The game is really fun, which I suppose is the most important thing. There is a high degree of customization. I have only been playing at the medium difficulty, so I will reserve most of my judgment on how realistic the gameplay is until I play at higher difficulties. That being said, it's looking good so far.
Areas for improvement:
- I guess not much can be done about this, but the lack of licenses is a big turn off for me. As a non-English/non-Australian fan, this takes away from the immersion. I would love to see my country and its players represented.
- The animations are better than Ashes Cricket 17. There seem to be more batting and bowling animations, however it is still lacking in this area. It's very jerky and choppy, and just looks awkward, and doesn't flow naturally. This also takes away from the immersion as it doesn't look realistic.
- There are so few twos in the game, especially by the CPU. I can count on one hand how many twos the CPU has taken, even when they were so easy.
- More on the fielding issue. I use automated fielding, but even when I'm batting, the fielders show no urgency and intent to stop singles. Additionally, fielders on the boundary are often within touching distance of the ball but don't dive or just let the ball cross the boundary. There are also too many direct hits.
- The computer's bowling and fielding changes don't make a lot of sense. They will keep bowlers in the attack even when I am constantly hitting them for boundaries, and take out bowlers who have taken wickets or have kept the runs down. Moreover, even when I consistently hit the ball in the same direction, they don't move fielders to that side.
- The CPU's random and nonsensical switches between over and around the wicket are less frequent, but still prevalent.
- I take wickets, and frequently, but it just feels a little scripted to me. Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't feel like I am getting the batsmen out due to something I have done like surprising them with a bouncer/yorker, or bowling a bunch of inswingers and then suddenly bowling an outswinger. It feels like they would have gotten out at that point regardless of what/how I bowled.
- Not super important, I suppose, but the hair on the players is quite shocking, even at higher settings.
- Load times are WAY too long. This really needs to be looked at.
- Commentary is really dull, and often times doesn't even make sense. It would help if they tailored it to the player type. For example, currently, when a spinner comes into the attack, it just says something about "giving it an almighty tweak" regardless of who the bowler is. Perhaps in the future, lets say if Mitchell Santner comes into the attack, it looks at his economy rate/skills and says the bowler will look to contain/keep the runs down. Conversely, if someone like Kuldeep Yadav comes into the attack, look at his strike rate/economy/skills and say this is an attacking move designed to take wickets.
All this being said, there are really encouraging signs on the gameplay front, and as I said above, I hope and expect that the game will get even better as I turn up the difficulty level. I look forward to future iterations of this game and if Big Ant follows this trajectory, I think maybe in 10 or so years we might actually have a really good cricket game that could at least imitate, if not rival, the FIFA/MLB/NBA/etc games.
