Cricket Revolution
Review
The rookie with some promise
by William Thompson
reviewed on PC
Bowling and fielding
With cricket, batting is just half of the game. The other half is when it is your turn in the field. The bowling controls are quite good with a number of various bowling types available in each team. After selecting which bowler, a simple technique is used to determine the pace and swing/seam/spin of the delivery. Much like batting, bowlers have an adrenaline meter (as opposed to the batting confidence meter) which grows or falls as they bowl. Good deliveries will result in an improved rating, whilst being hit for boundaries reduces the meter. Once the meter is full, the bowler can then opt to bowl one of their special deliveries, assuming they have enough allocated points (as discussed earlier). The only issue I have with the bowling is the placement of the bowling marker. The marker is difficult to control and it is hard to get a consistent line and length
Bowling a consistent line and length especially is imperative when setting the field placings. Setting the field is very simple though. It is simply a matter of picking up and dropping the fielder in the location where you want them in the fielding set-up. As with batting and bowling, you can have specialist fielders who have an advantage in catching or speed. Knowing the best place to put the fielders can help in lowering the opposition score.
Visuals and audio
Visually, Cricket Revolution is on a par, if not better, than the other cricket games on the market. Although, there are no real-life player likenesses, the players are somewhat realistic looking and their movements for the most part are quite fluid. The stadiums, including the futuristic indoor stadium and the Egyptian style stadium also give some variation to the scenery. On the downside are the scorecards... not because they are horrible to look at, but because they are missing the Fall of Wicket details. Surely there should be this detail in all cricket games, but not in Cricket Revolution. So if you want to know if your batsmen have been involved in a 100 run partnership, you’re out of luck. Although the visuals are first rate, the audio is sorely lacking. Certainly, the sound effects are suitable, with the sound of the bat hitting the ball authentic and the crowd interaction reasonable, but the expected commentary is non-existent. This reduces the feel of being in the game somewhat. It can be said that other games have commentary that is too repetitious and this is certainly true, so maybe the lack of commentary is a good thing that allows gamers to focus more on the task at hand.
An improving rookie
With a bit more polish, especially in the audio department, Cricket Revolution could be the cricket game of choice. As it stands now, it is just a rung below the big boys of EA Cricket and Codemasters cricket series (Ashes 2009 being the most recent). The difficulty level could also be a turn off to new players, but after some practice, the game become much easier and is in fact quite intuitive. But the gameplay itself makes the game enjoyable. The nature of the run-scoring and the wide variety of shot selection certainly makes the game feel more realistic. Bowling is not a chore that it can sometimes be, although the bowling marker issue can be frustrating. But none of the issues are major and Cricket Revolution does an adequate job of bringing cricket to the PC. I’m sure with future patches and updates the game will definitely be on the way to scoring a century.
6.8
fun score
Pros
Huge range of batting shots, combined with relatively intuitive controls make batting realistic.
Cons
The bowling marker makes it difficult to bowl exactly where you’d like. No commentary. Batting placement doesn’t seem to work as intended.
