My battles with Sonic The Hedgehog and the Rugby World Cup

I’ve never played many video games. As a lover of the outdoors, I know that’s a good thing.

On the few occasions I have played on friend’s consoles, I found myself incapable of walking away.

My first true marathon session was when I visited friends living just outside of Amsterdam. The game was Silent Hill and I played it all night long after my friends had gone to sleep. It was a mixture of wanting to play on and a genuine fear of closing my eyes and imagining babies coming at me with knives that saw me continue.

My friends went to work the following morning and upon their return, I was still playing, cursing at the shadows, paralytic with fear except at the fingers.

Needless to say, not a lot of cultural insight occurred on that trip. Whilst I can certainly see the appeal of video games. I’m just grateful that my formative years weren’t taken up by this hobby.

For I fear I’d still be sitting in my dressing grown to this very day playing something like Grand Theft Auto and swearing to myself that was enough for the day and I really should be looking for a job by now and getting my own digs.

Playing video games, on the other hand, with my nephews is entirely different. It beats telling them my own concocted stories or trying to figure out their toys and the impenetrable rules surrounding them. They offered me an alarming array of video games to choose from and so my heart leaped when I saw Sonic The Hedgehog: Rugby World Cup 2015 Edition.

I must confess that initial joy turned to bitter disappointment the first time I played it with them. They chose England for me and they were Wales (their father is Welsh).

It wasn’t playing for England that irked me. Frankly, by the end of the game I was glad they hadn’t chosen New Zealand. It was my complete ignorance as to what buttons to press and in which sequence that frustrated the living hell out of me.

My lack of video game experience was brutally exposed.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get a handle on the game. They were unleashing special powers left right and centre, and in between shouting out helplessly how do I tackle or simply do anything constructive, I was reduced to sobbing at my complete powerlessness.

Their jibes that I was useless at rugby wounded me probably a lot more than they should have. It was just a game after all. But it was my bloody game.

That’s when I took the initiative. I was determined to become proficient at this game. For the record, Wales beat England 101-0 in their pool match. To all English Roarers, if it’s any consolation I took the loss very much to heart.

As my nephews were crowing to their parents and my wife about the humiliation they had inflicted on me, I was seriously boning up on the game. A feature instantly caught my eye: 2015 Rugby Championship Training Rounds. There was a feature for 2015 Six Nations Training Rounds but it wasn’t England’s pride I was looking to restore.

It came as a pleasant surprise that a lot of thought had gone into creating this game. The game may have been played by hedgehogs, armadillos, gorillas and I’m not quite sure what else, but the principles of rugby remained the same.

Moreover, the players you could choose from were scarily up-to-date. I thought Heinrich Brüssow was a throwback to the past, like when he received the man-of-the-match award against New Zealand in the year-that-cannot-be-named Tri Nations. Yet then I saw Michael Hooper and David Pocock as a possible backrow combination so I knew I was Back To The Future.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sonic The Hedgehog, the saga began in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, which pitted a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog against a rotund human aptly named Doctor Eggman.

The premise may seem simple enough but each character came with a varying range of attributes. Some had a surplus of speed, others had power and others still had an all-round blend of power, skill and speed. It became quite tactical in terms of the team you chose and the overall balance.

The Rugby World Cup 2015 Edition is no different but with important tweaks. Firstly, there are four categories to choose from: speed, skill, experience and power.

Take a player like Will Skelton. You select him at lock and so the skill category becomes relevant to that particular position. He scores quite well in power but does poorly in experience and speed and is a mixed bag in skill. His character is Vector The Crocodile, which is amusingly described as divided between being ‘bossy and easy-going’.

His ‘strong sense of justice and kindness’ probably accounted for his praising of the Highlanders’ pack but his ‘argumentativeness’ may have been copied from his coach, Michael Cheika.

Equally amusing but scarily close to the truth are the backrow combinations David Pocock aka Espio the Chameleon, Scott Fardy aka Nack the Weasel and Michael Hooper aka Charmy Bee.

The first is described functionally as a chameleon who is a ninja warrior but also as “the opinionated number one of the Chaotix”. He has “a militaristic discipline whilst being quiet and laid back especially when chained to mining machinery.”

“Confident in his skills, opinionated and self-obsessed, he revels in training and discipline. He is not concerned by danger, and often yearns to be face it in order to use his ninja skills.” Espio scores well in power, skill and experience but fades away in comparison when it comes to speed.

The second is a purple wolf-weasel hybrid in search of the Chaos Breakdown Emeralds but does not know their true power and merely wants to sell them for profit. He is a slick, sneaky and mischievous character who will steal the Emeralds for an easier job. Nack tries hard to outwit others but is held back by naivety and often fails. He scores fairly well in skill and experience but lacks in power and speed.

The third is described as the “scatter-brained funny-kid of the Chaotix”. He is cheerful, curious, playful – especially with his long hair – careless and greatly energetic. Charmy’s fooling around makes the rest look professional. Despite an innocent but often petulant personality, he uses his stinging speed to inflict pain on his enemies. Consequently he scores super high on speed and quite well on experience but falls off badly in terms of power and skill.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting. The individual positions and characters you select count towards the overall balance of your unit. Take the back row as an example. It won’t allow you to select David Pocock, Michael Hooper and Wycliff Palu as a unit because they lack in power and skill (notably lineout skill). You can scrape by with Scott Higanbotham at 8 but you fare better with Ben McCalman.

Similarly in the backs, Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley and Matt Toomua barely score as a passable unit, and the same applies if you substitute them with Will Genia, Quade Cooper and Kurtley Beale. They either all score well across the board but nothing special in any given category or they score highly in one or two categories but fall away dramatically in others.

When I tried the first unit, they were all quite solid but I couldn’t for the light of day get them to do anything extraordinary. Their special powers were their all-rounded play. Which is a bit like being told, your blind-date has no stand-out feature. She or he is just an all-round good person.

When I tried the second unit, through a fluke coincidence of tapping the right buttons I unleashed their special skills to devastating effect but most of the time Quade and Kurtley cowered out by the touchline completely removed from the run of play.

I tried other countries and was both disappointed and relieved to find that it was not possible to select a back row or indeed an entire team of Duane Vermeulens. I did find selecting Victor Matfield presented similar problems – albeit for different reasons – to Will Skelton and selecting his other partner.

The New Zealand back and front rows were problematic in terms of finding the right balance of speed, power, skill and experience and the partner for Aaron Smith – played by Sonic The Hedgehog himself – was equally troubling. The loss of Aaron Cruden, who could stand flat up in the line and take on the opposition defence, is a big loss but let’s see how Lima Sopoaga goes this weekend and whether there’s a party at Tony’s afterwards.

In terms of a review of this game, I can’t give much of an opinion of the World Cup side of things – my only recommendation is not to select England – but I was intrigued by the balance factor and the amazing likeness of fictional characters to real-life players.

For that reason, I thoroughly recommend you check it out for yourselves. I’d also be extremely grateful for any feedback or helpful tips more experienced gamers could provide me.

I feigned a headache and told my nephews I couldn’t play again that day but I did promise them I would give them a rematch. And maybe something about vowing their grins would turn into brooding frowns and how much pocket money they were willing to put up.In short, I need your gaming expertise. Pocket money’s gone up since I was a kid!