Saturday, March 23, 2024

Ashes Cricket 2009: A Review

Ashes Cricket 2009

Another cricket game on the offering and by Codemasters again. Sports games, we believe, have a fan following of their own and Ashes Cricket 2009 promises something extra in terms of gameplay. To start with, the game features licensed teams and player names from the nPower Ashes series of 2009. Add to this the inclusion of the Hawk-Eye system that tracks LBWs and ball movements and of course commentaries by cricketing legends such as Shane Warne, Ian Botham and Tony Greig.

Gameplay: We were mildly surprised at the gameplay offered by this game in terms of the fun factor. The game has three modes which you can choose to play in, Test Matches, one-day internationals and T20. Having played a few cricket titles before and feeling utterly confident of myself, I chose a mode and straight away stepped into batting to know how the game felt. But a few balls later, I was failing miserably at the task and had no option to exit the game and go back to the tutorials section. Yes, the controls are a bit complicated and need some getting used to. There are tutorials for batting, bowling and fielding. This game provides the player with an option to even take ground catches and it is all based on timing and how quick the reflexes of the player are. The tutorials are voiced over by Shane Warne & Ian Botham and provide ample challenges to perfect your skills within the game. One better feature we found was the Legend Challenge wherein real world historic situations/moments could be re-lived and played. This was really good in terms of gaining some serious insight into the controls.

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Ashes Cricket 2009 Screenshots

Another cool feature we found in game was something called the ‘Confidence’ and ‘Tiredness’ levels of the players. So what it basically means is that if you are batting and fail to effectively tackle certain deliveries, then the confidence level meter goes down for that specific player and the subsequent deliveries are harder to face. The reverse is true if you are able to effectively tackle deliveries and successfully manage to douse the confidence level of the bowler which in turn would mean you attacking the ball every time you play a shot. This feature goes to batting, bowling and fielding. This feature was quite useful in providing an overall dynamic feel to the game as the game progresses according to how you play.

From the batting point of view, the controls are a bit complicated, but one gets used to them of course as the game progresses. The ball tackling feels realistic and depends on how well you have timed it. This can be known through an in-game timing meter that gives real time feedback on how well the ball was played. You can then accordingly adjust your shots and experiment to your heart’s content. I, of course, was dismissed several times while experimenting and that I guess is expected in the beginning. The field placing automatically changes according to how you bat and player bots automatically appear in the area that most of your shots go.

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Ashes Cricket 2009 Screenshots 2

For the bowling, there are several more controls you need to be aware of and it is quite a challenge we feel. The confidence meter plays a vital role here and the bowling aspect completely depends on one’s skills. The fielding aspect provides you with an option to take catches and this has to be perfectly timed in order to successfully complete. After the batsman lofts the ball, and if it travels to a player, the view automatically changes to that player with the ball flying towards him. A circle around the ball will let you time the catch by letting you know when. A red circle means that the catch cannot be taken, an orange means that it can be taken or might not, a green circle means that the ball is in a perfect position to be caught. However, all this happens in a flash and you would have only a few nanoseconds to press the catching key when you see the circle turn green. Again, this can be practiced in the tutorials section. All in all, a good gameplay in this game ensures that fun element that is expected out of sport games. My rating for gameplay for Ashes Cricket 2009 is 8/10.

Graphics: The in-game graphics of the game are pretty standard, with a few snags here and there, but overall good. The animations are smooth and each bowler, batsman and fielder have their own style incorporated in to the game. The game requires 2GB of RAM and a graphic card that supports Shader3.0 & above and has a minimum of 256MB of onboard memory. There are, although, some moments in Ashes Cricket 2009 when the graphics just seem to snag and the smoothness is lost. This we saw when we played the ball towards the boundary and the game slowed down a few frames and picked up again. Though a very minor lag, but is still noticeable. But overall, decent graphics ensure decent presentation of the entire game play. No major issues on that front in the game. I tested the game at different screen resolutions on my machine and found no issues. The game was smooth at the highest resolution of 1680×1050 and churned out a decent frame rate that did not compromise with the gameplay whatsoever.

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Ashes Cricket 2009 Screenshots 3

The Final Word: Overall a good game and definitely a better looking game in terms of graphics and better to play with in terms of gameplay. Ashes Cricket 2009 is intended for general entertainment and can be experienced even by those who are not big fans of sports games, as the game promises some serious fun gameplay. Sport game fans, well, you need to get this game into your collection as it extends gameplay capabilities from what was previously know.

Our Ratings:

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GamePlay: 8/10.
Graphics: 7/10.
Sounds: 8.5/10.
Overall (not an average): 7.5/10.

    By E. Kartik

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