Entries Tagged as 'Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii'

Freddie Flintoff’s Powerplay Cricket – press release timing failure

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and become an integral player for England in this fast moving, high scoring arcade cricket game.”

That should perhaps read:

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and engage in long, soul-destroying rehabilitation programmes that are ultimately unsuccessful. Slowly come to accept that your days as an international cricketer are behind you, even though you’re only 32.

“Now features Crying Into Your Puma Pillowcase While Having An Existential Crisis mini game.”

You can order it in advance and still have time to waterproof your Nintendo DS so that your salty tears of sympathy don’t knacker it up for when you want to play Club Penguin.

International Cricket Captain 2010 review

The 2010 version of International Cricket Captain is out. It’s a good game, but pretty similar to the 2009 version really. Our ICC 2009 review should tell you everything you need to know if you’ve never played the game before.

Other than that, we want to voice a gripe. To be clear, this is borne of playing this game for many, many hours, so it’s not a diss. Our gripe is with the micromanagement.

It feels a bit like two different games. There’s the side of it where you’re signing and training the players, managing the club and selecting the team. Then there’s the side of the game where you’re telling the bowlers where to bowl and setting the field.

We like the first part. We don’t like telling Steven Finn to bowl short and straight for two different batsmen every single time he comes on to bowl. It gets boring. Nor can we bothered changing the field by the time we get to 2015 – but we STILL want to see whether our young fast-bowling all-rounder is going to turn into Garry Sobers or not and we endure endless matches, going through the motions with our match orders in order to find out.

Is this a review? Not really, but we feel a bit better now.

Buy ICC 2010 here or download the free two-day trial.

Still not sure why we did that

We did our live review of International Cricket 2010 on Twitter. Ceci Masters kindly documented the review/mental breakdown in full and it can be seen here.

If you want to keep tabs on our ongoing descent, you can follow us @TheKingsTweets. We probably won’t be doing another live review of International Cricket 2010 though, we’ll say that much.

International Cricket 2010 on Twitter

Last night, we did a live review of Codemasters’ new game International Cricket 2010 on Twitter. We played a Twenty20 match as Pakistan and basically got battered.

Anyone interested in live Twitter reviews of cricket computer games can follow us again from about 7pm tonight when we’re going to have a go at day one of the Ashes.

This is perhaps the dorkiest thing we’ve ever done and we’re a massive, massive dork anyway. A live Twitter review of a cricket computer game. Even mum doesn’t think we’re cool.

Follow us on Twitter. Reply to our auto-updates and then marvel at how we don’t respond for a full week.

International Cricket Captain 2010 free download

International Cricket Captain 2010 is now available for download. You get a two-day free trial. Or you could just buy it from Amazon.

A spectacularly aggressive field with the score at 76 for 7

For the cheapskatey among you – which is pretty much all of you – you can get last year’s version for under £6. The 2009 version has the added benefit that you can’t choose to play as an Australian domestic team. International Cricket Captain isn’t about choosing from loads of LS and RF bowlers. It’s about wondering how best to combine your RFMs and your RMFs.

IC 2010 video preview

Massively disappointed that this isn’t an International Cricket Council backstab simulator.

That joke worked better before we realised it was ‘IC’ and not ‘ICC’.

We get a penny every time a new person watches this. We’re thinking about buying ourself some crisps later in the year.

To be honest, we’re only putting it up so that marketing people stop emailing us.

Ashes Cricket 2009 Wii review

The Wii version of Ashes Cricket 2009 is quite different from other formats. Having played both, we’d also say it was worse.

Batting technique

Don’t imagine that you’ll be playing hooks and drives. What you will actually be doing is carrying out a pendulous swing as if you’re putting a golf ball. Your on-screen batsman will then do all the dynamic swivelling and swishing on your behalf.

There’s an automatic aim. If you switch it off, you’ll only aim badly and get distracted, so you leave it on. However, you then feel a bit disconnected from proceedings, so that’s no good either.

Bowling technique

It responds to speed, but again, it’s a robotic pastiche of the real movement. This time it’s more like casting a fishing line if you didn’t have elbows. You can add swing or spin by rotating the controller as you bowl, kind of like bowling a cutter.

Verdict

It’s just hard to feel involved. Playing against another player is fun, in the way that playing against your mates on a Wii game is pretty much always fun. We’d recommend Ashes Cricket 2009 on one of the other formats though, to be honest.

Howzat internet cricket game launched

We did a preview of Howzat a few weeks ago. Just to let you know, it’s live now, so you can give it a go for yourselves.

It’s free, if that’s what you’re wondering.

Play Howzat and let us know what you think.

Ashes Cricket 2009 video game review | PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Ashes Cricket 2009 is an action cricket game, as opposed to a strategy game. It’s probably the best cricket game going of that type.

Batting

Weirdly, batting’s actually better than bowling. In previous cricket games, batting has largely been about getting frustrated and smashing the joypad because your idiot batsman set off for a run when the ball was in the keeper’s gloves or because you finally missed a yorker after facing six overs of them. In Ashes Cricket 2009, there’s none of this. More importantly, it actually feels like real batting.

The biggest compliment we can pay this game is that it really helps if you know a bit about cricket. For any given delivery, you have three decisions to make:

  1. Front foot or back foot
  2. Defensive shot, attacking shot, lofted shot or ‘using your feet’
  3. Direction of shot

Your margin for error varies according to how sensible a shot you’re playing. Aim a drive at a wide outswinger or play against the spin and you’d better get your timing bang on. Play a straight half-volley back past the bowler and it’ll be much easier to time. The upshot is, you look at the field and weigh up the percentages. It’s like actually playing cricket, only you’re not unfit and uncoordinated. Not until you get to the tail anyway.

Equally important is that the game doesn’t automatically punish you if you play a crap shot. Edges might not carry, mishits sometimes evade fielders. It all adds to the sense of realism.

Poor footwork there - you can tell, because it says it in writing

Bowling

To be honest, bowling is where Ashes Cricket 2009 falls down, which is a shame, because it promises a lot. There are loads deliveries on offer and it depends on the bowler and the playing conditions whether you can use them or not.

The bowling mechanism is good as well and at first you feel it’s just as good as the batting. It feels like you’re working the batsman over, trying to set him up. You’re bowling to your field and all’s going well. Then suddenly, it all goes mental.

I don’t know what it is, but after about eight overs, the opposition batsmen engage the long handle and switch off their brains. The ball flies to all parts, there’s a run-out every three overs and there’s NOTHING you can do about either of those things. At that point, it’s impossible to suspend disbelief and that’s no good.

Fielding

We’re shite at it. For catches, the ball approaches a fielder in slow motion and all you have to do is press a key at the right moment, as indicated by a red, amber or green colour around the ball. We favour the red immediately after the optimum green.

Is it worth buying?

We’d say so, yes. Twenty20 matches are largely immune to the demented slogging when you’re in the field, so that’s not so bad. Plus, you then get to gauge a run-chase, which is where this game’s at its best, because you’re constantly balancing risk and reward; picking your times to go over the top and making sure you score off every ball.

You can get Ashes Cricket 2009 from Amazon for not a huge amount of money.

Howzat free online cricket game preview

We’ve had a quick look at the new free online cricket game Howzat, which is due to be unveiled shortly. We’re giving it the royal seal of approval.

Gameplay

It’s a player v player action game, as opposed to a management sort of affair. Batting is largely as you’d imagine: you aim in your chosen direction and then execute either a normal or a lofted shot. Timing is key.

There’s a quite a neat system for the bowling. You aim where to pitch the delivery using a cursor and then you stop a pointer on a meter to decide what kind of ball you’ll deliver. The ingenious part is that the meter is divided into three sections for three different deliveries, but within each of those sections, there’s a range for pace – so you can deliver a slow, straight ball or a fast away-swinger by pressing the key at different times.

It’s five overs per innings. We got battered in our test game, but we were playing one of the guys who’s made the game, so we don’t feel too bad. We hit a couple of sixes and got a few wickets.

Customisation and longevity

So far, so short-lived. The big selling point in our eyes is the fact that you’ll have your own team. You can change all the players’ names and change the kit that they wear, but you can also develop them. When you play well in a match, you’ll earn experience points and you can then allocate this to your players as you see fit. As players level-up, bowlers will get quicker and swing or spin the ball more and batsmen will time shots better and hit the ball harder. Fielders will become less spazzy.

Yorker spammers

Anyone who’s played a cricket game will know what this means. If you need convincing about this game, you’ll be reassured to know that measures are being taken to counteract this tactic, which should ensure a good, rounded cricket game that you’ll be playing for some time.

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