This is based on my beta testing and some aspects have been improved like bowling marker so I have edited that part in my review.
What do you want in your cricket game?
If you asked this question to hard core cricket fan he will mention these in no particular order:
1. Game play should be as close to realism as possible
2. The graphics should be nice and smooth.
3. Ability to play in different variations cricket has to offer
We have already seen big launch of Ashes Cricket 2009 few months back and even though new patches are coming up for it I was never fan of that game. The demo did not appeal to me and the game itself turned out to be dampener.
Mindstorm unlike Codemasters, do not have any cricket game which they could use as a base for development. This is the first cricket game they have developed and it already is showing the signs of being the first in a successful series.
The Graphics and Animations:
As you would have seen from the demo and system requirements, this is not a system hungry game. This means that graphics will not be that great. Compared to Ashes Cricket 2009 the graphics are normal. But this game does not have that bad graphics as well. The animation for batsman playing shots, fielding and bowling are neat and finished. You do not have fielders or keepers diving unnaturally to save balls and catch the catches. The batsman when playing slog shots though look ungamely. It feels as if the batsman is Dhoni of old days.
The balls swing and spin is nicely animated. In addition to traditional animations associated with cricket games, you will find a feature called "On Fire" while batting. The batsman who scores consecutive boundaries gets on fire and then you can see ball actually on fire when batsman hits them. Some will say its childish and very arcade like but I found it good addition. The users who have played the demo have complained that the bowler and ball speed does not look fast.
The hawk eye is shown when a LBW appeal is made and some may find it confusing when looking for dismissal. The reason is that it will show two angles, the front on and side on. In front on angle you will be seeing the impact and sometime believe it’s going over the top but the side on view will show you actually the real height of the delivery if traveled ahead than impact.
The Game play:
Alright, the most important aspect of any cricket game. This aspect though has been missing in all the games until now. Mindstorm though seem to have found the answer though. This game is not for a casual gamer who likes to slam 250 runs in 20 over’s and then simulate the bowling. This game will appeal to hard core cricket gamer. You will finally be using third man and fine legs in a computer game.
While batting you will notice that it’s not about slogging your way to good score. You will appreciate the rewards building an innings bring to batsman. The bowlers will test your batting skills with varying deliveries. If you are playing and missing too much then chances are you won’t last too long because bowlers attain adrenaline quickly and bowl you special deliveries. Don't worry part time bowlers do not have this power. The AI bats smartly. It scores at high rate in opening over’s, builds innings in middle over’s and goes for broke in last over’s. Sounds similar to original cricket ODI.
The umpire makes correct decisions 90% of times.
Game modes:
The game lets you play in three modes in offline mode apart from the online game play. You can play
1) In a league with different countries as other teams. You will go through a season playing games against other sides just like England's Pro 40 competition.
2) You can play knockout tournament similar to ICC Knockout Cup. The final of tournament will be best of three games affair.
3) Single player mode in which you can play 10, 20 or 50 over game against computer.
The batting:
Mindstorm has given you choice of 34 shots. You can play a normal along the ground shot, a lofted shot or a slog shot depending on the situation and field settings. Now even though the there are 34 shots but you will still feel that you are missing some shots. In addition to lofted flick on on-side you will see that back foot play is missing from the game. I still do not like batsman hitting fast bowler for slog sweep on over pitched balls. I would rather have on side flick as a replacement.
When you first start batting the batsman is unsettled but as you keep on accumulating runs the batsman confidence keeps on increasing. Your reward for scoring runs is increase in your batting level. There are 10 levels a batsman can be increased too. The down side of this system is that if you are batting then it really does not make any difference after level 3. So a level 3 batsman is similar to level 10 batsman. It's different story of you are bowling. I will discuss that later.
When you are hit on body or head by ball your status changes from Settled to Rattled with variations of minor, major and critical for next 3 balls the batsman faces. The AI will bring field in and if you do not play right shot chances are you will be out caught. If you get you timing though you can score some free runs as well. But harder the level of game the harder it will get to play shot once hit.
Another feature unique to CR is the placement feature. Depending on your batsman type (defensive, moderate or aggressive) you can use your wrists to place balls in gaps. The defensive batsman can vary there shots to 22 degrees and aggressive batsman can place it to 8 degrees. A good feature I will say but most of times the bowler is about to deliver the ball till you get time to adjust your shot.
Overall I will say I enjoyed batting in CR. The balls impact on bat makes real leather on wood sound. At first when you start you will get confused by the new batting controls but few hours in nets and you will be playing like a pro gamer. The batting is not as easy as in other games. But still against minnows you can score some good high scores. Some people found batting in easy mode tough than in medium mode. But having played for so many hours I will say easy mode is easy, medium is medium and hard is really hard. You will not get away with slogging in this game.
The bowling:
Bowling is really fun in this game. For the first time I enjoyed bowling in a cricket game. But let me warn you bowling is the hardest part of the game to control. The bowling marker had some really hard speeds to control initially but they have been fixed. And guess how many no balls I have bowled in this game. 0. Even when bowling marker was tough to control I bowled zero no ball.
As a bowler you can bowl normal deliveries. And if you are specialist bowler (7 or above points) you can bowl 1 or 2 special deliveries that you choose for you bowler. And yes the variation actually is variation. So a toe crusher is actually a toe crusher which wills York the batsman. In order to ball special deliveries you need to build adrenaline by making batsman miss the balls. If bowled correctly you can attain adrenaline in 4 deliveries.
As a bowler you will enjoy the challenge the AI batsman poses because of its constant moving around increase and adjusting the aggression to the game situation. The balls spin, swing and seam. But they do more while AI is bowling.
The fielding:
The players are awarded skill points. If a player has 3 skills points for example then place him in outfield and he will run slow, throw moon balls and miss catches. If your player's fielding skills are high like 7 then player then he will score direct hits (very very high percentage), not miss catches and even run fast if you have given him that skill.
All the fielding is automatic and only you can control the throwing end. So the only aspect of fielding you really control is field placement. You can use field editor to place fielders where ever you want. That means you do not have to depend on someone to develop a fielding setting for you, you can actually pick the player and place him anywhere on field.
The AI though hardly misses anything from inside the circle. Even players with low fielding skills hit stumps regularly.
Online Game play:
This game would have been instant hit in online environment but sadly it will not. The online game is reliant on P2P session and that is the biggest drawback of this game. If you found the controls hard in offline mode, you will find it even harder in online environment. P2P session creates lots of lag and it is very hard to get your timings right while batting and while bowling you will be bowling a lot of wides and long hops. Sadly long hops will hardly be punished by batter.
Let’s say you will overcome the difficulties posed by lag. But another big flaw in online game play is the actual hosting and joining the hosted game. The guys with routers will be tearing their hair out as you need to have ports 27000 to 27010 opened. The firewall and antivirus prevents the forwarding of these ports and even if you manage to bypass them by closing those most users will have to manually edit their network settings to open the ports online and that is big task.
Online game play for me is the biggest let down in otherwise very promising game.
Disappointments:
1) This game is ideally suited to be a perfect test match game, but lack of test matches is a dampener.
2) The game has no commentary. Although the commentary gets bit mundane after some time in all games but still it adds flavour to the game. It enhances the game playing experience and something which the developers should take care off.
3) The power plays and free hits are not yet implemented properly.
4) Lack of gamepad play. This should be made available as early as possible because most gamers love to use gamepad rather than keyboards. Current workaround to this issue is using XPadder. But not everyone will be able to configure it properly.
Overall Verdict:
Graphics and Animation: 6/10
Batting: 8/10
Bowling: 8/10
Fielding: 6/10
Overall Game play: 8/10
Features: 5/10
Online Game play: 3/10
Overall game: 7/10
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