Surely after the efforts of the last few years, that can’t be enough? Or can it? EA have gone back to the drawing board after the Codemasters effort and have seen that a few things introduced to cricket games that could work for them as well. The first thing that’s noticeable is the four page leaflet giving you the low-down on all of the game’s controls. After playing for a little while, the controls will become second nature and the leaflet will have served its purpose. Whether for better or worse, the game is still aim squarely and cricket fans, with little or no catering to anyone who knows little to nothing about the game.
In terms of modes and stats, Cricket 07 doesn’t have much over its predecessor. You’ve got Play Now, International and Domestic modes. International provides the standard fare, Cups, Tournaments and the International tours that have been present since Cricket 2004, while most of the teams in the game were in last year’s addition. The Domestic modes cover England and Australia. You can play either a full season or the selected trophies/cups individually, which now include the Twenty20 tournaments from each region. The main feature that has been added is called “The Ashes”. Here, you can pick to play through the 2005 itinerary or the 2006/07 itinerary, as well as re-enact or recreate scenarios from last years gripping series. Most will involve you batting, with the odd bowl scenario necessary as well. You can create your own players and place them into International squads, though there are no restrictions on your customising options, so you’re player can have maxed out stats for all traits. It makes the mode feel slapped on.
More shots have been added to your batting arsenal
Strangely and disappointingly, EA have only managed to secure four country/region licenses. None of the Asian nations, most of the minnows and regional teams are reduced to made-up players. While the names can be changed and their corresponding stats are at least accurate. We’ll say this, if the budget for the game compromised the licenses for the sake of gameplay development, we’re all for it. In fact, we’re happy to report that the game has been improved over Cricket 2005, to the point where it’s actually playable. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but at least we have a starting point. The batting has been almost completely overhauled, with some innovative, intuitive and borrowed ideas added and the general presentation has been spruced up to more acceptable levels.
Where as batting was virtually an impossible task in Cricket 2005, it is much more functional and workable in Cricket 07. Previous cricket games have had you pointing an analog stick in the direction of the shot and pressing a button to play the shot. Now, you’re bat has been essentially mapped into the right analog stick. On the default camera angle and with a right-handed batsmen, push down on the right analog stick to play a straight drive, left to play offside and right to play onside. There are eight directions to play shots, with the option of playing off the front or back foot. You can choose for foot movement to be automatic, though it’s much more engaging, when you’re playing and you use the d-pad of left analog stick to control your foot movement. When you add a confidence meter that actually works, a timing meter that works similarly to the one in Ricky Ponting Cricket, lofted power that actually adds power, a charge button that works and a generally more functional physics engine, you have batting that works!
It’s a rather exciting moment when you hit your first six and come to realise that it has been fixed it, to an extent. It’s interesting to watch and behold how the confidence meter actually allows your batsmen to time the ball better. The new system is more intuitive than the old one but can take a bit of time to get used to. To be fair though, this is merely a starting point. You see, things like the amount of directions that a ball can travel remains. For example, the ball will only travel a certain amount of paths. While this can be overcome sometimes with immaculate (which is now possible to achieve, though rather rarely) timing but for the most part, you won’t be able to hit some of the lovely gaps or be constantly stopped by fielders. The new engine is much more flexible and variable but it will still feel limited. Apparently, there was meant to be a degree of power related to how far the analog stick was pushed but this didn’t really work as well as it could have. There is definitely room for more improvement but at least these improvements will be based of something that works, rather than fixing something that is broken first.
Unfortunately, while the batting has been a marked improvement, the bowling feels like it has taken backward steps. The real improvements are the fact that you can now bowl over or around the wicket on the fly by pressing left or right on the d-pad and you can now cycle through and change the field by pressing up or down on the d-pad. It’s quite handy and a welcome addition. The rest remains relatively unchanged. Press a button to start your run-up, position the point where you want the ball the pitch, press again to set, add swing/seam/spin and set the pace of the ball, before the meter goes over a line or else you bowl a no ball.
The presentation is more dynamic
For whatever reason, the bowling marker is very twitchy this year, so you’ll start off bowling a lot like Scott Boswell, rather than Glenn McGrath. Also, EA have not gone the route of Codemasters, in terms of mapping the bowling functions. Ricky Ponting Cricket had the different types of balls you can bowl such as outswingers or leg-cutters, mapped into the face buttons that more or less represented their “direction”. Cricket 07 has the different balls unintuitively mapped into random buttons, which makes them very difficult to learn. While at times the bowling will feel legitimate, for the most part, it is overshadowed by superior batting.
While Cricket 07 has improved in numerous areas, some issues hold it back from truly joining the realm of top sports games. The fielding has neglected the meter that was in Ricky Ponting Cricket that controlled the catching and throwing, though the fielding AI is sharp, fast and quite realistic. There are still numerous misfirings, such as wides being called when the ball travels between the batsmen’s legs and the stumps and the impossibility of getting an LBW decision. At least the amount of glitches is reduced significantly. However, the crunch again comes down to the AI in the game. While you are unlikely to be treated with as much distain as you have been in previous versions by the USA and Bermuda, playing against the better teams will prove to be a stiff challenge, particularly as a bowler.
As a batsman, the difficulty is primarily determined by the timing meter. As you increase the difficulty, the meter for the sweet spot becomes smaller and your timing needs to be all the more precise. However, lesser bowlers struggle with consistency and it’s noticeable. As a bowler, regardless of the difficulty, you’re only likely to have your good balls rewarded against lesser teams. We were constantly monstered by the likes of Hayden, Symonds and Pietersen. It became frustrating, because once the confidence meter had hit “full”, it seemed that we were dispatched with total ease, to absolutely anywhere that the batsmen pleased. The only solace was that it was much less likely that Howard Johnson, the USA number 11 batsman, will be belting your 150kph yorkers for six. Fielding AI captians aren't particularly bright or imaginative, as they only move fielders to where the ball was hit the previous ball. That's sure to work.
Graphically, the presentation is cleaner and the main overhaul in the batting animations has helped with the batting improvements immensely. Things actually look like they’re coming together. Camera angles have been changed around a bit but for the better. Some players look reminiscent to their real life counterparts but for some reason, we played and the real player models were replaced by some generic phony in the middle of the game. Despite an improved physics engine, the visuals are crying out for a next-gen makeover, with physics that can hopefully go much further than what they currently are. The crowds are still a bunch of lifeless cardboard cut-outs and the stadia look accurate to their real-
life counterparts but grossly under detailed.
The first cricket game to be functional from such a prespective
Sound-wise, there is an improvement over that abysmal job that was done last year. The music is more varied and includes Caribbean and Indian tracks. The commentary is much more accurate but limited in the amount of player names and the fact that you’ll hear 95% of what there is to hear after a couple games. There is no insight or real commentaries, just Richie Benuad and Mark Nicholas stating the bleeding obvious. Even though it is an improvement, the game essentially fails to deliver on atmosphere, with a dead feeling hanging around.
So where does this leave Cricket 07. Despite what the final score will say, we’re very glad to see the improvements that have been made. Even though there is still room for a lot of improvement, at least there are starting points, rather then points that need to be fundamentally fixed beforehand. While it will become obvious that the game isn’t particularly endearing as a single player game, especially full test matches, at least you’ll be able to get some jollies through 2-4 player six hitting competitions. People who are considering this purchase, can at least know that this game is at least functional, has potential enjoyment and can serve as a rain-break killer, though being a cricket fan is an absolute must.
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