"The best one yet!"

7 may seem like an underwhelming score for the best game of a series, but if you've played every game then you'd see why.

As any fan of the "AFL Live" franchise would know, the graphics are never going to be sensational, due to irgurus and their lack of a decent budget. We all hoped Sony's new involvement in the games would help, but alas, it has not. Sony have just kept the series alive and exclusive to PlayStation 2 owners (woohoo!).

The graphics have been improved, the stadium textures and player textures have been increased noticeably, but we are all still disappointed because we still can't tell which player is which if it weren't for the number on their back.

Ignoring the poor graphics, the gameplay in AFL Premiership 2006 is a large improvement over last year's lacklustre pile of ****. Everything runs much more smoothly, and their are very few gameplay bugs, in fact, I am yet to come across any as of yet.

The features are good, we now not only have, "Quick Match," "Single Match," and "Season Mode," we also have, "Career Mode," which allows us to take control of a team through multiple seasons, playing through the draft, tradings and retirements, and earning experience points to spend on players to make them better.

The missions make a welcome return to the series, although there is a disappointing lack of them, no historical matches, they all seem to be from the past few years, if not just the last year.

The commentary is still poor, it is still bad cut and paste jobs, for example, "Kerr...tackles...Biglands," and "The... Eagles are... well in front of... Carlton."

Fans of the series know not to expect too much of irgurus and Sony when it comes to AFL games, but we all wish EA Sports would take over the series and actually be bothered making it. I mean... AFL '99 was a stroke of genius, and is still the best AFL game to date!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/24/06