Offline play is good fun as it takes away the poor AI and makes games far more realistic, but whether you’re able to finish an online game or not seems like pot luck due to frequent player disconnects. There is a saving grace in the form of multiplayer support, with the Xbox 360 version even supporting Xbox Live play. This then gives you an age to trundle along and win the match. So, Australia might score 190, but they’ll only have lasted 15 overs. Secondly, you’ll be able to dismiss the entire team in far fewer overs than is usually possibly in real life. Firstly, the AI team will score at a ridiculously high run-rate, no matter what type of match you’re playing. Opposition AI is almost completely attacking in style, no matter what difficulty setting you choose to play with. Thankfully, these fielding problems don’t ruin things, but it’s by far the weakest aspect of the game. Having said that, overthrows often result in the AI batsmen losing their minds and in turn produce easy run-outs.
It’s as if international cricketers were never taught how to back up the receiving fielder at the stumps. If you attempt to throw the ball to the bowler’s end of the wicket you better be damn sure that you’ve nailed it, or the ball will bounce past the pathetic player stood over the stumps, giving the batsmen easy extra runs. The end result is plenty of dropped catches and some horrific fielding. It sounds simple enough, but the timing bar appears suddenly on the screen and comes and goes in an instant. As with batting and bowling, fielding is handled by pressing a button at the correct time, be it to return a ball to the keeper’s or bowler’s end, or to try and catch a ball.
Cricket novices are able to play without any prior knowledge of the sport, but proper fans can work on their line and length, pick out weak deliveries and organise their field to suit the match situation.īowling controls and options really haven’t changed, but batsmen can now charge down the pitch (at the risk of a stumping) and fielding seems far more awkward than before.
It’s pretty simple stuff, but bowlers can bowl various different deliveries and batsmen have the option to move around in their crease, defend or go on the attack. Your basic batting and bowling controls are as they were, using a combination of directional stick aiming, timing and power bars. On the pitch things initially seem very similar. The lower difficulty levels practically make the game into a completely different sport, but they do allow your average cricket hater to have an enjoyable game. Any Brian Lara veterans will want to start at County or Test level, while newcomers can get some practice in the tutorial mode and practice nets. Other game modes include test matches, one day internationals and Twenty-Twenty matches, all playable at a difficulty that suits you.
Still, the World Cup is where the excitement is at the moment, so the official licence can’t be sniffed at. Of course, this makes playing in any of the non-official game modes rather strange as your sporting heroes lose their proper names, only to be replaced with rather blatant but not license-breaking titles. The big news this time around is the official licence for the Cricket World Cup, and this means that while playing in the official tournament mode you get all the correct player names and stats. Some spit and polish has certainly helped, but things are largely the same as they were – except England have become worse.
Now we’ve moved into the next-gen era and the legendary series has arrived on the Xbox 360 (as well as PS2 and PC). It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best option cricket fans had. In the summer of 2005 Brian Lara made a triumphant return to video games, with Codemasters’ game being addictive and highly enjoyable.