Screenshots :.
International Cricket Captain 3
PC
Matt
10-08-2007
"Disco Reject"
"Wait? What's going on?"
"Thrill-a-minute stuff"
Much to Jay’s disgust (amongst other such things), he has discovered that I am rather an avid cricket fan. Turning on the trusty digital radio and listening intently to the comings and goings of five full days of test cricket is perfectly natural to me, with the various swings in momentum and random chatter of the commentators keeping me more than entertained. Jay, being somewhat more of a footy and er… footy type of person, doesn’t really know what to make of all this, and whilst to be fair he seems to just put on his headphones and listen to some tunes to block out the boredom, an occasional moan does surface every now and again.
Luckily for him, it fell on my shoulders to review that latest instalment in the International Cricket Captain series (and luckily for you really, as I doubt he would have known too much about what he was talking about). Not actually the third game in the series but actually the eighth, the title promises more of the series’ classic team-tinkering and aggression-balancing action that marked previous titles as an enjoyable deviation from the normal, but this time with up-to-date players and stats as well as a 3D match graphical highlight package and a variety of match types from classic five-day test matches to newer, more hectic Twenty20 games.
Some of you are no doubt wondering exactly how one goes about managing a cricket team. In actual fact, things are a lot simpler than you may have thought, with control over both your batsman and your fielders being given via a couple of sliding bars to adjust aggression, a few buttons to adjust bowling line and length and a couple of field options to cycle through. Have Kevin Pietersen at the crease? Notching up the aggression bar a few notches will see him at his best, although doing so too quickly will lead to another of his inevitable low-score spectaculars. Likewise, having Michael Vaughan stroll out to bat is usually an exercise in patience, with careful batting and defending the order of the day. Each batsman has a small ‘health bar’ which increases the more settled they become, and the trick is to eek out as many runs as you can for as little risk as possible, although obviously this is easier said than done in the shorter one-day and Twenty20 games.
Bowling offers more opportunity for control, with the player allowed to swap between various lines and lengths to try and unsettle the opposition, all of which handily have little notes to point out their preferred shots and foot positioning. By pinging in a few good length balls outside the off stump, chances are that any batsman who enjoys flicking fours off his pads but struggles off the front foot is going to send one straight to one of your slips. It doesn’t always work, of course – the nature of cricket is its unpredictability – and there are times when you’ll have to slog away for a while for little reward, but anyone who’s seen the previous year or two of English test cricket should be well-prepared for it. Fielding is also customisable to a point, with a number of preset options and one that allows you to place fielders where you think they should be.
With that said, the lack of tinkering options when on the field is something that also hamstrings International Cricket Captain to a degree. Whereas in football management games endlessly fiddling with tactics convince you that various happenings are completely down to your actions, players coming in and out and particular styles suiting particular formations, the simplicity of ICC 3 does make you wonder if your decisions regarding aggression and line are having any kind of impact. In one match against a rampant Indian side, asking messrs Strauss and Cook to start carefully and bat defensively ended up with the former getting caught off a ridiculously over-ambitious shot and the latter getting run out, whereas asking Kevin Pietersen to take things a bit more aggressively ended with him scoring a painstaking 13 runs from 54 balls. Quite often, particularly as far as batting is concerned, you feel as though you’re watching things play out as they would have anyway, with only hugely drastic changes in tactic making any noticeable difference.
Adding to the disappointment are the highlight snippets that pop up to show crucial moments of the match. To call them outdated would be perhaps a bit too kind; indeed, they look vaguely similar to the old original PlayStation Brian Lara cricket game, released back in 1999. Players all look identical apart from skin colour and a selection of about 5 haircuts, and the animation of the players often verges on the downright wrong, with some of the shots some batsmen end up producing only being possible via dislocation of at least one shoulder. On top of all this, fours are sometimes given for balls that clearly go to fielders, shots occasionally glitch through players’ diving bodies and LBW decisions are given that no umpire this side of Daryl Hair would give, even if they were facing the wrong way when the ball was bowled. Okay, flashy graphics aren’t exactly necessary when it comes to a management type of game, but seeing your team dance like Thunderbirds puppets when they snare a wicket is only amusing for a certain amount of time. Even the presence of Jonathan ‘Aggers’ Agnew on commentary duty fails to drag the whole thing up from the muddy puddle.
Hence, it all becomes somewhat frustrating for even a cricket fan. Whilst it’s true that you can select from a huge roster of county players for the national team or even play as your favourite county team themselves, the main meat of the game, i.e. the matches, feel somewhat out of your control at times. As a short burst between playing something else it will certainly fill up a bit of your time, with options of custom test-match or 50 over match series and an internet play option also present (although sadly a little unreliable, if my attempts to play a match were anything to go by), but if you’re hoping for something exacting and absorbing, the fact that even the most ardent of fans soon becomes slightly bored of not having much input means it won’t hold your attention for long enough. Without the actual feel of leather on willow, International Cricket Captain 3 almost feels as if it should have been left back in the pavilion.
Luckily for him, it fell on my shoulders to review that latest instalment in the International Cricket Captain series (and luckily for you really, as I doubt he would have known too much about what he was talking about). Not actually the third game in the series but actually the eighth, the title promises more of the series’ classic team-tinkering and aggression-balancing action that marked previous titles as an enjoyable deviation from the normal, but this time with up-to-date players and stats as well as a 3D match graphical highlight package and a variety of match types from classic five-day test matches to newer, more hectic Twenty20 games.
Some of you are no doubt wondering exactly how one goes about managing a cricket team. In actual fact, things are a lot simpler than you may have thought, with control over both your batsman and your fielders being given via a couple of sliding bars to adjust aggression, a few buttons to adjust bowling line and length and a couple of field options to cycle through. Have Kevin Pietersen at the crease? Notching up the aggression bar a few notches will see him at his best, although doing so too quickly will lead to another of his inevitable low-score spectaculars. Likewise, having Michael Vaughan stroll out to bat is usually an exercise in patience, with careful batting and defending the order of the day. Each batsman has a small ‘health bar’ which increases the more settled they become, and the trick is to eek out as many runs as you can for as little risk as possible, although obviously this is easier said than done in the shorter one-day and Twenty20 games.
Bowling offers more opportunity for control, with the player allowed to swap between various lines and lengths to try and unsettle the opposition, all of which handily have little notes to point out their preferred shots and foot positioning. By pinging in a few good length balls outside the off stump, chances are that any batsman who enjoys flicking fours off his pads but struggles off the front foot is going to send one straight to one of your slips. It doesn’t always work, of course – the nature of cricket is its unpredictability – and there are times when you’ll have to slog away for a while for little reward, but anyone who’s seen the previous year or two of English test cricket should be well-prepared for it. Fielding is also customisable to a point, with a number of preset options and one that allows you to place fielders where you think they should be.
With that said, the lack of tinkering options when on the field is something that also hamstrings International Cricket Captain to a degree. Whereas in football management games endlessly fiddling with tactics convince you that various happenings are completely down to your actions, players coming in and out and particular styles suiting particular formations, the simplicity of ICC 3 does make you wonder if your decisions regarding aggression and line are having any kind of impact. In one match against a rampant Indian side, asking messrs Strauss and Cook to start carefully and bat defensively ended up with the former getting caught off a ridiculously over-ambitious shot and the latter getting run out, whereas asking Kevin Pietersen to take things a bit more aggressively ended with him scoring a painstaking 13 runs from 54 balls. Quite often, particularly as far as batting is concerned, you feel as though you’re watching things play out as they would have anyway, with only hugely drastic changes in tactic making any noticeable difference.
Adding to the disappointment are the highlight snippets that pop up to show crucial moments of the match. To call them outdated would be perhaps a bit too kind; indeed, they look vaguely similar to the old original PlayStation Brian Lara cricket game, released back in 1999. Players all look identical apart from skin colour and a selection of about 5 haircuts, and the animation of the players often verges on the downright wrong, with some of the shots some batsmen end up producing only being possible via dislocation of at least one shoulder. On top of all this, fours are sometimes given for balls that clearly go to fielders, shots occasionally glitch through players’ diving bodies and LBW decisions are given that no umpire this side of Daryl Hair would give, even if they were facing the wrong way when the ball was bowled. Okay, flashy graphics aren’t exactly necessary when it comes to a management type of game, but seeing your team dance like Thunderbirds puppets when they snare a wicket is only amusing for a certain amount of time. Even the presence of Jonathan ‘Aggers’ Agnew on commentary duty fails to drag the whole thing up from the muddy puddle.
Hence, it all becomes somewhat frustrating for even a cricket fan. Whilst it’s true that you can select from a huge roster of county players for the national team or even play as your favourite county team themselves, the main meat of the game, i.e. the matches, feel somewhat out of your control at times. As a short burst between playing something else it will certainly fill up a bit of your time, with options of custom test-match or 50 over match series and an internet play option also present (although sadly a little unreliable, if my attempts to play a match were anything to go by), but if you’re hoping for something exacting and absorbing, the fact that even the most ardent of fans soon becomes slightly bored of not having much input means it won’t hold your attention for long enough. Without the actual feel of leather on willow, International Cricket Captain 3 almost feels as if it should have been left back in the pavilion.
4/10