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Rugby League Live 2 arriving this year

Australian developer Big Ant Studios to make sequel to 2010's rugby title.

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19 Comments

Australian publisher Tru Blu Entertainment has announced that local developer Big Ant Studios is currently developing Rugby League Live 2, for release later this year on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

A look at the new Rugby League Live 2.
A look at the new Rugby League Live 2.

The new game features licensed leagues and teams from the NRL, Super League, Cooperative Championships, NSW and QLD cups, Toyota Cup, and Australian, English, and New Zealander international championships. Other game features include a new tackling system, tactical passing, strategic defence, high ball catching, the ability to create custom teams and players, competitive and cooperative multiplayer matches with up to eight players online, a 10-year career mode, and a new experience system.

Big Ant, developer of Rugby League Live and AFL Live Game of the Year Edition, is an Australian game developer, specialising in sports, character, and racing content for consoles and PC. Tru Blu Entertainment is the publishing arm of Home Entertainment Suppliers (HES), a Sydney-based distributor of games, consoles, and accessories and the exclusive distributor of Mad Catz products within Australia. Tru Blu has published NRL Rugby League Live, AFL Live, and Rugby Challenge.

Rugby League Live 2 is slated for release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 later this year.

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awakeningland

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awakeningland

Can you lie and make Widnes a really great side please?

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tigerlegend76

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tigerlegend76

It's not fair to compare this to EA's games, they have been developing sports games for over 20 years now.

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UniqueNameTwo

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UniqueNameTwo

@tigerlegend76 They also can afford to spend $100,000,000 when making a game. NRL is a much, much, smaller audience than grid-iron or soccer, which is why EA doesn't bother. That leaves publishers like TruBlu to step in, and I'd guess they're no where near as willing to splash around millions of dollars as EA is.

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Lhomity

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Lhomity

Would be nice to have a decent rugby league video game for a change.

They really need to contract someone from EA with Madden or FIFA experience, start over from scratch on all their mechanics, especially defense, and get it right.

Then, improved player animations and likenesses (even if only NRL players). Benji Marshall needs to actually look like Benji Marshall. I don't care if the crowd looks stiff, as long as what's on field looks and feels good.

Annual DLC with roster and schedule updates would be nice too.

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Nintendo_Man

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Nintendo_Man

Anyone who buys this game should be banned from playing games for life.

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gameking5000

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gameking5000

@Nintendo_Man Why's that? Do you have a strong dislike for sports games or just think this game will bad since Big Ant are a small low-budget company and they haven't got a good track record.

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Nintendo_Man

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@gameking5000

Because i played the previous game (luckily did not buy). It was one of the worst games i have played in 20 years.

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boags24

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boags24

@Nintendo_Man So you're willing to judge a series based off one game?Yeah good on you, lets all just judge Mario off the original Jump Man.Pleb.

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UniqueNameTwo

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UniqueNameTwo

@Nintendo_Man RLL2 has been done from scratch (and you can tell!), so you should play it before you judge it based on RLL1.

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Poidad

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Poidad

enough with the rugby, how about another AFL game that is finished off, better custom seasons, better AI, better mechanics, more statistics, more features in general. Still they do make the games I tend to play the most, like international cricket. But like robertwarnes91 said, i do keep going back for more backhanders!

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justincrdable

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justincrdable

@Poidad Because AFL is a ladies game

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TBoneTony

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TBoneTony

I think that Big Ant Studios is a good developer that has potential.

Even though I thought that AFL live lacked a bit of polish, it was way better than other AFL games in the last 20 years.

I do hope to see what they can make out of the International Cricket game that I heard that they were working on.

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quaggabones

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quaggabones

this is for PS2 right?

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robertwarnes91

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robertwarnes91

I can't believe those jokers are making yet another Rugby League game.We're like a weak house wife who keeps going back to her abusive husband. "Oh things will be different this time, he loves me. He didn't mean to hit me". And she goes back to him and it's the same trash. "I hit you, because I love you."

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wombatboy94

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wombatboy94

They need to get to the EA standard or even the 2k standard before they can be taken seriously. Rugby League Live was a terrible game.

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UniqueNameTwo

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UniqueNameTwo

@wombatboy94 Ok, you need to buy as many copies of the game that EA or 2k expect to sell, so they've got the money to do that.

Oh wait, even if every NRL fan in Australia bought a copy each, that would still be far short of the number of customers for Madden or FIFA!

A popular grid-iron game will sell 2 million copies with ease, but if a NRL game sold even just 100,000 copies, it would be a record-breaking event!!! There's just not a giant world-wide market for league games, which is why EA doesn't bother with them.

This is a locally produced game about a local sport for a local audience, you can't really expect them to spend $100M making a game that has no possible way of making the money back.

Local sports games are done on a tiny budget (probably less than 1% of what EA would spend), so it's pretty darn impressive that they even make it to the EB games shelves in the first place.

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wombatboy94

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wombatboy94

@UniqueNameTwo Yeah fair enough mate. But there was something wrong with that last game. I do understand that it is a smaller market, I just want some quality control when I'm spending my hard earned on a game I'll get disillusioned with in no time at all. I'm not saying they should bankrupt themselves but need to iron out some of the issues. I understand it's not going to be an EA or 2k experience but something in the ball park especially when it comes to the physics of the game would be nice

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UniqueNameTwo

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UniqueNameTwo

@wombatboy94 Yeah, no one will argue that RLL1 was a decent game, even TruBlu and BigAnt would probably tell you that they screwed up big time if you asked them in private... but since then they did a great job on the AFLL game-play (though, not good graphics or game modes, which RLL2 does seem to have!), this new Rugby has been done from scratch and they seem to be trying to redeem themselves with a quality product this time, so I'll give them a 2nd chance.

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shuffles88

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shuffles88

@wombatboy94 it really was. rugby challenge had a lot of potentail but was dumbed down like crazy. fingers crossed this time

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