Oh no! Rugby 18 demo looks absolutely awful

So there is good news and bad news. The good news is that we are getting a Rugby 18 title for Xbox One and PS4. The bad news is that it looks absolutely awful.

We all know that Rugby games are not top priorities for developers but knowing that we would finally get a glimpse of Rugby 18 at E3 in Los Angeles earlier in the month had rugby fans eagerly anticipating the event.

While Rugby 15 was an absolute and total disaster, Rugby 18 looks not much better despite three years of development in between.

EA Sports Rugby 08 was the last decent rugby title, before that we were blessed with the extremely enjoyable Jonah Lomu Rugby. Since EA abandoned rugby we have been left in the gaming wilderness.

Based on the first gameplay footage to emerge from E3, it looks like Rugby 15, and that’s terrible. YouTube gaming channel Sports Gamers Online uploaded a look around the menus as well as a few minutes of in-game action:

It looks dreadful and we need to face the fact that a small studio will never be able to deliver a rugby game that we want. EA Sports, has absolutely no interest as the game would just not sell outside of Ireland, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

We will still buy it and give it a go, but we don’t hold out much hope.