MattW
Administrator
Much delayed, but perhaps there's still some benefit to posting up an official review for CR:
Developed by new developer Mindstorm Studios, Cricket Revolution marks one of the only serious attempts to break into the 3D cricket simulation market in recent years, one dominated by Codemasters and still shadowed by EA Sports. However the overwhelming impression of Cricket Revolution is a game that doesn't know what it is meant to be and results in something that few will find appealing.
An overview of one of the stadiums in Cricket Revolution
When first word of the game got out, the descriptions were of an awful sounding arcade experience; however shortly before release we got claims of 'realistic gameplay'. The change though is not one that can just be made with a few tweaks, it is fundamental to the approach developers take to creating a game. As such, the game is near fatally flawed.
There is a huge screen listing nearly every country where someone owns a cricket bat, however this apparent large choice of teams is misleading. You have ten main teams that are actually full of players and they are the only ten that the computer can play as. Beyond this, even if you do create squads for these other teams, they all play in a generic Cricket Revolution kit. However, there seems potential for rather big patches to add in things like domestic cricket sides if someone were to put the time in. Another problem with squads is that there are only 11 players in them, which means there's a key element lacking in the tournament modes. There is a well rounded choice of modes, but it lacks the option for test matches. The large choice of empty teams brings up Cricket Revolution's each way bet on mods, the game is fairly editable, but only to a point. If Cricket Revolution wants customisation as a strong point, they need play PES and copy and paste a Master League in.
The teams listing
For multiplayer there is a LAN and an Internet option, though the game suffers from very low numbers of players and after several attempts I was unable to set up a game. There are a handful of fictitious stadiums that have no relation to any real world ones, but look somewhat shiny. The graphics are okay at best, you get some oddities in animation like having batsmen turn and stay in a ready position after each run (with occasional follow throughs when it is a close runout), but the only major issues are the low quality of the graphics and the relatively high demands they make of my graphics card. This is likely just a lack of thorough optimisation, so may well be improved as time goes on, Cricket Revolution has been patched numerous times since release, though no significant changes are apparent.
The realistic gameplay takes an immediate hit when you first go out to bat. First off you will be confronted by the fact that the batsman sees the pitch of the ball before it leaves the bowlers hand and then must move across the crease to be in the right line to play the desired shot. These two factors ruin batting and that's before you get to the ill thought-through control scheme, which involves having to pick shots based on about 15 combinations of arrow key presses, like doing combos in a fighting game.
These button presses are made much more difficult by the complete lack of feedback as to correct timing, even the information given in the nets about timing is minimal, yet out in the middle you are expected to time everything perfectly and know the correct position to be in to play the shot. In my experience of the game, this means that going for anything other than a single to a fielder isn't worth the risk.
A complete lack of difficulty curve compounds this, with no discernable difference between easy and hard, there is no forgiveness to learn the controls. You basically either get it or you don't and like me, if you can't get it right you will end up frustrated. The CPU will smash you around and bowl perfectly as you struggle to connect your shots.
As a break from the batting, the bowling controls are far improved, the 'bowling gadget' is a quite innovative and well designed control. However it doesn't give quite enough control, in batting you have all the shots to choose from, but in bowling you only decide the seam position and speed of the delivery.
The Bowling Gadget
The only break from this comes when your bowler fills an adrenaline meter, unfortunately this then brings out one of the most arcadey and unrealistic parts of the game. The ball can create a fire trail! These come from each bowler's specific special deliveries, including things like the 'toe-crusher' or more mundane things like a slower ball. The game gives no real indication what these are to you besides on the bowler selection menu, for a game so dependent on getting controls right, it doesn't go out of its way to tell you them. Cricket 07 and Ashes Cricket 09 are both far better in giving feedback to the player in what to press and what is available to the bowler.
Fielding is all automatic, besides choosing the end to which fielders throw to. It is more accurate than it should be, with perfect throws and hitting the stumps from the boundary happening most times. However as someone who doesn't like fielding in cricket games, it is nice for other people to do it.
For a game that tries to be arcade-like, it is completely devoid of fun thanks to a horrible control scheme and steep difficulty curve. As a realistic cricket simulation, it fails thanks to gimmicks in bowling and the huge issues with footwork when batting.
Besides many fundamental flaws, there are a lot of missing touches. The lack of replays mean you are left wondering how you got out very frequently and the hawkeye-esque ball tracking for LBWs doesn't show the full picture either. The lack of controller support compounds the problem of poor controls and once you've gotten through the over, you need to grab the mouse to navigate the menus. The lack of commentary adds to a lacking atmosphere, with only the same few crowd noises to keep the silence away.
Cricket Revolution set out to be just that, but there was a huge lack of decisiveness. The game tried to be different, but forgot there was a good reason so many cricket games have had very similar control schemes. It could have set out a great niche by having a strong online component, but despite the low price, the game just isn't good enough to get people coming back to play more. I'm sure many left frustrated and the ones remaining are those who were able to master the controls. PlanetCricket members who were able to master the controls have noticed how the difficulty isn't there anymore, it is really poor for a game to rely on being hard to play to create overall difficulty.
Something I always say about difficulty levels on cricket games is that they focus too much on shortening timing windows instead of just making AI smarter. The AI should be learning from your gameplay, it should learn from how opponents react to you online. The game should just try to keep you on that point of knowing you're in there with a chance, but not being able to topple all the batsmen. Levels of difficulty are an outdated concept, a cricket game that is truly adaptive is the only one that would be able to cope with the wild changes between what casual gamers want and what the traditionalists want. The cricket game that can get this right will be able to be forgiven for a lot.
But I digress. Cricket Revolution has potential, it is great to have new entrants in the cricket games market, but they need to look at what the other games are doing right. When people think of their perfect games, they inevitably say they want various parts out of various games (and ideally a lot of stuff out of football games). When you think of Cricket Revolution, there is very little you would want other games to emulate.
As for scores,
Gameplay - 5
Graphics - 4
Patchability - 7
Longevity - 6
Overall - 5/10 - It's a foundation to build from, but they must correct some fundamental issues before the game can improve.
Developed by new developer Mindstorm Studios, Cricket Revolution marks one of the only serious attempts to break into the 3D cricket simulation market in recent years, one dominated by Codemasters and still shadowed by EA Sports. However the overwhelming impression of Cricket Revolution is a game that doesn't know what it is meant to be and results in something that few will find appealing.
An overview of one of the stadiums in Cricket Revolution
When first word of the game got out, the descriptions were of an awful sounding arcade experience; however shortly before release we got claims of 'realistic gameplay'. The change though is not one that can just be made with a few tweaks, it is fundamental to the approach developers take to creating a game. As such, the game is near fatally flawed.
There is a huge screen listing nearly every country where someone owns a cricket bat, however this apparent large choice of teams is misleading. You have ten main teams that are actually full of players and they are the only ten that the computer can play as. Beyond this, even if you do create squads for these other teams, they all play in a generic Cricket Revolution kit. However, there seems potential for rather big patches to add in things like domestic cricket sides if someone were to put the time in. Another problem with squads is that there are only 11 players in them, which means there's a key element lacking in the tournament modes. There is a well rounded choice of modes, but it lacks the option for test matches. The large choice of empty teams brings up Cricket Revolution's each way bet on mods, the game is fairly editable, but only to a point. If Cricket Revolution wants customisation as a strong point, they need play PES and copy and paste a Master League in.
The teams listing
For multiplayer there is a LAN and an Internet option, though the game suffers from very low numbers of players and after several attempts I was unable to set up a game. There are a handful of fictitious stadiums that have no relation to any real world ones, but look somewhat shiny. The graphics are okay at best, you get some oddities in animation like having batsmen turn and stay in a ready position after each run (with occasional follow throughs when it is a close runout), but the only major issues are the low quality of the graphics and the relatively high demands they make of my graphics card. This is likely just a lack of thorough optimisation, so may well be improved as time goes on, Cricket Revolution has been patched numerous times since release, though no significant changes are apparent.
The realistic gameplay takes an immediate hit when you first go out to bat. First off you will be confronted by the fact that the batsman sees the pitch of the ball before it leaves the bowlers hand and then must move across the crease to be in the right line to play the desired shot. These two factors ruin batting and that's before you get to the ill thought-through control scheme, which involves having to pick shots based on about 15 combinations of arrow key presses, like doing combos in a fighting game.
These button presses are made much more difficult by the complete lack of feedback as to correct timing, even the information given in the nets about timing is minimal, yet out in the middle you are expected to time everything perfectly and know the correct position to be in to play the shot. In my experience of the game, this means that going for anything other than a single to a fielder isn't worth the risk.
A complete lack of difficulty curve compounds this, with no discernable difference between easy and hard, there is no forgiveness to learn the controls. You basically either get it or you don't and like me, if you can't get it right you will end up frustrated. The CPU will smash you around and bowl perfectly as you struggle to connect your shots.
As a break from the batting, the bowling controls are far improved, the 'bowling gadget' is a quite innovative and well designed control. However it doesn't give quite enough control, in batting you have all the shots to choose from, but in bowling you only decide the seam position and speed of the delivery.
The Bowling Gadget
The only break from this comes when your bowler fills an adrenaline meter, unfortunately this then brings out one of the most arcadey and unrealistic parts of the game. The ball can create a fire trail! These come from each bowler's specific special deliveries, including things like the 'toe-crusher' or more mundane things like a slower ball. The game gives no real indication what these are to you besides on the bowler selection menu, for a game so dependent on getting controls right, it doesn't go out of its way to tell you them. Cricket 07 and Ashes Cricket 09 are both far better in giving feedback to the player in what to press and what is available to the bowler.
Fielding is all automatic, besides choosing the end to which fielders throw to. It is more accurate than it should be, with perfect throws and hitting the stumps from the boundary happening most times. However as someone who doesn't like fielding in cricket games, it is nice for other people to do it.
For a game that tries to be arcade-like, it is completely devoid of fun thanks to a horrible control scheme and steep difficulty curve. As a realistic cricket simulation, it fails thanks to gimmicks in bowling and the huge issues with footwork when batting.
Besides many fundamental flaws, there are a lot of missing touches. The lack of replays mean you are left wondering how you got out very frequently and the hawkeye-esque ball tracking for LBWs doesn't show the full picture either. The lack of controller support compounds the problem of poor controls and once you've gotten through the over, you need to grab the mouse to navigate the menus. The lack of commentary adds to a lacking atmosphere, with only the same few crowd noises to keep the silence away.
Cricket Revolution set out to be just that, but there was a huge lack of decisiveness. The game tried to be different, but forgot there was a good reason so many cricket games have had very similar control schemes. It could have set out a great niche by having a strong online component, but despite the low price, the game just isn't good enough to get people coming back to play more. I'm sure many left frustrated and the ones remaining are those who were able to master the controls. PlanetCricket members who were able to master the controls have noticed how the difficulty isn't there anymore, it is really poor for a game to rely on being hard to play to create overall difficulty.
Something I always say about difficulty levels on cricket games is that they focus too much on shortening timing windows instead of just making AI smarter. The AI should be learning from your gameplay, it should learn from how opponents react to you online. The game should just try to keep you on that point of knowing you're in there with a chance, but not being able to topple all the batsmen. Levels of difficulty are an outdated concept, a cricket game that is truly adaptive is the only one that would be able to cope with the wild changes between what casual gamers want and what the traditionalists want. The cricket game that can get this right will be able to be forgiven for a lot.
But I digress. Cricket Revolution has potential, it is great to have new entrants in the cricket games market, but they need to look at what the other games are doing right. When people think of their perfect games, they inevitably say they want various parts out of various games (and ideally a lot of stuff out of football games). When you think of Cricket Revolution, there is very little you would want other games to emulate.
As for scores,
Gameplay - 5
Graphics - 4
Patchability - 7
Longevity - 6
Overall - 5/10 - It's a foundation to build from, but they must correct some fundamental issues before the game can improve.
