Here are my praises and praises and praises of this game. First and foremost, I'm delighted to play my first match against with RV, Who's one of the most helpful, kind people i've met in the forum. 
It was 4 times before i could get the game loaded (blame my damn net!) and RV was very patient and He fixed the issue instantly, and there! The magic has started!
The best thing, first - It's multiplayer, and it couldn't get any better with what the game has to offer, so let's take a look at the HowZat team has managed to put forth, and review every aspect of the game.
Appearance and Interface - The look of the menu is class. Dark, glassy and background blur style is just perfect! Simple, and as user-friendly as you can imagine! Very easy to use.
You can create your own game, and let people challenge you.
You can go over the name/ID of the user and challenge them instantly. As soon as you click over it, The squad of their team is shown, is very helpful in judging the strength of the team. Since it's still the Beta version, this feature has a lot to be seen once the game releases this saturday!
You have the Challenge button at the bottom and it instantly sends a challenge to the person at the other end.
Easy to use, and you can accept/decline challenges in a click.
Into the game - The first things you get when a match starts is the toss. What i like about it is you don't have much time to choose it. That's what the game is! You don't have much time to take decisions. That makes this really exciting.
Immediately after you get the toss, you don't have any fuss happening, if you won it, you get 10 seconds to choose what you want to do, bat or field. If you lose it, the other person will have 10 seconds to choose, obviously!
So there isn't much hussle, not time taking and almost puts you in the game instantly.
And coming into the game, As i said, I'll write in very detail about every aspect of the game. So let's go:
Sprites/graphics: The first thing you'll notice is that the graphics are very simple, and remember, since this is a browser game, The graphics shouldn't be too heavy, as all the people don't enjoy good net connections. As i was saying, The graphics are simple, yet designed to look realistic, to give the feel of a real cricket match. The monotonous, cartoonish sprites, most of the times, downplay the look of the game when you have 3D along with it. So it's a good thing that there are real looking sprites. You have the adboards with various sponsers, adding to the color, and decent crowd. You can 'feel' the pride of hitting a six off the bowler when the ball goes high over the crowd and the stadium. That's a great thing.
Graphics at events match up to reality. When you hit a six, four or get out, you get an transition animation after it. That adds to the taste even more. See, these all count. They all play a part to the fun playing the game which we may or may not notice sometimes. Credit to the team again.
I must admit, the 3D models are very good looking for an internet game. There were many 3D based cricket games, but they all were actually processed animations, or rendered. But here you barely notice any flaws. It's as if you are commanding the player in the game to play the shot you want him to. Decent efforts with the 3D models, extremely satisfying for an internet game.
Overall, the graphics are neatly done. You won't notice any flaws or get irritated by something that's badly done. The capabilities of the designers is undoubtedly high, and it's not that you can't do better graphics, but the limitations of the internet and the need to get the game working for every internet user does conjust it. And In spite of the limitations and restrictions, getting good graphics into the game is a really really great thing. The team gets another pat on the back.
Okay, so let's move on to another important aspect, crucial for all the fun we have!
Realism, Gameplay and controls: To put it frank and straight, This is the best game i've ever come across that gets close to real life cricket. Almost perfect. You feel like a cricketer. I'll explain why.
You have a lot of space to take your breath in, i mean, the pitch doesn't look too short/squeezed or too big/stretched out, and the players can move around to make room to play shots and you can pretty much in every area you want to.
A good thing as mentioned, is that you have the option of moving your batsmen left and right on the crease. You don't find this usually in many cricket games, and gives you freeness of putting a ball away in the way, direction you want to. Small things, big success. More on it down.
Realism: The categories of realism deal with, ball physics, and skills, mostly and with the batting, of course.
The Ball physics are very good, you get effective bounce, drift, and speed. On the pitch and on the outfield, too. When you smack a ball perfectly, you can see it go over to the fence almost in a flash. When you don't, the ball rolls over to the fielders, pops over from the pad, or goes high in the air if mistimed/misjudged. Same with the bowling, getting the ball to nip around, spin, isn't always easy to do. But when you get it right, for example with a fast bowler, you can see some strong bounce, pace and power in the ball, which goes through quickly on the pitch, and can make the batsmen prone to make mistakes. But all of it, has to do with the skills, which is an amazing part of the game.
Skills: The skills are the matter for all the things that happen in the game. The more skills you have, the more flexibility you get. Like a highly-skilled batsman can score easily and does rare mistakes. Where a low skilled batsmen, even at their best, can't match a medicore shot from a high skilled guy. Likewise, the bowlers, when you play a low skilled bowler, the bowling marker goes loosely, making it hard to stop it at the place we want. And guessed, you have all the control in the world with a skilled bowler. Applies to The amount of spin/pace too. That's the realistic part, the more skilled players you have, the more chances you have of ending up winning over your opponent. A resemblence of real cricket.
Sub-aspects:(errrr)
Batting: There are the Right handed and The Left handed batsmen in the game. I really like the batting. In fact, you miss a ball, you can smash it the very next delivery. All depending on how you're timing it and how your position is. You've a set of 19 shots to choose, as though, VR said, all of them aren't in the beta. But you have the freedom of choosing and getting the shot you want to play.
The big thing, the big part, is your timing. What i liked the most. Though easy to grasp, It's very difficult to master. Because every ball isn't the same, and you have to have a great sense of judging what shot you want to play, and when. You can pull out a blistering stroke from the slightest of touches or can get caught playing the mightiest of shots. Whatever you do, all you need to do is quick, that's what i'm loving about this game. You're not left with much time once the ball comes in, and have to act quick or else the possibilites are that what might happen will not favour out. Or in the simple sense, you might get out.
But it's not always bang or go, the game has a solid good defence system, and works pretty well nudging down tough deliveries. Just like in real cricket. But you can go slog the bad loooose balls fearlessly. Unless you make the horrible of mistakes, you're pretty much ensured that you'll get good results out of it.
There's a lot about batting, and i'll write on about it later. I can't stop the overwhelming thoughts that want to get down in this post!
Okay, Bowling! The very interesting part!
There are all the bowling types available, as from as many as i've seen. You've the fast, medium, slow bowlers. Both, left handed and right handed. Coming from over the wicket respectively.
The bowling is as important and plays as realistic as batting. You get a marker that tells you where the ball is going to land, and you move it around and choose the area you want to pitch the ball in. Simple. But you don't have too much time to decide the placement.
There's the great mantra if you want to restrict the opponent, Bowl well. As simple as it sounds, it requires a great presence of mind to do and get things done right. It isn't randomly place and bowl, but it's just like in the real cricket, bowl where it's tough to place a shot, or at good areas, supporting chances of batsmen hitting the ball over places where there are fielders. But for all to happen, you've to sacrifice in experimenting a few balls and test out the batsmen.
To my experience, i couldn't go over bowling at full length when i'm left with no option. No, you've to bowl in good areas, and i'm so so extremely happy that you can catch a bit of experience that happens with the real life bowlers. Often we feel bowlers could just bowl at death to contain runs, and you can feel exactly why they always don't do so. You're inviting a slog fest if you're doing it, and the biggest trick there is to always keep the batsmen guessing and working out on their tactics.
The bowling is very good, you can get considerable amount of swing, spin, accuracy as and pace, according to the skill(s) levels of the bowler.
Structure of using the controls: Well, if anything has to be the newest, This is it. The bowling bar. It seems great and we can happily do two things at once instead of doing them twice, if they were individual options. The Pace and spin/swing are morphed into a system where you're choosing the direction of the ball you want to swing/spin and choosing the intensity and speed of it all at once. There's a pointer that goes from left to right and vice versa and you've to stop it where you want, and the pointer moves according to the skill level of the bowler, It moves fast from side to side when you're bowling a low skilled bowler, the reverse with the skilled. Just to give some sense of what i'm talking, it's body is somewhat of the BLC'96. Where You had the 'intensity' meter to decide the pace/swing/spin of the ball through it, that goes from minimum intensity to high intensity at the center and back to low at the corners. Something like that, but you have three bars, left/center/right, 'inside the bowling bar' itself to decide the direction. I can go on, but It's better i know, to see and experience it, but this will sure catch many keen eyes. Another pat for it.
Fielding: Fielding is pretty simple. Something you don't need to worry about. It's automatic by default. As much as i've known about it. It's good, The fielders get alerted when the ball comes their way, they dive, catch, stop, do everything. Nice work with the fielding system.
Controls: The easy part, and what you can get used to. They're straight forward, you don't have a mess of using all your keyboard to bowl a normal stock delivery. I won't go through or tell the keys you need to use, but rather the special controls you get in the game.
There are quite a few, simple and effective. For the batsmen, you have POWER hit, where you can slog using it. Which enables access to all the power shots. Quite obviously, you have the run option, which you can use after playing a shot.
Pretty much easy to bowl too, A simple two step process. You get a marker, and you hit a button to stop it where you want. Then the bowling meters turn up, where you choose the intensity of speed/drift and the direction of the ball. Left-Straight-Right.
Time limit: A short bit i wanted write about. You have a maximum of 10 sec to decide the options. That include changing bowlers at the end of the over, choosing the toss, Setting the position of the batsmen and the bowling marker. So keep your mind in the game, because you might let happen what you don't want to and plans can fail. Perfect for online games.
That sums up the controls. That enables people of nearly all ages to play the game, easily.
Then you have the sounds, cameras and the loading.
Sounds: Good loops, not low-quality, and are sync'd with various events. Crowd Goes wild when you hit a six, four, or when a wicket falls. Pretty good, not a let down. But i expect more in this aspect after the game releases, like chants and famous crowd hauls added in the updates.
Camera: The camera is good. The view is great, and there's an action movement (Where camera is wobbled a bit to give madness and war-like a feeling in it, just as if it's hand-held) and it gets better when you hit the ball and the camera wobbles down to give a realistic feel.
Loading time: This game does fair amount of justice at loading. Once you're in the lobby, it means you can sure play the game with no connection bothers. Everything will be preloading while you're in the lobby, and when you challenge the opponent, the remaining part of the preload process is loaded, and you're in the game. Might get problems twice or thrice at maximum when you're running the game first, for people with low bandwidth. But once you get the game running, there are mildest of chances to ever encounter a problem.
So that's what i came to know from the beta, maybe i'm missing some points but i'll add them once i notice.
Cheers, hope that gives a good view. Though there's only a day left when you can actually play the game.
Many Thanks to the Howzat team, this is one of the best cricket games i've played. If you're bothered of repititive word uses like feel, realism, simple, instant and easy. I can't help it, because that's how the game is!
It was 4 times before i could get the game loaded (blame my damn net!) and RV was very patient and He fixed the issue instantly, and there! The magic has started!
HowZat Review and a guide to the game- In detail. The most realistic multiplayer browser cricket game ever.
The best thing, first - It's multiplayer, and it couldn't get any better with what the game has to offer, so let's take a look at the HowZat team has managed to put forth, and review every aspect of the game.
Appearance and Interface - The look of the menu is class. Dark, glassy and background blur style is just perfect! Simple, and as user-friendly as you can imagine! Very easy to use.
You can create your own game, and let people challenge you.
You can go over the name/ID of the user and challenge them instantly. As soon as you click over it, The squad of their team is shown, is very helpful in judging the strength of the team. Since it's still the Beta version, this feature has a lot to be seen once the game releases this saturday!
You have the Challenge button at the bottom and it instantly sends a challenge to the person at the other end.
Easy to use, and you can accept/decline challenges in a click.
Into the game - The first things you get when a match starts is the toss. What i like about it is you don't have much time to choose it. That's what the game is! You don't have much time to take decisions. That makes this really exciting.
Immediately after you get the toss, you don't have any fuss happening, if you won it, you get 10 seconds to choose what you want to do, bat or field. If you lose it, the other person will have 10 seconds to choose, obviously!
So there isn't much hussle, not time taking and almost puts you in the game instantly. And coming into the game, As i said, I'll write in very detail about every aspect of the game. So let's go:
Sprites/graphics: The first thing you'll notice is that the graphics are very simple, and remember, since this is a browser game, The graphics shouldn't be too heavy, as all the people don't enjoy good net connections. As i was saying, The graphics are simple, yet designed to look realistic, to give the feel of a real cricket match. The monotonous, cartoonish sprites, most of the times, downplay the look of the game when you have 3D along with it. So it's a good thing that there are real looking sprites. You have the adboards with various sponsers, adding to the color, and decent crowd. You can 'feel' the pride of hitting a six off the bowler when the ball goes high over the crowd and the stadium. That's a great thing.
Graphics at events match up to reality. When you hit a six, four or get out, you get an transition animation after it. That adds to the taste even more. See, these all count. They all play a part to the fun playing the game which we may or may not notice sometimes. Credit to the team again.
I must admit, the 3D models are very good looking for an internet game. There were many 3D based cricket games, but they all were actually processed animations, or rendered. But here you barely notice any flaws. It's as if you are commanding the player in the game to play the shot you want him to. Decent efforts with the 3D models, extremely satisfying for an internet game.
Overall, the graphics are neatly done. You won't notice any flaws or get irritated by something that's badly done. The capabilities of the designers is undoubtedly high, and it's not that you can't do better graphics, but the limitations of the internet and the need to get the game working for every internet user does conjust it. And In spite of the limitations and restrictions, getting good graphics into the game is a really really great thing. The team gets another pat on the back.
Okay, so let's move on to another important aspect, crucial for all the fun we have!
Realism, Gameplay and controls: To put it frank and straight, This is the best game i've ever come across that gets close to real life cricket. Almost perfect. You feel like a cricketer. I'll explain why.
You have a lot of space to take your breath in, i mean, the pitch doesn't look too short/squeezed or too big/stretched out, and the players can move around to make room to play shots and you can pretty much in every area you want to.
A good thing as mentioned, is that you have the option of moving your batsmen left and right on the crease. You don't find this usually in many cricket games, and gives you freeness of putting a ball away in the way, direction you want to. Small things, big success. More on it down.
Realism: The categories of realism deal with, ball physics, and skills, mostly and with the batting, of course.
The Ball physics are very good, you get effective bounce, drift, and speed. On the pitch and on the outfield, too. When you smack a ball perfectly, you can see it go over to the fence almost in a flash. When you don't, the ball rolls over to the fielders, pops over from the pad, or goes high in the air if mistimed/misjudged. Same with the bowling, getting the ball to nip around, spin, isn't always easy to do. But when you get it right, for example with a fast bowler, you can see some strong bounce, pace and power in the ball, which goes through quickly on the pitch, and can make the batsmen prone to make mistakes. But all of it, has to do with the skills, which is an amazing part of the game.
Skills: The skills are the matter for all the things that happen in the game. The more skills you have, the more flexibility you get. Like a highly-skilled batsman can score easily and does rare mistakes. Where a low skilled batsmen, even at their best, can't match a medicore shot from a high skilled guy. Likewise, the bowlers, when you play a low skilled bowler, the bowling marker goes loosely, making it hard to stop it at the place we want. And guessed, you have all the control in the world with a skilled bowler. Applies to The amount of spin/pace too. That's the realistic part, the more skilled players you have, the more chances you have of ending up winning over your opponent. A resemblence of real cricket.
Sub-aspects:(errrr
)Batting: There are the Right handed and The Left handed batsmen in the game. I really like the batting. In fact, you miss a ball, you can smash it the very next delivery. All depending on how you're timing it and how your position is. You've a set of 19 shots to choose, as though, VR said, all of them aren't in the beta. But you have the freedom of choosing and getting the shot you want to play.
The big thing, the big part, is your timing. What i liked the most. Though easy to grasp, It's very difficult to master. Because every ball isn't the same, and you have to have a great sense of judging what shot you want to play, and when. You can pull out a blistering stroke from the slightest of touches or can get caught playing the mightiest of shots. Whatever you do, all you need to do is quick, that's what i'm loving about this game. You're not left with much time once the ball comes in, and have to act quick or else the possibilites are that what might happen will not favour out. Or in the simple sense, you might get out.
But it's not always bang or go, the game has a solid good defence system, and works pretty well nudging down tough deliveries. Just like in real cricket. But you can go slog the bad loooose balls fearlessly. Unless you make the horrible of mistakes, you're pretty much ensured that you'll get good results out of it.
There's a lot about batting, and i'll write on about it later. I can't stop the overwhelming thoughts that want to get down in this post!
Okay, Bowling! The very interesting part!
There are all the bowling types available, as from as many as i've seen. You've the fast, medium, slow bowlers. Both, left handed and right handed. Coming from over the wicket respectively.
The bowling is as important and plays as realistic as batting. You get a marker that tells you where the ball is going to land, and you move it around and choose the area you want to pitch the ball in. Simple. But you don't have too much time to decide the placement.
There's the great mantra if you want to restrict the opponent, Bowl well. As simple as it sounds, it requires a great presence of mind to do and get things done right. It isn't randomly place and bowl, but it's just like in the real cricket, bowl where it's tough to place a shot, or at good areas, supporting chances of batsmen hitting the ball over places where there are fielders. But for all to happen, you've to sacrifice in experimenting a few balls and test out the batsmen.
To my experience, i couldn't go over bowling at full length when i'm left with no option. No, you've to bowl in good areas, and i'm so so extremely happy that you can catch a bit of experience that happens with the real life bowlers. Often we feel bowlers could just bowl at death to contain runs, and you can feel exactly why they always don't do so. You're inviting a slog fest if you're doing it, and the biggest trick there is to always keep the batsmen guessing and working out on their tactics.
The bowling is very good, you can get considerable amount of swing, spin, accuracy as and pace, according to the skill(s) levels of the bowler.
Structure of using the controls: Well, if anything has to be the newest, This is it. The bowling bar. It seems great and we can happily do two things at once instead of doing them twice, if they were individual options. The Pace and spin/swing are morphed into a system where you're choosing the direction of the ball you want to swing/spin and choosing the intensity and speed of it all at once. There's a pointer that goes from left to right and vice versa and you've to stop it where you want, and the pointer moves according to the skill level of the bowler, It moves fast from side to side when you're bowling a low skilled bowler, the reverse with the skilled. Just to give some sense of what i'm talking, it's body is somewhat of the BLC'96. Where You had the 'intensity' meter to decide the pace/swing/spin of the ball through it, that goes from minimum intensity to high intensity at the center and back to low at the corners. Something like that, but you have three bars, left/center/right, 'inside the bowling bar' itself to decide the direction. I can go on, but It's better i know, to see and experience it, but this will sure catch many keen eyes. Another pat for it.
Fielding: Fielding is pretty simple. Something you don't need to worry about. It's automatic by default. As much as i've known about it. It's good, The fielders get alerted when the ball comes their way, they dive, catch, stop, do everything. Nice work with the fielding system.
Controls: The easy part, and what you can get used to. They're straight forward, you don't have a mess of using all your keyboard to bowl a normal stock delivery. I won't go through or tell the keys you need to use, but rather the special controls you get in the game.
There are quite a few, simple and effective. For the batsmen, you have POWER hit, where you can slog using it. Which enables access to all the power shots. Quite obviously, you have the run option, which you can use after playing a shot.
Pretty much easy to bowl too, A simple two step process. You get a marker, and you hit a button to stop it where you want. Then the bowling meters turn up, where you choose the intensity of speed/drift and the direction of the ball. Left-Straight-Right.
Time limit: A short bit i wanted write about. You have a maximum of 10 sec to decide the options. That include changing bowlers at the end of the over, choosing the toss, Setting the position of the batsmen and the bowling marker. So keep your mind in the game, because you might let happen what you don't want to and plans can fail. Perfect for online games.
That sums up the controls. That enables people of nearly all ages to play the game, easily.
Then you have the sounds, cameras and the loading.
Sounds: Good loops, not low-quality, and are sync'd with various events. Crowd Goes wild when you hit a six, four, or when a wicket falls. Pretty good, not a let down. But i expect more in this aspect after the game releases, like chants and famous crowd hauls added in the updates.
Camera: The camera is good. The view is great, and there's an action movement (Where camera is wobbled a bit to give madness and war-like a feeling in it, just as if it's hand-held) and it gets better when you hit the ball and the camera wobbles down to give a realistic feel.
Loading time: This game does fair amount of justice at loading. Once you're in the lobby, it means you can sure play the game with no connection bothers. Everything will be preloading while you're in the lobby, and when you challenge the opponent, the remaining part of the preload process is loaded, and you're in the game. Might get problems twice or thrice at maximum when you're running the game first, for people with low bandwidth. But once you get the game running, there are mildest of chances to ever encounter a problem.
So that's what i came to know from the beta, maybe i'm missing some points but i'll add them once i notice.
Cheers, hope that gives a good view. Though there's only a day left when you can actually play the game.
Many Thanks to the Howzat team, this is one of the best cricket games i've played. If you're bothered of repititive word uses like feel, realism, simple, instant and easy. I can't help it, because that's how the game is!
