I hope here to offer a fair and unbiased gameplay review on BLIC 2005 and EA Cricket 2005.
Just to highlight my credentials before someone has a go at me for not being a 'real cricket fan' or a 'kid'......Cricket is my favourite sport in the world. I live, eat and breathe cricket. I have been playing and watching cricket since I was 4. I watch EVERY SINGLE BALL of a 5-day test match and find it thoroughly entertaining, even when 5 maidens are bowled in a row because I understand the battle within the battle. I have been playing cricket competitively for the past 8 years in NZ, and a million years before that just for fun in the streets and gullies of Bombay, India. I have practiced in the nets with Sachin Tendulkar (not kidding), Dion Nash, Darryl Tuffey and Lou Vincent.
As for my gaming experience, I have played Brian Lara 95 and 96 (my favourite cricket game) on the Mega Drive, BLC 99, Cricket 97, 2000, 2002 and 2004 on PC, and a million other sports games including the FIFA series, Rugby series, Rugby League series, NBA series and the Pro Evolution Soccer series which is my favourite. So I do think I have a pretty good idea of what makes a good
cricket game and sports game in general.
And finally, I am not an EA fanboy. Neither am I a Codies fanboy. I couldn't give a rats ass who made the game, as long as the game is good.
OK, on with the review. Just to note, this is based on playing multiplayer on the PC demo of BLIC 2005 and the PC full version of Cricket 2005. I am not considering things like stadiums, player faces, player names, cutscenes, game modes, replays, hawkeye, muscleman players, commentary etc., since I consider them to be peripheral things. Gameplay is the be all and end all of all sports games, and that's what I'll focus on.
BATTING
With BLIC's batting, the first word that comes to mind is 'solidity'. The player techniques are solid, they grip the bat right, the bat does not twist in the hand when playing shots, and the strokes really do look realistic. Compare this to EA, where batting just seems really 'clunky' and flimsy. The animations for some of the shots are quite horrible. I mean for Cricket 2005 to have a back-foot defensive shot where the batsman overbalances is just pathetic. When you hit a six, the ugly animation for the shot with the bat twisting, the
batsman's head in one direction and his feet in another really kills any joy you may get.
With BLIC, when you play a back-foot defensive shot, it feels like a back-foot defensive shot. When you play a straight drive, it feels like a straight drive. Not like EA where the straight drive has such a big gap between bat and pad that Geoff Boycott would jump off his chair saying "my Mum could drive a truck throught that!!". With Cricket 2005 there are so many times when you play a shot and wonder how it was physically possible for the ball to end up there. The ball bounces off the bat and pad in funny ways and in random
directions - the physics are just totally wrong.
In BLIC 2005, I also really love the way you can 'noodle' and 'nudge' the ball using the defensive shot directions - this helps in defending away from close-in fielders and also in smothering the spin from around the wicket by opening up the leg. I love the way the tailenders bat differently.
But on the other hand, BLIC 2005 has a woefully limited number of stroke types, especially on the leg side. There hardly seem to be 3-4 shot options in TOTAL from midwicket to fine leg. The only ones I could see were the front foot on-drive, the Brian Lara style pull and the tuck off the hip. All these shots had the same animation whether the direction pressed was midwicket or fine leg. There is no sweep, no back foot on drive, no flick off the toes, no advance etc. Coupled with the lack of a front-foot back-foot option, batting in the game just seems really limited.
I must commend EA here, for the shot range in Cricket 2005 is extensive. 8 shot types for front foot normal, 8 for front foot lofted etc...Indeed, sometimes you do wonder what shot to play since there are so many choices.
Unfortunately, however these shots have been poorly implemented. It seems that BLIC developers have focussed on a few strokes only and implemented them really really well, while EA have chosen to go with many shots, but individually most of them have been implemented really poorly.
BOWLING
I really enjoyed BLIC 2005's touch of allowing the bowling marker to move right up to the last minute - this adds a lot to the multiplayer game. I also liked how you could add early/late swing, drift, the different bowling actions and the different angles of approach. Its obvious Codies have thought about the bowling experience and this does add a lot of enjoyment and realism to it.
Where I think EA Cricket 2005 has the edge though is that not all bowlers can bowl every variation in their art, which is a long overdue feature. In Cricket 2005, Ian Butler can't swing the ball (which is realistic), and Shivnarine Chanderpaul can't bowl a flipper (again realistic). However, when playing BLIC 2005, I nearly fell off my chair when Ashley Giles bowled a doosra at me!! I mean, Giles...a doosra??!! He can hardly spin the ball the orthodox way for goodness sakes, and now he's throwing down 'ball of the century' doosras at me??!! How dare he!! This 'limited bowling variation' is something I really do think that the developers at Codies have got to bring into future versions of BLIC.
Overall though, I do think that the implementation of bowling in EA Cricket 2005 could have been a lot better. Bowling just does not seem to be all that fun. This has probably got to do with the bowling marker always defaulting to the perfect line and length, making bowling really easy, or something else, I don't know. As in the batting, there are a lot of good ideas, but they are not translated well into the game. For example, the inswinger in Cricket 2005 is really bad - it swings out in the air first and then cuts back in off the pitch...which obviously is just a plain wrong representation of what an inswinger should be like. The special deliveries too are a nice touch, but their effectiveness is spoilt by the fact that they can only be bowled in a single fixed position. The swing/seam direction arrow at the bottom of the screen spoils the multiplayer experience, as the batsman always knows which way the ball is going to deviate. Another issue is that the ball speed seems to adjust itself depending on what shot is played. For example, no matter how
fast a yorker I bowl, if the batsman plays a defensive shot to it the ball looks like a slower ball...but if a flick is played to a yorker of the same speed, the ball just seems faster.
Which brings me back to BLIC 2005 and its issue of bowling speed. My oh my...what have they done here. The variation in bowling speeds is a big, big negative in the game. You never know, playing as the batsman or as the bowler what speed the next ball is going to be at. You don't even know the approximate speeds because they can fluctuate so wildly. Every time I manage to bowl a 130kph+ ball its like a small victory and the bowling does really look good, but then I spend the next 5 overs trying to get it back up to
that speed and the frustration sets in. It does have a major detrimental effect on the game in my opinion. I do hope that Codies (or a patchmaker) can fix this because it will go a long way towards making BLIC a great game.
FIELDING
Not much to comment on the fielding really...Cricket 2005's fielding is the usual. Its annoying though when players seem to be able to throw equally well with both left and right hands. With BLIC 2005, I do find at times the throws to be either superhumanly powerful (which makes it really hard to take singles when the ball is hit to the boundary), or completely powder puff (which makes you wonder whether everyone has just had shoulder surgery). Maybe in addition to throw power, throwing accuracy could be factored into future
versions. Also, the camera does seem to switch to the fielding view rather quickly at times, which makes it difficult to judge quick singles (and doesn't allow you time to admire your shot).
ATMOSPHERE
Overall, I think the crowd atmosphere in BLIC 2005 is extremely good compared to EA's version, which is just boring and puts you to sleep. Sure cricket crowds aren't always jumping up and down making a whole lot of noise (see Lord's members), but games are meant to be fun, and surely a bit of exagerration here doesn't hurt, so well done Codies.
So the question arises...Am I going to buy the full version of BLIC? No. Why? The limited batting and the bowling speed issue are really game killers for me. Plain and simple. They will ruin the longevity of the game in my opinion. That is not to say that I don't appreciate Codies effort. Indeed, I do think that the BLIC series has a lot of potential, and with a few major and minor modifications could become a great game, but I do not think BLIC 2005 is there just yet. BLIC 2005 does not need a complete overhaul at all. It really seems that BLIC has been made by genuine cricket fans - it actually feels like you're playing a game of cricket. Whereas the EA series seems to be going nowhere...the developers seem to learning about the sport as they go (in the nets, a pitched up delivery is referred to as being 'long' rather than 'full'). There are a lot of nice touches and ideas in Cricket 2005, but the execution is poor. So in summary, I reckon that the word to describe the multiplayer experience of BLIC 2005 is 'limited', but what they have done, they have done really well. If they include stats, and a sweep shot, and an advance shot in the next version, you know they'll do a damn good job of it. As for EA, if they can't get a cricket game right after so many attempts, there really is no hope.
