Games: EA : Cricket 2007

EA : Cricket 2007

Labels: Sports Games on

[SGPhoto_2006_11_16_19_52_361163703188.jpg]

EA Sports' Cricket series has bumbled on for a number of years now, struggling to impress even the kindest of critics. Just like Tubby Taylor when he was on the rack in 97, it's been poking around at the crease and doing a woeful job of it. Some could blame pitiful development budgets or a dev team who couldn't really give a crap about some little niche sport from Down Under; but whatever the reason, EA Sports just haven't fielded a decent Cricket game in absolute yonks.
Finally, that's changed. Now, we're not saying Cricket 07 is the best thing since Herschel Gibbs dropped the World Cup, but there are enough improvements in this year's effort to make it a much more enjoyable game than the last few put together.
One of the reasons this version of Cricket works that much better is the decision to go with an analogue stick batting system. Dubbed the Century Stick, the concept is that it gives you an intuitive way of choosing where to play your shot - you just tip the stick in the desired direction. The degree of tilt you add to the stick influences the power in the stroke, so a gentle lean should theoretically just knock the ball away for a single, where a decided push results in a more forceful drive, cut, pull or hook and so on.

Howzat!
You also influence the shot your batsman will play by holding L1 to add loft (when attempting to hit the ball over the top of the field), or R1 for advancing down the crease if you decide to attack something short or slow. On top of that, there's also a foot selection option (which is thankfully an automated thing, unless you go into the options and switch it over to manual). This forces you to choose whether your batsman will play on the front or back foot, which again requires more shoulder button pressing. Ultimately, it's a bit fiddly to want to bother with, but at least it's there for those who are sticklers for detail.
Because there's only a couple of seconds when the ball is bowled to decide which shot you're going to play, pushing the stick to "hit" the ball is just so much more intuitive than having to remember which button on the controller has the stroke you want. The timing required in your shot has been made a little more forgiving too, so your entire team won't get out for zero the first time you play.
Running between the wickets is still just a matter of tapping the Circle button, where two taps will immediately make your batsmen push for a second run. Because of a permanent PIP display in the corner, you can always see if it's worth the risk. The AI is still extremely accurate in the field - we saw only one dropped catch after a week of play on the medium difficulty - but there are occasions when you get overthrows and fumbles which is good to see.
Your batsman also has a confidence meter that you need to monitor when he first gets to the crease. If you try to play wild shots from the get go you're more likely to get out cheaply, so a conservative start is needed to warm you up into a slogging machine.
We do like the fact that hopeless batting bunnies like Glenn McGrath tend to catch the edge of the bat more often, or loop the ball up into the air off simple straight bat shots. There's a much larger degree of error with the inexperienced batsmen, so you really have to work to get your runs on the board, just as those blokes have to do in real life.
Bowling, while serviceable, isn't nearly as much fun. Charging down to the crease and rolling the arm over still lacks any truly compelling gameplay hook. First you choose where the ball will pitch and then you wait for the bowler to reach the crease, upon which you press a button to bowl. If you time it too late and the power meter goes beyond the crease marker, it's a No Ball. That's about all there is to it.

Choosing which ball you're going to deliver and ensuring the field is in place is still the most fun part of the bowling process, instead of anything that you actually do on the controller.
When your bowler is all fired up - say, after taking a wicket or starting his over - you can choose from special deliveries that include Bouncers, Yorkers, reverse swing and slow balls, but more often than not you're stuck with the standard deliveries for the bulk of your innings. Why we can't decide to bowl a bouncer or slow ball whenever the hell we want is a major annoyance, although it's obviously designed so you can't exploit the more difficult to play balls.
When you consider that the action out in the field is all automated, bowling simply starts to get boring. You're basically just waiting for the batsman to make a mistake. The thought of bowling in a test match in an innings that goes for more than two days is too depressing to even contemplate.

Relive your Ashes dreams/nightmares, depending on
whether you're British or Australian.
Okay, so what else is there? Well, whilst you can load up just about any domestic or international competition structure you can think of (from the KFC 20Twenty to the World Series), a big chunk of Cricket 07 is devoted to the Ashes. In this official mode you can replay that amazing 2005 test series that took place in England, or go straight into the new 2006 series based here in Oz. It's just a shame that tests are so long and tedious to get through - and no you can't simulate an innings.

A scenario mode also offers you a number of small challenges to complete, based on highlights of the 2005 series. These mini challenges can be addictive - if only because scoring a century with a pair of tail-enders is the sort of underdog challenge us Aussies lap up - but it doesn't really feel like a lot of thought went into this mode. When your reward for finishing each scenario is the unlocking of the highlights clip that introduced it in the first place… well, there's not a lot of motivation to struggle through.
In terms of its visual style, Cricket 07 makes clear improvements on its predecessors. The game definitely looks more like a TV broadcast than ever before. The camera perspective has been given a tweak, most of the players are easily identifiable (which is a nice change) and the animations are mostly excellent.
Everything appears nice and crisp, although the stadiums and crowds could probably have done with some more detail. At least there's a nice depth of field blur to disguise the simplistic crowd animation. Cricket 07 won't win any awards for its visuals, but it does the job. What else can you really expect from a game that features a bunch of blokes standing around a big empty green field waiting for something to happen?

Character animation and detail has improved massively this time around.
For those that like to put themselves in the game, there's a Create-a-Player option and squad editor. You can go into some detail with your player's abilities, giving them very specific strengths, as well as choose a name for the commentary to use. The visual options are basic, but you can get some memorable results. There's no RPG element to your custom player though, so don't expect to develop his career.

Cricket 07 is a fun enough game for hardcore cricket fans, but it¿s still not the addictive, compelling, exciting game that it has the potential to be. The new Century Stick batting system is a huge improvement, so you and a couple of cricket loving buddies will have some real fun smashing the ball about in the limited overs games, but the bowling side to Cricket 07 is still too weak to make test matches worth ploughing through. If you¿ve hated these games for the last few years ¿ and you certainly wouldn¿t be alone in that opinion ¿ then it¿s worth coming back to take another look now that some effort has gone back into the game¿s development. There¿s still a lot of work to do to make this a truly engaging sports simulation, but at least you can still enjoy smashing the Poms out of the park with Adam Gilchrist and the Century Stick. Take that you Ashes stealing charlatans!

Games

EA : Cricket 2007

Visitors

Labels

Comment Box