Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

afternoon than pottering along to the local pavilion to watch
0 the he village game of team cricket or maybe - what even could partaking be nicer on in a warm game summer's yourself?
Its a nice image, but being in good old England we don't get
many warm summer's afternoons so what better way to enjoy the
sport than from the comfort of your armchair in front of the monitor.
This in mind, it is perhaps rather surprising that there haven't been
many computer cricket games. In fact the only good one that springs
to mind is Audiogenic's Graham Gouch. But this could all be set to
change. Team 17 are working on their more arcadey Final Over cricket
game and now we also have Grandslam's latest contribution. But will
it really bowl you over?
GRAPHICS
I must say I was slightly confused by the
graphics for Ws Cricket - I mean, when I
saw the batting or bowling screens I
was impressed. They are nicely set out,
the sprites are large and well-animated
and the stadium is detailed_ But (and
this is a big but) when the fielding
screen came up it looked absolutely
abysmal. The sprites are tiny and very
basic and took me back to graphics
from about ten years ago! It just looked
very strange - like two different games.
At the beginning, not surprisingly,
are the title sequences, which show a
selection of digitised pictures containing
cricket memorabilia. This is a very
nice touch that cricket fans are bound
to love. The pictures are used throughout
the game to select your players and
they give the game a more human
touch rather than having to choose
from a lot of facts and figures. You can
also put in your own images by using a
paint package.
The different animated sequences
that appear throughout the game work
well, such as Umpire decisions, and
there's even a rather strange but realistic
animation of a duck for, you
guessed it, no runs scored
SO%
on
INTRODUCTION
It's Cricket
triereie,.!
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Tory minister. It's Cricket literally. Tina Hackett is your umpire
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There a re a nice range of animations
and the digitise d picture s work we ll
SOUND o The introduction for the game is a loud dancey tune, but
what is really impressive on the sonics front though is the
speech f samples. These have been taken from match commentary so you
get things like "It's in the air" of "He's out" and these phrases fit in with
the l action and give an authentic feel. The crowd effects work well too
with cheers, boos and the like going off when appropriate,
all ehelping
to create a good international cricket atmosphere, 70
a
OPINION
t 42%
6
/
1-4-94
11111
Overall this game just didn't work in the playability stak
h The bowling aspect is okay, as is the batting, but the fielding
is absolutely dreadful. Once the batsman has hit the
ball eyou
then get an overheadview of the rest of the field.
If you're on the bowling side you have to pick a fielder,
move r him to where the ball is probably going to land and
then he will throw the ball back. This is very fiddly and
tedious o and it's more a case of guesswork than actual skill.
The bowling isn't too bad -you get to pick whether you
want n to bowl the ball around or over the wicket and then
you can choose whether you want spin or not. Pace or spin
bowling w is determined by the player's attribute in the
Player's Profile. This works well enough but after a while
i
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11 111•1
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The fie lding pa rt of the game is fa t
too random a nd ve ry fiddly
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PME-ointi CM I 67t-
, 3 4 5
The memora bilia in
the introduction is
a nice touch a nd
will appeal to a ll
true cricke t fans
would become rather repetitive. The batting part is quite
nice though - once you've remembered which controls do
what. There are 12 moves available and you press the joystick
once, twice or three times followed by up, down, left
or right depending on the shot you want_ This method
allows for some really nice moves to be executed.
The game has its good points, such as having plenty
of player stats which should go down well with the
real cricket buffs, and it is also expandable for future
add-ons, However, despite some nice graphics, a great
cricketing atmosphere and some cleverly-used speech
samples, the fielding aspect lets the whole thing down
A shame.