Cricket has never had the mass appeal of most sports, in terms of the games market anyway. With low-popularity in the USA and Japan, the only viable selling areas are the UK and Australia. It is then surprising that Electronic Arts have been producing cricket simulations for almost a decade, especially when other sports such as rugby were neglected for so long.

Cricket 2005 has naturally been touted by EA as being the definitive version of the series with ‘intuitive controls‘ and the usual exponential number of motion captured animations, that you never really see. With the Ashes Series between Australia and England coming up this is a big release for EA in those territories, but it seems like a work in progress still.

Gameplay

Although the game of cricket is pretty much equally weighted between batting and bowling, the batting area of the game is far harder to achieve successfully. The main problem is that the player must be able to play a wide variety of shots, aim these shots and be able to time the shot correctly. One solution is to take the timing out and just go for directional shot-selection, with random aiming. Electronic Arts have attempted to tackle the whole lot at once, with limited success. Their basic solution was to use the analog stick to select the type of shot with the A and B buttons selecting the use of the front foot or back foot respectively. Now this does work well on the basic level, but unfortunately the unforgivingness of the timing system in Cricket 2005 has let them down in this respect. Even on the easiest difficulty the player has to play tenth of a second-perfect shots, or end up with a very small innings.

What compounds this problem is that, unlike the excellent Rugby 2005, Cricket 2005 has no proper training mode. This makes the game more trial and error than anything else, although there is a commentated training mode, it only really points out what’s wrong – not what the best technique is. This is frustrating, and will often undo any work done when fielding. The bowling is far better executed in Cricket 2005, with the ability to select a type of delivery quickly and easily, aim where the ball will bounce and put swing/spin on the ball. It can be a little harder for players new to the game to understand where to pitch the ball, but as with batting it’ll end up as a trial and error affair.

Essentially there are two types of matches you can play, limited overs (an over being six deliveries from a bowler) or a test match (played over four or five days). Now the limited over games, otherwise known as one day matches, are well executed and enjoyable to play. The same would go for the test matches, if they didn’t take around six or seven hours to play. Now this would be okay if you could save the action mid-match, but naturally EA neglected this point – making it nearly impossible for anyone to complete a test match, unless they have no social life to speak of.

The best part of Cricket 2005 has got to be the multiplayer, especially the cooperative modes. This works great, as you bat in pairs in cricket, allowing you and a friend to build a a batting partnership together, and to argue who ran who out. The versus modes aren’t as good however, mainly as the game isn’t really ‘pick up and play‘ which is a shame for a sports title.

Graphics / Presentation

As you’d expect from a game from EA Sports, the game presentation is first class. Similar to the ESPN games, the matches are presented like a TV feature with commentary from the legendary Richie Benaud. They have also featured such things as the third (television) umpire, to decided run outs and catches along with a visual way of checking for leg before wicket (LBW). One thing that is missing though is the Hawkeye technology, which is the most effective way of showing LBW and is now commonplace for most TV cricket presentations.

Unfortunately the graphics aren’t so good, especially for a game released at this time in the Xbox’s life, once again compounding the opinion that the game was rushed out for the Ashes. There’s a relatively good amount of detail in the game, for example you’ll be able to recognise your favourite players, but it’s all really unpolished. The flat, pixellated textures look shabby and hark back to the days of Tomb Raider on the Sega Saturn, in terms of visual quality. The player animations, especially when fielding, are wooden and often are executed incorrectly – which is only funny the first few times.

Cricket 2005 Xbox Screenshot

Cricket 2005 Xbox Screenshot

View all Cricket 2005 Xbox Screenshots in the XBS Gallery

Audio

The menu music is the usual mixture of indie rock that EA seems to really dig at the moment, which is fine depending on your taste of music. Unfortunately they really, really screwed up on the commentary. It’s not that the soundbites are bad, but they’re mis-timed and mostly talk about things totally unrelated to what’s going on. For example, Richie Benaud will start talking about the history of test cricket in the middle of a one day match, which is just plain confusing.

Replay Value

If you have the time to put into the game, it’ll last you ages with plenty of modes, teams and competitions. For the average gamer however it’s likely to last a very short amount of time due to boredom.

Overall Score

Overall Score: 6.7/10 [not an average]

Additional Comments

Cricket 2005 could be so much better than it actually is, and although I put in a good 20 hours when reviewing the game I never got much enjoyment from it. I would only advise this for hardcore cricket fans, and even you guys might take your own cricket bat to your TV in frustration.

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