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Please send me your own reviews of Cricket 2000 for the Playstation. The CricketGames.com review is at the bottom of this page. Reviews Review by Ravindra Krishnamurthy. Online Reviews Review by Console Domain. Review by GameSpot UK. Review by New Zealand GamePlayers. Magazine Reviews Arcade magazine reviewed in March 2000 issue. Playstation World reviewed in April 2000 issue Sent by David Johnston. I have finally read a review on Cricket 2000 from EA for the Playstation in Playstation World Magazine. Overall the magazine seems to give an average review by saying that Cricket 2000 is too slow to be an arcade game and too simplistic for experts involving very easy controls for batting and bowling. The game features all 12 top international teams and enables you to take part in a World Cup. Apparently batting is a doddle and you can score runs off every ball, the timing of the shot is determined by a vertical bar in the top left corner. Bowling is also simple whereby you position the ball, press a button to release it and then use the joypad left/right to add spin. The fielding is left totally to the computer. There are some good points though, for example the sound effects are very good even though the commentary is minimal, the presentation is impressive and the graphics look realistic too, quite similar to EA's last version on the PC. Here is the summary of Cricket 2000 as shown exactly in the magazine: Graphics 7/10 - It's green and sparse, realistic but dull. The rectangular players move nicely with plenty of moves and touches. Sound 8/10 - A constant chatter from the crowd, with solid thwacks and soothing commentary from David Gower. Lifespan 7/10 - Depends on you, will become boring quickly if you demand arcade thrills. A bit of a slow-burner. OVERALL - 7 out of 10 - 'Cricket 2000 will sell to people looking for a good, laid back kind of game that contains no fighting or ungentlemanly behaviour. Nice, but slow' With the start of the new English domestic season soon upon us and all the anticipation that brings we English can hopefully forget the troubles of last years World Cup and look forward. What better time to release a cricket computer game. Cricket 2000 for the Playstation is that game and coming a year after the solid if not spectacular Brian Lara Cricket it too should be looking to build on and beat all opposition. Unfortunately EA Sports and Krisalis want you to go back in time to 1999. You see EA bought the licence to the World Cup, released a terrible game which rightly bombed so they have tried to get it right this time to recoup some of the money spent securing the licence. Unfortunately they tried and failed. Cricket 2000 is just a Playstation version of last years game with some of the more glaring bugs fixed (left handers do at least appear from the start) but a far more simplistic control system. It all starts with an intro showing clips of last years tournament before being taken to the functionary EA style front end. Your playing options are limited to Quick Start (2 teams at random), Friendly, World Cup and Super 6. That's you lot! No test matches, not even a net option to practice the game. There are options to change the difficulty, set the weather, pitch, display score (on/off not choice of Eng 100/1 or Aus 1/100 styles) plus standard volume controls. I thought I would play a World Cup. There is no choice of setting the teams in each group or even an option to have the same teams as the actual tournament. The selection seems totally random as Kenya, Scotland and Bangladesh all appeared in the same group! Playing all computer controlled matches using quick results England (105 all out in 23.4) lost to India (152 all out in 35.3) in the final. To test the actual playing controls I played a simple friendly between England and Scotland. Winning the toss Scotland proceeded to smash me all around the park at 20+ an over. Bowling is very simple with the now standard cursor showing the pitch of the delivery and an option to impart spin/seam in one of eight directions on the ball via the D-Pad. Gone is the advanced bowling set up of the PC game that was one of the best features and allowed a lot of control over the delivery. Once selected a line grows up to an 'optimum' position where upon the delivery is bowled. You can not add sudden pace or a slow ball as again that feature present in the PC version has disappeared. When batting you have a limited amount of time to position your batsman before he is fixed in position. You then press the D-Pad to represent the shot you want to play and a cone in one of 8 arcs appears. A bar then grows along side a bat in the top corner. This represent the strength and timing of your shot. Hit the button at the top of the bat and you will play an optimum shot. The problem is this is all done before the computer bowler has got in to his bowling stride which means you end up watching the delivery and your shot with no control, everything determined from this power/timing graph and cone position. Even on the hardest level if you line up the pitch of the ball in the centre of your batting arc and hit the top of the bat you will end up smashing sixes all over the place. Fielding is simply a case of selecting one of about a dozen pre-selected fields most of which are totally in-appropriate for a one day game of cricket. There is no fielding or ball 'radar' so once you have hit the ball you have to gauge whether to run or not. There is no replay function ever so you are saved from having to witness any of your shots/wickets. The commentary is provided by Richie Benaud and David Gower. I can only guess they were paid by the word as the same phrase is repeated several times an over. It is widely inaccurate at times - a spinners delivery described as pure pace! Most other times it is simply a case of saying how bad a player you are and sounds totally false as a cricket commentary. After so much negative what can be said positive about the game? Well the graphics are generally pretty good with some very good motion capture mixed in with the old truly terrible capture and some shockingly blocky shadows. There are plenty of camera options for playing the game but most are unusable and don't move with the ball. There is though an option to turn around and cancel a run which was sadly missing from Brian Lara Cricket. The downside is though if you don't press this button after playing a defensive shot your batsman will stand there and be run out by the keeper! I have to admit I only had time to play the game for about an hour in an attempt to get this review written but having done so there is nothing in the game to make me want to go back and play it again when I have more time. This from someone who has bought every cricket game on the market (EA again never offered to send any review copies) in the vain hope that someone will one day get it right. I am still waiting. Score 43% |
Revised:
Saturday, 16 March 2013. |
