For years, EA tried, and essentially failed, to bring a decent cricket experience to the table, while the fun but horrendously buggy Shane Warne Cricket was only good for a rainy day. SWC did however possess the necessary foundations. The fruits of building these foundations were realised once RPIC 2005 was released. Unlike England’s Ashes victory that year, this was no flash-in-the-pan, as the game proved to work extremely well off a few good fundamentals and solid execution, providing a highly enjoyable game. Given that the foundations were as solid as they were, it was inevitable that the follow-up wouldn’t be too different from the original. However, some changes and additions have been made - some good, and others not so good.
There has been an extended training mode added to the game. Not only will you be introduced to the new features of batting, bowling and fielding, but you’ll also have Tony Grieg there to talk you through everything. It does come off as somewhat shallow, but it gets the job done. Unlike the PC version, the Xbox 360 version has a much better layout for the controls, and it's much easier to get through the training, as you won’t be fiddling with the controls, attempting to blindly figure out which control does what.
Ricky and the boys are back and shinier than ever.
In terms of the batting, it’s identical apart from two major additions. You have new strokes added to your arsenal, as well as three more dedicated buttons to strokes. The new strokes are attacking and lofted sweeps (which can be played in reverse), each with their own buttons. Furthermore, when the batsman's confidence is full, you can play a charge-down-the-wicket-shot. There has been an expansion on batting animations, so there are a few more variations on conventional shots as well. The new additions fit in quite well, and only add to the depth of the game’s mechanics. The biggest addition is the arc that appears in the fielding graph in the bottom corner, indicating the direction of your shot that you play. This was seen in Cricket 2000, but failed miserably due to utter mechanical failure. In 2007, with much better development methods and technology, this works extremely well.
The most advantageous aspect of the arc is that with the 360 pad you can now direct your shot with almost 360 degrees of freedom. This is excellent, because the player now has the ability to split tightly packed fields, something that has been virtually impossible in previous cricket games. It allows for much more freedom, but at the same time requires the player to play the correct shots with the correct timing, of course. It just shows how far cricket games have come, and this feature shines on the Xbox 360.
In terms of the bowling, the general mechanics are pretty much identical to previous versions. Cricket 07 would have actually done quite well to copy this, as it's the most intuitive set-up of any cricket game. Each face button controls the break or spin of the ball, and you can apply swing or flight after delivery. The major change is that now there is a much larger window for bowling at top speeds. Still, bowling can be a tad uneventful, or even easy at times. Fielding has undergone the most changes. You can now change all your field settings on the fly, and can now throw to either the bowler’s or the wicket keeper’s end. However, the catching and throwing meters have been changed, and as a result aren’t as helpful as in the previous game. They’re not as conducive to reflex reactions, making close-in catches rather difficult to hold on to. Also, we would have preferred the bumpers be used ahead of the triggers.
Apart from the minor changes, the simple fact remains that the game is very similar to its predecessor. However, despite there being similar aspects to both games, the minor improvements are for the better. For example, the AI is more realistic. When it is behind in a chase, the computer will start to hit out more aggressively - heck, they’re much less conducive to stonewalling and actually take the easy singles, unlike in the previous game. However, on the lower levels of difficulty and against teams of lesser ability, it is still too easy to bowl out a team for paltry scores and utterly savage their bowling attacks.
New shots are added to your arsenal.
The rest of the minor improvements are primarily mechanical, and make the game feel more refined and deep. You have the option of playing with "realistic" or "balanced" stats. Realistic stats are meant to reflect the teams in reality, with an attempt to reflect the individual’s abilities. Balanced stats attempt to make the playing field more even, so several players will be assigned similar stats. Still, some of the stats in the game aren’t exactly true reflections of the actual players' abilities. That, and there's certainly room for improvement, particularly where AI is concerned. Factors such as confidence should take longer and more effort to build, though we would accept the current levels if we were playing a short game. While the game is arcade in nature, we would like to see some leeway for proper cricket. That is, not scoring at over 16 runs per over.
Probably the aspect of the game that is most disappointing when compared to the original is the selection of modes. While you have the ICC 2007 World Cup and ICC Champions Trophy to play through, each with licensed players and originally announced squads, the other options involve setting up custom Tests, ODIs or Twenty20 series or exhibitions. The issue with the latter options is that you play with fictitiously named players. You can make new squads and rename players, but it’s a rather tedious process and the renamed players aren’t as accurate as their licensed counterparts. While there are various unlockables and Achievements, we were very disappointed that there's no mode similar to the Classic Matches mode, or even the Double Wicket option from the previous game. After a while, the game will feel empty.
The Xbox 360 version does have a saving grace, mind you. The simple fact that RPIC 2007 can be played against human opponents over Xbox Live elevates the game and genre to a new found level of respect. It shows that there are enough people interested in such a feature that developers find it viable to put in the effort for such a feature. While you’d be somewhat desperate to take part in a test match online, limited overs games are great fun, especially against a human opponent. While this feature is excellent, we did come across a little bit of lag, but that may have just been our connection at time.
Graphically, the game is not a huge leap over its predecessor. On the Xbox 360, it’s more detailed and more fluid under the right conditions, but for the most part it is merely an upgrade over the previous game. Animations are smooth and faithful, and the various stadia look good as well. The batting animations are most beneficial from this arrangement. In terms of player resemblance, this only holds for the official squads, and even so the majority of them only hold a slight resemblance. Furthermore, there is no real account for distinguishing characteristics, such as weight or beard length or even height. However, playing with the real players gives more atmosphere than the non-real characters, which in turn is still better than previous efforts in cricket games.
Even the digital Lara won't be upstaged.
In terms of sound, we’re rather disappointed - the sound effects and commentary have been pretty much recycled from the previous game. It’s cleaner, more accurate and houses the talents of Jonathan Agnew, David Gower, Ian Bishop, Bill Lawry and Tony Greig, but is not particularly discernible from its predecessor. It’s particularly disappointing that the commentators don’t use the real names in the World Cup and ICC Trophy as often as they should. You’ll only be hearing the names of the major players though.
Overall, Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2007 makes the necessary tweaks to elevate it to being better than its predecessor, even if a couple of the tweaks aren’t welcome. There's room for improvement, but as it stands, this team is well in place to deliver in future games, and it’s a lot of fun as it is. It does adopt an arcadey approach, but it comes off quite well for a second time. While players may not appreciate the ease of the lower-level AI opponents and the lack of polish compared to other sports titles, you have to remember that this game would have received only a tiny fraction of the budget enjoyed by a game such as Madden or FIFA.
Taking this into consideration, it's done very well. However, in general, we’re a touch disappointed about the lack of gameplay modes and, if you’ve got Live, the game's value increases quite a lot, especially once the AI opponents become too stale to bother with. We really hope that the game continues with a cycle of improvement, so hopefully the next game will be even better. If you buy one cricket game, Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2007 is the one to get.
Still good fun though.
. I wasn't laughing at the time 
Loading...
