Rugby Union Team Manager 2015

Alternative Software (the people that made the rugby challenge game) have just released a new rugby manager game. Given the terrible offerings we've had so far I feard the worst, but I have to say - I really like it!

Anyone else got it? Will be interesting to hear other people's thoughts on it.


I am only a few weeks into the season, so haven't experience transfers and contract re-signing, but I'm so pleased with it so far.

Positives:

Accurate database - the right players, in their right positions, with reasonable stats. You even get the picture of each player!

Fun in game management - I like the team calls idea, and they do seem to work and give you an influence on the game. For example you can make a team call to disrupt the opponents set piece, and it in variably leads to a stolen lineout. Also, you can call champagne rugby which often leads to a free-flowing passing move that leads to a try. There are defencive moves that seem to work too. This obviously isn't overly realistic - a coach won't just shout out 'right lads, let's steal this lineout!' and suddenly they do it, but it makes you feel like you are influencing the game, which is good.

Editor - obviously you don't quite agree with your players' ratings for your favourite teams, so it is very easy to modify more to your tastes

Negatives:

There is a lot going on, with a lot of drop down menus and choices to click. Takes a while to get used to, and is fairly busy

Do we really have to play the colt and academy team games?? Is there no option just to autoplay them? I know you just 'simulate ' the game and get the result, but it adds around a minute's worth of clicking/waiting per game, and gets a bit boring

So well done Alternative Software - a great start, and hopefully they can build on it over the years and give a truly awesome rugby manager game to rival Champ man 01/02!

Would you recommend it? Was thinking about getting it.

Are there any quirky special features such as if you bring on Jim Hamilton he gets a yellow card automatically, or Strauss mode where you can never finish an overlap, or maybe even a Jonathon Davies alert, "It's on if they go wide", if you're about to score?

Or maybe Andy Robinson mode when, if you play Lamont at centre and he doesn't pass the ball (which would have resulted in a try) the screen shakes as Andy Robinson punches the glass?

I would thoroughly recommend it, and has generally got good reviews elsewhere.

It takes a while to get used to, and the interface is very busy with a lot of drop down menus, but the amount of things you can do as a manager are staggering.

Saying that, you can automate a lot of it, and there is a tutorial at the start that gets you to do that.

You've really go to look after the finances too, and you are encouraged to develop young players.  I've not looked much into the latter, but your executive board falls out with you if you don't do it!

The player stats are generally fairly accurate, but I did a bit of editing.  Word of warning - do you editing first then play the game.  I think you might be able to update the stats mid game, but I couldn't work out how.

Cornell De Preez was worse than Leonardi for example, so I edited him to be a complete man beast now!

Matt Scott was OK but made him more of a calibre of player that he actually is.

The fitness stats are worth editing too - all the forwards have a fitness rating in the 10s or 20s (out of 100), which just isn't accurate!

I absolutely loved Champ Man, cracking way to spend ridiculous amounts of time.

Presumably of compiling stats on players you start with Mark Bennett, full marks in all categories, and work downwards from there??

I would love this, but query whether it's compatible with Mrs fES and Baby fES!!

funnyExiledScot wrote:I absolutely loved Champ Man, cracking way to spend ridiculous amounts of time.

I still play Champ Man 01/02 but with updated players - can point you in the direction of how to get it if you want! There's a dedicated community keeping the game alive.

Surely something like this is perfect for 3am when baby FES is up all night??

I'm afraid I'm too easily consumed/obsessed by such things. I had a bar job between Uni terms and spent ludicrous amounts of time on CM during that time. Given that I have NO time whatsoever these days to do anything, I will stay away for my health.

I can remember the random players who used to be awesome on CM: Neil Lennon, Danny Murphy (both at Crewe), Zola Moukoko, Ibrahimovic, Jorgensen, Lentini, Deco, Duncan Ferguson (!) (in fact Everton players were often overrated due to the designers both being Evertonian) etc. Happy times!!

Okoronkwo. Aghawowa. Saviola...

....Samuel, Ortega, Archibald, Hammell, Bakayoko, Alan Fettis, Salas, Ibagaza.....

Taribo West on a bosman...

No matter what team you went, you always signed the same players to start with!

Anyway, this is about a rugby manager game...

I think most mainline Coaches have the game! I certainly see most of them playing it on their Apples when they should have their eyes on the game being played in real time in front of them on the field

Am I right that this isn't available on Apple? Probably a good thing for my health and social life if so.

No I don't think it is available on Mac.

Not sure if anyone on here has got the game, but here are some tips for those that decide to get it:

- First thing to do - hire an Agent! It reduces the required acceptance when signing players / staff to 75%, so you save a lot of money with transfers

- Don't be afraid to spend money - I didn't actually sign anyone until a good few weeks in as I was concerned by a lack of money, but as long as you are making profit each week you should be able to sign some good players (within the salary cap)

- You can assign duties to your assistant manager, and I recommend doing this for your academy and colts games, as it gets a pain in the hoop to have to play those games too

- Be careful with your Colts team - you need to make sure there are enough players contracted or else you can't progress the game.  i.e. if a prop gets promoted to the academy you have to sign a new colt prop.

RDW I was about to question your judgement, when I realised this is of course a completely different game to Pro Rugby Manager 2015 which is dire. I shall take a look at this

Pro rugby manager looked completely awful and got worse reviews - this is significantly better and has received widespread praise.

There are obiviously some issues, but on a whole it is an excellent game.

Might look this up, thanks RDW

Now what are the chances we get a decent, FIFA esque rugby game in time for the World Cup, rather than the codswallop we got for 2011

I don't think we'll ever see an accurate rugby game for a console - rugby is just too complicated to play on a controller with one person.

There are plenty of fun games - I like the recent Rugby Challenge games - but all you need to do is offload like the Harlem Globetrotters and you win the game! Not overly realistic.

Back to RUTM2015, I completed my first season as Edinburgh and managed to win the Pro12 and sign Savea, Afoa and Ben Robinson the Aussie prop - totally realistic!

RDW_Scotland wrote:I don't think we'll ever see an accurate rugby game for a console - rugby is just too complicated to play on a controller with one person.

There are plenty of fun games - I like the recent Rugby Challenge games - but all you need to do is offload like the Harlem Globetrotters and you win the game! Not overly realistic.

Back to RUTM2015, I completed my first season as Edinburgh and managed to win the Pro12 and sign Savea, Afoa and Ben Robinson the Aussie prop - totally realistic!

Did you opt for Savea on the wing ahead of Hidalgo-Clyne or Beard??? That's just mad.

Is it possible to manage 2 teams at the same time like under CM2, so in theory you could hijack Glasgow and swap Strauss and Strauss, and maybe Cuthbert and Hogg, Coman and Harley etc....

funnyExiledScot wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:I don't think we'll ever see an accurate rugby game for a console - rugby is just too complicated to play on a controller with one person.

There are plenty of fun games - I like the recent Rugby Challenge games - but all you need to do is offload like the Harlem Globetrotters and you win the game! Not overly realistic.

Back to RUTM2015, I completed my first season as Edinburgh and managed to win the Pro12 and sign Savea, Afoa and Ben Robinson the Aussie prop - totally realistic!

Did you opt for Savea on the wing ahead of Hidalgo-Clyne or Beard??? That's just mad.

Is it possible to manage 2 teams at the same time like under CM2, so in theory you could hijack Glasgow and swap Strauss and Strauss, and maybe Cuthbert and Hogg, Coman and Harley etc....

It was a tough selection call certainly! Beard was punted to reduce the salary cap to afford Savea....£350k he's on!

Unforutnately you can only play 1 player - I did see some comments about that when looking at reviews.

Hopefully this will just be the beginning of the game, releasing new improved versions every season.

Since this is about a rugby game I'll just tell ye all I bought Rugby 15, where you actually play the matches not manage the team. Don't buy it. It's an abomination.

FecklessRogue wrote:Since this is about a rugby game I'll just tell ye all I bought Rugby 15, where you actually play the matches not manage the team. Don't buy it. It's an abomination.

Gutted to hear that, but I had a feeling it would be. It looks like the RWC2011 game rehashed with clubs in it. Its meant to be the start of a new series of Rugby <Insert year> games

The next in the series would need to be significantly better than Rugby 15 then, played it on a friends console. If you were rating it in the form of a player this game is like the guy you get when you are kicking off at 12.30 and come 12 midday only have 14 players.
Will check out that rugby manager game though sounds good would love for EA to make an attempt at an actual rugby game for the world cup or something with the games engines they use for madden and fifa and such they could have a great crack at it

I may give this a download , I'd much rather play a management game all day.

Have to say, I'm starting to get a little bored now.  Once you get into it and do a full season it is kind of the same old thing each day.

Maybe I need to take on a new team to freshen things up a bit, but I've got a world class player in the Colts and I want to see him work his way up to the main squad (they have to play a certain number of games to realise their potential - basically 2 seasons from the Colts).

It's also getting very frustrating because there is a salary cap (3.5M for Edinburgh) which basically means if you want to sign anyone decent you need to get rid of most of your squad players.

So I finally caved last night and bought this. Actually pretty impressed with it so far, although the interface is horrible and really needs a lot of refining!

Still not entirely sure how everything works, but having also been a major addict of CM01/02 the main thing that kept me hooked in that game was signing youngsters and bringing them through, so I like the idea of the colts system and am hoping it works well.

I'm also hoping that this will lead to a successful series of these games, with an update every year. The old championship manager games didn't take too long to go from being pretty basic, clunky things to being properly life destroying bundles of excellence, and this game is a pretty good starting point.

RDW - any idea what effect the different difficulty settings do? I'm playing on easy, but have no idea what effect that has!

My steam keep pausing the download and it's Wee weeing me right off.

Is this a buy on disc from the shop or a download game?

Either Ozzy, its currently a lot cheaper (£17.50 best I've seen) if you buy the disc, but I was impatient and downloaded it for full price on steam

http://www.alternativesoft.co.uk/RUTM/RUTM.html

If anyone is wondering how realistic this is, I'm playing as Edinburgh and I seem to give away penalties and knock the ball on CONSTANTLY. So pretty damn realistic.

Pro rugby manager 2015 is a bloody awful game.  I was on the original Digital Jesters forum when they were looking for researchers, I put my name down for the 4 welsh regions but didn't get the job.  The new game is exactly the same as the old game, even the music, except the database is all to hell.  While the game seems to have got even worse on match day.  Following the release of the first version of the game they opened up a forum (Digital Jesters) and used the fans to become researchers for the next release.  They will probably do that again next time.

Firstly Dan Biggar is inferior to Sam Davies in stats, which is crazy.  Tipuric is a blindside flanker, the only Welsh players they have gotten close to being accurate is the very big star name Welsh players.  Though the players who have actually moved to France are vastly better than the ones still in Wales, which is madness.   Most squad players they have just guessed at their abilities.  It's not suprising considering the game is made in France but it's frustrating when you know such basic things are wrong, and your trying to coach your team.

I've even had situations where Scott Baldwin who is only 26 talking about quitting the game and going into politics, while Dan Biggar missed 3 kicks in front of the posts only for Leinster to kick a penalty from the touch line from their own 22!

Finally the set pieces moves are wrong, you look at the display and select the move you want only for the computer to do something totally different to it, the moves are not actually synced up correctly.

The only 2 fun things they ruined were in the previous version, if you had a scrum you could use the scrum half to draw the blindside wing, drawing in the opponents wing, then the scrum half would pass to your unmarked wing and score.  While if you went to the finances screen and pressed enter and typed PotOfGold you could get £1 million in the bank.

What's left of that community is now on the Independant rugby forum, including many of the reserchers from the second version of the game.

I looked at Pro Rugby Manager a few months before Rugby Union Team Manager came out and I'm glad I read the reviews - it looked God damn awful.

RUTM has been confused for that game quite a lot, not helped by the Amazon link taking you to PRM instead when when you searched for Rugby Union Team Manager

So I was very glad to see that Rugby Union Team Manager was being released, and had very good reviews!

Both mine still don't work!!!! 

Why can't Steam have a contact line!

There's a forum for people to ask questions to the developers - I can't tell you what it is, but I'm sure you can find it!

i bought rugby 15 for xbox 360.... arrived today, and am vastly under-whelmed with it..really dissapointing

It's poor, I played 15 minutes on my X1 and its poop.

£30 down the drain

Course it is until EA actually makes one/if EA actually makes anyone they will generally be that way

Thankfully Pro Rugby Manager 2015 is priced at £6.99 in the shops now.