some sort of vibration, leading up to a grinding noise.

So no matter what iteration it might be, there will be issues, no matter what the platform.

It is beautiful and pretty much flawless, the tray loaded DVD is far more practical for gaming, especially since you can always get your games out of it if some unforeseen hardware failure should occur.

I lost my MGS4 disk after my PS3 YLOD and had to be sent to Sony.

I really hope they’ve made it so that there is a ‘potential’ stat like in NHL so that the rookies with high potential get better over the seasons, while as players age they lose potential and start to show their age.

That way you build your team by getting rookies and playing them over several seasons to improve.

I have to say that not being able to jump into a quick game sounds annoying and loud music is never needed, but is seen to be for some reason.

EA will never make a Rugby League game as it isn’t a huge worldwide sport (and doesn’t have a big population number of support like say NHL in North America). A shame, but hopefully this game is better than the Wii one?

Many things are lacking right from the opening menu, to customization, to actual game play itself

The main menu is tainted with obscenely loud rock music, just doesn’t set a rugby league mood. Setting up a quick game is quite difficult, given that all you want to do is have a quick game. You have to go through choosing the teams, roster if you like, as well as the strip you play in, which all requires the usage of about 80% of the buttons on your control. Ridiculous! Instead of just x to go forward and triangle to go back, you now have to use O, R1 and R2 (PS3 terms) and a couple of others can’t really remember.

Customization is lacking big time. In previous games you could customize everything from stats, to birth dates, to the size of the players arms. Customization in these games is important as it adds longevity and more options to the game

While it is cool that the uniforms, rosters and stadiums have all been updated, it’s a shame that game play has not, in fact, I rate the game play of rugby league 2 a lot better, smoother, and realistic. Big call I know. First of all game play itself is very, very fast. It’s like a game of touch. Might take a while to adjust to. The graphics are substandard to say the least, and quite unrealistic. The fact that 9 out of 10 tackles you make would rate in the channel 9 “Brut Big Hit” competition also adds to the fakenes of this game. The frustration of useless AI (Artificial Intelligence) players also annoys the heck out of me. I miss a tackle on Greg Inglis and my other mates who are within the length of an arm to G.I just stand there and watch him get away to score. I can’t even beat QLD on the game! Haha. The players are quite unresponsive to your controls. They take a while to actually run after you shift the stick for him to run. If a player breaks the line you’re better off leaving the full back in AI mode to catch him. I guarantee that if you try and control your full back you won’t catch him.

I’ll close with some good things

There are a couple of cool additions to this game. The step is L3 stick in PS3 terms, don’t know and don’t care what it is for Xbox lol, but you can actually control which way you want to step, which takes away the risk from previous games of getting the ball down the flank, coming to the full back and stepping out because the randomization of the R2 button has made your player step that way. Has happened to me many times. When kicking, an arrow pops up showing you where your kick is going to go, which makes 40-20s a little easier. Also with the kick, your outside backs chase there little hearts out which is good. In the opposition red zone the cross field kick actually works, because your little digital outside backs run for it. I’ve scored a couple of tries from the cross field kick and I must say, the level of satisfaction I received from achieving that was huge. And that’s about it for the pros

All and all cons far out score pros. If Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a solid 9/10 I’ll rate this 5/10

The pros are a step in the right direction and I hope another league game comes out that is developed by EA

Still should be a good blast with the boys though

I’d say hire it before you buy it, you might actually like it. I can’t believe I’ve written this much about a game. Nothing else to do

Dragon Age is an exception. Comparing to the graphics of Mass Effect 2 it isn’t as good but Mass Effect 2 played smoothly on a Core 2 Duo with a NV GTX 470. Dragon Age on the other hand struggles at High settings without AA or AF applied.

Other than its steep requirements, it is a well written game.