Worth a play but not much more.
The passing system in this, and like in the other versions, is a little slack. Every pass from the halfback (Scrumhalf) is as if you are lining up for a drop goal. There is no choice of flat passing. On the run, passing is a little slow. You need to pass well before coming up to a player who is going to tackle you. This can be annoying as in real rugby you can pass at the last moment and in a tackle.
KIcking is ok, probably the best feature of the gameplay. The commentary gets old and boring very quickly in this game. It repeats nearly every time you score and kick. The games AI also needs improvement. In the World Cup tournament I played, the computer scored every conversion and penalty. Now we know that Romania and Portugal etc won't have the skills of Australia, New Zealand etc but in 08 it seems they do. The rankings they give the teams don't really make any differences to the game. Playing as a top team does have a slight edge over the smaller teams however it is just the difficulty setting you choose that makes the difference.
Graphics are good in this game. The stadiums look excellent. One problem is that when they show the Allblack Haka, it is not in time. This was a fault in the last game and shows that they have just used the same engine again. The difficulty of the game is a little challenging and takes a while to get used to how to tackle and use the ball. The tutorial they get you to play doesn't help with much.
There is enough to keep you occupied for hours however once you have completed certain parts of this game you won't want to do them again.