EA Sports Cricket 2007 (PC) Review
The 2007 edition of cricket world cup is just round the corner. While the teams prepare for the start of their world cup campaign, there could not be a better time to do a quick review of latest EA Sports offering for the billions of cricket fans across the world. While watching your favorite cricketers battle it out for the ultimate prize in world cricket, you'll often feel the urge to be at their place and experience it on your own. That is where a game like EA Sports Cricket 2007 comes in handy and allows you to go through all the anguish and glory witnessed by those cricketers.
This edition of the game, released days before the beginning of The Ashes comes in a 2CD pack. The installation is straight forward and usual EA Sports setup. There is nothing extraordinary here. Once the game is installed, you get down to the business and a serious one at that. You’ll be greeted with another customary EA Sports Cricket interface. No shocks here and no visible changes from the last edition either. The interface is good, clean, simple and easy to navigate though sometimes you get the feeling that there’s no way you can reach certain parts with that keyboard of yours. It is indeed frustrating but the good old mouse comes to the rescue.
[BREAK=Batting & Bowling]
Now, on to the game play. This surprisingly is a lot better than any of the earlier editions. At a time when none of us expected EA Sports to better this area after they failed to do so in all their previous attempts, it certainly came up as a pleasant surprise. It is not to say that the game play is perfect. Far from it but at least it’s a good step forward. In simpler terms, game play in EA Sports Cricket 2007 has improved. The improvement can be seen in all three areas of the game – batting, bowling and fielding.
The batting and bowling control remains almost unchanged from the last edition. What has changed is the way they work. As a batsman, you can select your shot direction, back foot or front foot and the power behind that shot. It’s far easier to play the game with a gamepad where you can use one analog stick to determine the shot direction and power while using the other for controlling the player’s foot movement. This new control system is termed by EA Sports as the ‘Century Stick’. As a bowler, you select the type of ball you want to bowl, the spin, the direction and the pace. You press the keys as shown on your monitor screen for the type of ball to bowl. Special deliveries like Yorker and Bouncer come up from time to time when the batsman is low on confidence. Some bowlers also have their own special balls to bowl like the ‘Doosra’ for Harbhajan Singh.
[BREAK=Fielding & Sounds]
The fielding has improved as well. Now there are three modes of fielding instead of two. There’s the manual fielding, semi-automatic fielding and the fully automatic fielding. You can decide on field placements for your team men. In manual fielding, you have to do the running and the throwing all by yourself. In semi-automatic, added in this edition, the computer will do all the running and field the ball. You just have to decide on which end to throw and the power behind your throw. Throw it too fast too soon and there will be over-throws. It looks brilliant. In fully automatic mode, the computer the field the ball and will decide on which end to throw at. This mode is boring as hell and I’d prefer the semi-automatic mode to start with. Once you’re comfortable with it, just change over to manual mode and you’ll have a greater control over fielding.
The sound effects and background music seems to have improved though only slightly. The EA Trax system has been incorporated well into the system. The songs from various genres play in the background while you’re browsing the interface or the pause menu. The sound effects include crowd chants, the sweet sound of the ball hitting the bat and players encouraging each other. The crowd effects actually vary according to the region you’re playing in and from test matches to ODI. The commentary is well done and improved but gets repetitive after a few matches. The commentary is potently handled by English cricketer, Mark Nicholas and the legendary Richie Benaud.
[BREAK=Graphics & Game Modes]
There’s nothing to say about the graphics. It’s still not up to the mark of games such as NBA or FIFA but is still a benchmark for other games in its class. It’s a fact that games like Cricket and Rugby are meant for only a very small amount of world population and gaming companies such as EA Sports and Codemasters do not allot a huge budget for these games and that’s understandable. The teams that work in such games are much smaller in comparison. With all these things in mind, whatever they’ve done in the graphics department for Cricket 2007 is praiseworthy.
EA Sports Cricket 2007 comes with many different game modes which ensure replay ability. Apart from the usual ones like The Ashes, World Cup and World Series, you can take part in the fully licensed version of Twenty-20 Cricket. This game introduces a range of bats from brands like Gray-Nicolls, Kookaburra, Puma and Slazenger. The teams for Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand are fully licensed while that is not the case for the other teams. You’ll have to live with weird and misspelled names like S. Gungly, R. Dravia, V. Seway and S. Tendehar which is a real shame. The licensed teams have correctly spelled names and the used models better represent their real life counterpart. The number of 3D modeled stadia is less and only The Eden Garden from Kolkata feature among Indian grounds.
[BREAK=Conclusion & Ratings]
It’s time to conclude my review with ratings for each category I touched up on. The game is okay sort of a game which has improved over time. Finally after so many attempts, EA Sports have been able to come up with a decent all round game. Add to the fact that its World Cup season, I expect the game to sell good in major cricket playing countries like India, Australia and England. The next cricket release from Codemasters still has some more time to go before it hits the shelves and hence it’s a win-win situation for EA Sports. I’d recommend this game to all cricket lovers and for the first time, I’d say it’s worth your money. Get the game and relive the moments from the World Cup again and again.
Ratings:
• Graphics – 7/10
• Sounds - 6/10
• Commentary - 8/10
• Gameplay - 7/10
• Overall - 7/10
System Requirements: Windows 2000/Windows XP or higher, 1 GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, Graphics card with 32MB RAM, 1.2GB Hard disk space.
Test System: Windows XP SP2, 2.8GHz P4 CPU, 1GB DDR400 RAM, nVidia 6600GT AGP graphics card.
The 2007 edition of cricket world cup is just round the corner. While the teams prepare for the start of their world cup campaign, there could not be a better time to do a quick review of latest EA Sports offering for the billions of cricket fans across the world. While watching your favorite cricketers battle it out for the ultimate prize in world cricket, you'll often feel the urge to be at their place and experience it on your own. That is where a game like EA Sports Cricket 2007 comes in handy and allows you to go through all the anguish and glory witnessed by those cricketers.
This edition of the game, released days before the beginning of The Ashes comes in a 2CD pack. The installation is straight forward and usual EA Sports setup. There is nothing extraordinary here. Once the game is installed, you get down to the business and a serious one at that. You’ll be greeted with another customary EA Sports Cricket interface. No shocks here and no visible changes from the last edition either. The interface is good, clean, simple and easy to navigate though sometimes you get the feeling that there’s no way you can reach certain parts with that keyboard of yours. It is indeed frustrating but the good old mouse comes to the rescue.
[BREAK=Batting & Bowling]
Now, on to the game play. This surprisingly is a lot better than any of the earlier editions. At a time when none of us expected EA Sports to better this area after they failed to do so in all their previous attempts, it certainly came up as a pleasant surprise. It is not to say that the game play is perfect. Far from it but at least it’s a good step forward. In simpler terms, game play in EA Sports Cricket 2007 has improved. The improvement can be seen in all three areas of the game – batting, bowling and fielding.
The batting and bowling control remains almost unchanged from the last edition. What has changed is the way they work. As a batsman, you can select your shot direction, back foot or front foot and the power behind that shot. It’s far easier to play the game with a gamepad where you can use one analog stick to determine the shot direction and power while using the other for controlling the player’s foot movement. This new control system is termed by EA Sports as the ‘Century Stick’. As a bowler, you select the type of ball you want to bowl, the spin, the direction and the pace. You press the keys as shown on your monitor screen for the type of ball to bowl. Special deliveries like Yorker and Bouncer come up from time to time when the batsman is low on confidence. Some bowlers also have their own special balls to bowl like the ‘Doosra’ for Harbhajan Singh.
[BREAK=Fielding & Sounds]
The fielding has improved as well. Now there are three modes of fielding instead of two. There’s the manual fielding, semi-automatic fielding and the fully automatic fielding. You can decide on field placements for your team men. In manual fielding, you have to do the running and the throwing all by yourself. In semi-automatic, added in this edition, the computer will do all the running and field the ball. You just have to decide on which end to throw and the power behind your throw. Throw it too fast too soon and there will be over-throws. It looks brilliant. In fully automatic mode, the computer the field the ball and will decide on which end to throw at. This mode is boring as hell and I’d prefer the semi-automatic mode to start with. Once you’re comfortable with it, just change over to manual mode and you’ll have a greater control over fielding.
The sound effects and background music seems to have improved though only slightly. The EA Trax system has been incorporated well into the system. The songs from various genres play in the background while you’re browsing the interface or the pause menu. The sound effects include crowd chants, the sweet sound of the ball hitting the bat and players encouraging each other. The crowd effects actually vary according to the region you’re playing in and from test matches to ODI. The commentary is well done and improved but gets repetitive after a few matches. The commentary is potently handled by English cricketer, Mark Nicholas and the legendary Richie Benaud.
[BREAK=Graphics & Game Modes]
There’s nothing to say about the graphics. It’s still not up to the mark of games such as NBA or FIFA but is still a benchmark for other games in its class. It’s a fact that games like Cricket and Rugby are meant for only a very small amount of world population and gaming companies such as EA Sports and Codemasters do not allot a huge budget for these games and that’s understandable. The teams that work in such games are much smaller in comparison. With all these things in mind, whatever they’ve done in the graphics department for Cricket 2007 is praiseworthy.
EA Sports Cricket 2007 comes with many different game modes which ensure replay ability. Apart from the usual ones like The Ashes, World Cup and World Series, you can take part in the fully licensed version of Twenty-20 Cricket. This game introduces a range of bats from brands like Gray-Nicolls, Kookaburra, Puma and Slazenger. The teams for Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand are fully licensed while that is not the case for the other teams. You’ll have to live with weird and misspelled names like S. Gungly, R. Dravia, V. Seway and S. Tendehar which is a real shame. The licensed teams have correctly spelled names and the used models better represent their real life counterpart. The number of 3D modeled stadia is less and only The Eden Garden from Kolkata feature among Indian grounds.
[BREAK=Conclusion & Ratings]
It’s time to conclude my review with ratings for each category I touched up on. The game is okay sort of a game which has improved over time. Finally after so many attempts, EA Sports have been able to come up with a decent all round game. Add to the fact that its World Cup season, I expect the game to sell good in major cricket playing countries like India, Australia and England. The next cricket release from Codemasters still has some more time to go before it hits the shelves and hence it’s a win-win situation for EA Sports. I’d recommend this game to all cricket lovers and for the first time, I’d say it’s worth your money. Get the game and relive the moments from the World Cup again and again.
Ratings:
• Graphics – 7/10
• Sounds - 6/10
• Commentary - 8/10
• Gameplay - 7/10
• Overall - 7/10
System Requirements: Windows 2000/Windows XP or higher, 1 GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, Graphics card with 32MB RAM, 1.2GB Hard disk space.
Test System: Windows XP SP2, 2.8GHz P4 CPU, 1GB DDR400 RAM, nVidia 6600GT AGP graphics card.
stopped playing all games ...
