After all the hype, I finally got my hands on Cricket 2005 a week ago. While I have not yet mastered this game and I am still to ’’discover’’ things about this game, I thought I would still write a review. It is a known fact that EA doesn’t spend even half the resources for a cricket game as it does for other games. But even so this game is a vast improvement from cricket 2004. But at the same time, there were some disappointing let downs.

Graphics

The good thing about the game is that the menu screens look really good. The graphics are a big improvement from the last edition...the players’ faces resemble the real players’ faces. But don’t get too excited. You will be disappointed if you are an Indian/Pakistani fan. It seems EA has got the likeness right only for Australian and England players. I played as India against Australia. When Sachin Tendulkar came out to bat, I noticed he had a moustache! Rahul Dravid did not look like Rahul Dravid and was the same height as Tendulkar. Harbhajan Singh had no beard. None of the Indian players resembled Indian players. However, all the Australian players were made to resemble the real players to a very great detail. I don’t know why EA is doing this. That’s just wrong. But still I give them props for improving from the last edition.

The stadiums look better in this game as well. However, there are significantly less number of stadiums in this game than the last. If you play in Australia or England, ou have the choice to play in 4 or 5 different stadiums but if you play in India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka, you have only one choice. So if you play a test tour to India, you will play all your games in the same stadium. This was a big disappointment. You also have the opportunity to play in different kinds of pitches in this game and the graphics for this looks good. You can actually look at the pitch and say this is a dusty pitch, wet pitch and so on.

Game Play

The game play is a significant improvemnet from Cricket 2004. I have only played this game a few times but I noticed a few good things. The batter confidence meter seems to work really well. There is also the bowler confidence meter which was missing in the earlier game. Different bowlers have different deliveries they can bowl. If you are a swing bowler, you can swing the ball and you have the ability to decide to decide how much to swing it. If you are a spin bowler, you can decide how much spin to impart. If you are a good spin bowler like Warne, Murali or Harbhajan, you can actually bowl surprise deliveries like googlies, doosras and even teesras! You bowl these surprise deliveries only when you are confident though. For example, I was bowling as Harbhajan Singh to Symonds. He hit me for a six and I lost the ability to bowl the doosra and tesra for a while.

The batting seems to much harder than bowling in this game (reverse of C2004). If you are facing a good bowler like McGrath, it is very easy to get edges. You need to play yourself in before trying any shot.

Sounds

The sounds are very good in this game. The menu sounds are a big improvement and the song collection is good (yes they finally have a song collection for a cricket game).

Conclusion

I would give this game a 7 out of 10. There are some big goof ups which makes me angry. The fact that the aussie faces look real and some other teams’ faces look really bad just makes me mad. EA should have taken the time to make it all look real, they certainly had the ability.

I have only been playing this game for a week. So I am still to discover many things about this game........but so far I have been impressed. If you are a big cricket fan and really enjoyed playing C2004, you will certainly like this game.

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