Before starting a game for the first time, only the Play Now option is available and by selecting this, a tutorial can be played. This can be skipped by players familiar to the controls of the previous Rugby games, although it is useful to refresh knowledge of the buttons and obviously introducing new players to the controls.

All game modes are available once the tutorial has been dealt with. The game modes include World Championship, which is basically the World Cup, Tri-Nations, RBS Six Nations, and Ten Nations, which has the Tri-Nations and Six Nations teams plus Argentina as the tenth team. The Super 14 is included as well as European Trophy, Lions Tour and the Guinness Premiership, the English club competition. The Bledisloe Cup between New Zealand and Australia can be contested during the Tri-Nations as is now customary.

The World League is the game mode where the coach gets evaluated on his team's performances. The first task is to choose a division-three team and lead it to victory, and hopefully promotion, as there are four divisions in World League, Elite League and Divisions 1, 2 and 3. A World League Knockout Cup is also played and that features teams from all divisions.

The way to strengthen a squad is by using the transfer windows to recruit new players, and this is done by using the transfer points to pick up the players. Transfer points can be gained by scoring tries in matches, winning matches, playing home games - the higher the division the more bonus points are gathered, as well as winning the entire division and Knockout Cup. The total transfer points needs to be higher than the total salary amount of the players - otherwise the game is over. A job security meter is shown at the World League menu to show how well the coach is doing and also a statement of the season's goal, be it to win the division or get to a certain stage of the Knockout Cup.

New to this game is the introduction of impact players, by far the best players in the game. They are easily identifiable by the fact they have a star icon above their head for the duration of the match. Their role is to turn the game around in dire situations, essentially being the team's go-to men.

Offload passes are a new feature. Pressing the cross button when a player is tackled and has a cross icon above his head allows this, though sometimes the pass goes back inside instead of to a winger clear on the outside so a better option would have been to allow offloads using the usual L1 and R1 buttons to determine the direction of the pass and to lower risk of getting pass intercepted on the inside.

Quick lineouts can be executed by pressing square but one error was seen as one of the throws was to a player inside five metres of the touch line, which of course is illegal.

Another addition is the quick penalty, executed by pressing square; if 'quick penalty' is displayed on screen, often a tap can lead to the defending team getting further penalised if they are within ten metres of the player that taps the ball.

There are only three difficulty levels in the game, labelled Club, Pro and Elite modes. Beginners will find Club to their liking whereas most players are likely to start off at Pro. Once tactics have been discovered to best win games Elite is the natural level to go to.

The All Blacks are deservedly the top ranked team in the game but the mind boggles at the thought that England is highly ranked, the third best team in fact, fourth if the Lions are included, who themselves are second only to the All Blacks. Seeing as the World Cup was over in 2003 and England have done nothing to create the idea they are a top-five team, let alone top-three, one wonders why they are, in terms of overall stats, a great team in Rugby 06.

Using the Classic 2 camera option has the camera placed behind the team with possession, however an annoyance is that after selecting a punt for a penalty, the camera gets placed in front of the kicker so it can be difficult to see the sideline and a kick to touch may in fact get kicked to an opposing player. That the camera is not placed behind the kicker as in open play is astounding.

The try animations still get interrupted and often change into a different animation so why this dilemma still hasn't been addressed is quite disappointing, so a diving animation turning into a tackled-from-behind animation is irritating and inexcusable.

Another animation problem is when a punt in open play looks to be well past or short of a player, and often the fullback, the fullback seems to get the ball despite it looking like the ball was nowhere in his vicinity. Clearly this needs to be remedied in future versions.

The game has no replay save feature so those classic tries cannot be saved for the ages.

Sometimes the computer-generated statistics for tournament games seem unrealistic, for instance the first three games of the Super 14 saw the Crusaders beating the opposition by 40+ points, yet only one of those games saw a single bonus point for scoring four tries. Also the league leaders in penalties had over 18 penalty goals after just three rounds of play.

One good thing about the game is that it fully utilises the oft-unused right analogue stick. On attack, the stick can be used to perform a shoulder charge, a sidestep and a powerful fend. On defence, the tapping of R3 in a ruck creates the possibility of turning the ball over but that is done by using hands in the ruck so if the referee sees it he may possibly penalise your team and can send a player off.

Holding R3 kills the ball, and if the referee doesn't see it the ball becomes unplayable and a scrum feed is awarded to the team without possession - of course, a penalty may be awarded against you if the referee sees the offence.

Timing of pressing R3 is essential to success in this game, as is selecting the correct set play on defence and attack. The right set plays create holes on attack and fills gaps on defence.

Some errors include Matt Giteau as a right-footed kicker, which is quite strange since he is hardly an unknown. Also puzzling is that Conrad Smith's special attribute is that he is a speed merchant, whereas a more realistic attribute would for him to be a tackle breaker.

The graphics in this version are okay, and getting to the FIFA standard with a lot of players having great likenesses and animations resembling their real-life counterparts, though some of the players are still unrecognisable. Stadia are well done and are comparable to the real thing.

The soundtrack is again not something to write home about - the only saving grace is the D4's contribution to the game. The commentary is by Ian Robertson and NZ's own Grant Fox and suffers from the usual sports games dilemma of repetitive commentary, and at times Fox gets too excited, which those familiar with him speaking will find unnatural.