Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii

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.

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.

Ashes Cricket 2009 on the PC

We’re reviewing Ashes Cricket 2009 at the moment. It’s actually pretty good, although we’re going to play it a bit more to check there’s no massive flaws that ruin the illusion.

There was a slower ball bouncer in the original Brian Lara Cricket which would clean bowl cowering batsmen every time. We couldn’t play the game after we found that. We had to leave the house and speak to people instead. It was horrendous.

So far, we’ve found that batting’s harder that bowling – but it always is in these games. Our World XI side got past 50 in our first innings though, which is way better than you usually manage with a new cricket game. Nevertheless, we do make one recommendation if you’re going to get the PC version of Ashes Cricket 2009: grow some additional fingers.

Between directing your shot; choosing to play off the front foot or back foot; and then playing either a defensive shot, attacking shot or lofted shot, you’re having to make use of at least one unreliable finger. Apparently you can move around the crease as well, but our batsmen have been more Inzamam-ul-Haq than Jonty Rhodes thus far.

Buy it from Amazon now if you can’t wait for our proper review.

International Cricket Captain 2009 review

How’s it work then?

You captain/coach either a county side, an international side or both. You train your players, select your team, make your bowling changes, tell them where to bowl, position your field, gauge how much to attack with the bat, decide when to take the new ball – pretty much everything.

You can even call Ian Bell a dick for dropping a sitter, although he won’t hear you, because he’s only a pixellated representation of Ian Bell and not the man himself. He will miss straight ones though.

Any good?

Yup. The International Cricket Captain games have been refined over time and they’re pretty decent now. We’d prefer there to be more long-term planning and less on-field decision-making, but that’s personal preference.

The fact is it offers a lot. You can train youth players in anticipation of using them six seasons down the line and you can then spend ten minutes moving your fielders around for the fifth over of a Twenty20 game against Derbyshire.

Graphics

The graphics are okay now and at least the highlights don’t take ages, like they did in one of the earlier versions. You see a bit too much of spinners’ run-ups in each highlight, but it’s all fairly snappy and the match graphics feature Hawkeye and some graphs. Everyone loves graphs.

Sound

Jonathan Agnew commentates. He didn’t get annoying in the time we played, but you can switch him off if you’re playing a longer stint.

Training in International Cricket Captain 2009

Bizarrely, considering that cricket’s such a statistical game, International Cricket Captain doesn’t go in for statistics in the same way that football management games do. We feel this is a mistake, as cricket fans are generally overfond of stats. Why not exploit this identifiable personality defect?

Instead, it’s all a bit TOO real. Each player has a host of attributes defining how they play, but these attributes are invisible. You have to judge whether your batsmen are any good on the offside by ACTUALLY WATCHING THEM. This is a bit laborious for our tastes. It’s very admirable making the game so realistic, but an option to see the players’ attributes in number form would be quicker for those of us with jobs and maybe even the odd friend.

On the plus side, you are notified when a player improves in some facet of the game now, so you’re not completely in the dark about whether your training sessions are having any impact or not.

‘Ah, Paul Horton’s one better at defensive shots now,’ you exclaim – totally unaware of how significant that one is. Is it one out of ten? One out of a hundred? Who knows? All that matters is that Paul Horton’s one better.

Verdict

If you’ve played a previous version to death (of your own social life), you’re unlikely to find enough here to draw you back to overly-obsessed solitary squalor. If you’ve never played, you should definitely give it a go. Training youth players for the Ashes bid in six years time is obscenely addictive.

Buy it from Amazon (it was only £9.50 last time we checked) or there’s a free download of International Cricket Captain 2009 available where you get a two day trial.

International Cricket Captain 2009 free download

You can download the latest version of International Cricket Captain for free here.

It’s a two day trial version, but you can get a code after that and play the full version. Or you can buy it from Amazon for just £9.50.

Initial impressions are that changes are minimal, but welcome. The last version was actually pretty decent and this seems a slight refinement of that. We’ve done a full review of International Cricket Captain 2009 if you want more info.

The trial version did completely freeze our computer when Australia took the new ball, but it wouldn’t be International Cricket Captain if that didn’t happen every now and again. Having the computer crash is what reminds you that maybe it’s time to start interacting with society again.

Ricky Ponting’s match-fixing shame

“So one thing I always do is I gotta run myself out early on – it’s much more fun being an Andrew Symonds or someone.”

Don’t fear, people. Ponting is talking about playing Ricky Ponting Pressure Play on the PSP, which is known as Brian Lara Pressure Play in the civilised world.

He also says: “The likenesses are quite remarkable.”

We can only presume he’s not talking about the PSP version.

Cricket Life 1 update

Those of you with elephantine memories may be wondering whether Cricket Life’s out yet.

It’s not.

However, their website has been updated with a fantastic picture of Mike Hussey.

“Okay, Mike. If you could just try and look a bit more like a retarded cow then that’d be great.

“Okay, bit more frightened…

“Bit more frightened…

“That’s it!”

Cricket Revolution screenshots

New cricket game! It’s not out yet though, so we’ve no idea how good it is.

It doesn’t matter really. If our short-lived, poorly-paid career as a videogame ‘journalist’ taught us anything, it’s that previews of games only need pictures.

Mervyn Athrapatta’s going along nicely.

We’ve rather unhelpfully shrunk this screenshot down so much that you can’t make anything out. If we hadn’t done that, you’d have been able to see that Kumar Sangappora’s vital statistics are as follows:

• Face: short
• Weight: feather
• Height: type one

He’s also Caucasian, unlike many Sri Lankans.

It’s Dad’s old ‘bowling several balls simultaneously’ trick – only this time it’s TO THE MAX!

Here’s the official website from where you can glean actually-not-very-much-more information.

International Cricket Captain 3 review

Rubbish. Okay, that’s a bit extreme. How about ‘worse than its predecessor’?

The graphics are better, but still bad. The whole point of this update is the presentation (nothing else has changed) so it’s hard to ignore. Before, they hadn’t made any effort, so you overlooked the rough appearance.

It’s like when someone’s bought some ridiculous new glasses to replace a broken pair. They looked stupid before, but now it’s as if they’re actively making a point of looking like a dick.

Look:

Rubbish.

And what you can’t tell from that screenshot is that each animation takes longer than the previous 2D version. You only watch the highlights to get an idea of what’s going on. Highlights aren’t the game. Highlights just keep you from the game. So the 3D highlights keep you from the game longer.

Oh and they’re jerky and hurt your eyes too.

Play the free Cricket Captain 3 demo, if you don’t believe us.

Don’t get International Cricket Captain 3. Get International Cricket Captain 2 or International Cricket Captain 2006 or whatever the hell it’s called. It’s only seven quid and it’s still the best cricket game available until they bring out one with more statistics than the entire history of the Wisden Almanack.