Ashes Cricket 2009

Put off by the terrible box art of Ashes Cricket 2009, I didn’t expect much from the game. The proverb ‘do not judge a book by its cover’ came around to bite me in the ass this time, since behind the shabby exterior, bad animation, and less than perfect optimization, Ashes Cricket 2009 had quite a unique experience (in a good way) in store.

Unlike the traditional way cricket games have played out for years, where (while batting) you just hold down directional keys and punch the ground or loft shot button to execute shots, Ashes Cricket 2009 is a bit more intricate. Here you move around the crease while the bowler takes his run-up, select the direction you wish to place a shot in, and once the ball’s pitched, you time your shot by pressing one of three buttons - Attack, Defend or Loft. Batting becomes an on-going process, where rather than just focusing on the direction you wish to play the shot in, emphasis is laid on preempted shot selection and more so on timing. Timing is the key in any of the aspects here, be in Batting, Bowling or Fielding.

The fact that each shot played is broken down into so many variables - footwork, shot placement, timing and shot selection - makes the game’s learning curve steeper than your traditional cricket videogame. This isn’t such a bad thing, since skill plays a bigger role here than it did in EA’s cricket games (or Codemaster’s older ones, for that matter), making playing against a human opponent more challenging and a true test of skill. You have to manually adjust the placement of a shot using the W,A,S and D keys to train a directional beam on your mini-field-map to play between the gaps. After that, you have to select whether you wish to play a shot without any footwork, on the front foot, on the back foot, or by coming down the pitch - by holding down no key, the CTRL key, the Shift Key, or both the Shift and CTRL keys together, respectively. Finally, to execute a shot you have to press the defense, attack or loft shot button, which are the Down, Left, or Right cursor keys, and time it perfectly.

While the game’s batting design makes it fun to play, it makes it that much less realistic, since unlike real cricket where you don’t know where the ball’s going to be pitched until the very last moment, in Ashes Cricket 2009 the ball’s placement is revealed right when the bowler’s run up starts, making timing your shots a far greater challenge than shot selection. Also, the fact that there are so many layers involved in playing a good shot, means that newer or casual/midcore gamers might find it really difficult to cope with the game, and would much rather stick to traditional styled cricket videogames.

Those who wish to take an extensive course in learning how to play this game though, can play the game’s ‘Legends Coaching’ mode which walks you through the finer details of each aspect of the game. This mode not only shows you how to play, but it’s actually fun for a change unlike most game tutorials. Warney and Ian ‘Beefy’ Botham have lent their voices to make this mode interesting, as they guide you through the basics as well as advanced techniques step-by-step, telling you where you’ve gone wrong and how you can improve. A word of warning though: if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t like going through tutorials, this game may end up being close to unplayable for you; you might as well skip it altogether.

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The other major aspect of cricket - Bowling - isn’t as easy as it is in other games since it’s rather different. Bowling well consistently requires you to be on your toes, as you try and get both your placement and execution quality perfect for each delivery. Placement quality is your line and length, which is indicated by the color of the ball marker you move around on the pitch. The pitch has certain ‘sweet-spots’ that make your cursor turn green when you put the ball marker over them. The lighter the green, the better the ball placement and the harder it is to hit the ball. Execution quality comes into play once the run-up nears its end. A bar pops up to help you release the ball as late as possible, without over-stepping and causing a no-ball. The later you release a ball, the better the Execution quality; and perfect execution as well as placement quality ensures that your deliveries are that much harder to hit. To mix things up a bit, you can pick from a plethora of deliveries that help you keep the batsman guessing.

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To add a more persistent feel to each innings, the game has a brilliant ‘Confidence’ system in place that awards your consistency with better performance. In test matches, a player’s fortitude, perseverance and mental conditioning is tested through the long 5-days of play, and the game does a great job of capturing that via this system. If a batsman times shots well, scores runs, or hits boundaries, his confidence gets boosted and he finds executing shots that much easier. He gets ‘in form’, so to speak. Similarly, if a bowler bowls a consistent line and length, gets wickets or bowls maiden overs, he gains confidence, making it easy to bowl good deliveries. This semblance of persistence makes playing long test-matches against your friends or the AI, that much more fun and less boring in comparison to playing older cricket games for long durations.

If playing the two-team Ashes Cricket Test tournament is not what you seek, you can always turn to the the Twenty20 or One-Day International mode, which are equally fun. I for one, am not a big fan of test cricket, so the inclusion of these modes kept me going.

What ticked me off though was the shabby animation, that makes players seem stiff and unreal. While you could argue that its just cosmetic and doesn’t change the gameplay experience at all, I’d beg to differ since the immersion level of a game can be severely handicapped by bad animation and/or bad optimization. Speaking of which, load times in the game are erratic and what may take a few seconds to load sometimes, may take up to a minute or two at other times (even on high-end rigs), showing that the game wasn’t ported all too well. Framerate dips are scattered throughout the game too, which aren’t too severe, but are an annoyance nevertheless; they’re a testament to the bad job developer Transmission games has done of porting the game to the PC - the bastard platform for multi-platform games. Given the option, I’d recommend you pick up the console version of the game over the PC one, since that’s supposedly free of the optimization issues.

In conclusion, Ashes Cricket 2009 might be a bit laborious to get the hang of, but if you persevere and give the game a chance, it’s loads of fun. The bad animation, dated visuals, and shabby optimization can be a hindrance, but its nothing you can’t look past if it’s good gameplay you seek. If you’re a cricket game fan, and don’t mind shedding just Rs. 499 for the PC version of the game, I recommend that you do so. Just don’t expect something extraordinary, and you won’t be disappointed. The only thing you need to bare in mind is that this isn’t your traditional cricket videogame, so if you want some laid-back old-school cricket action, look elsewhere. This one keeps you on your toes perpetually!