MattW
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ICC Pro Cricket 2015 Review
We've had a video game featuring the Cricket World Cup for every edition since 1999, but the one for the 2011 World Cup took a very different turn from 2007 - Cricket Power, a modification to Cricket Revolution, was a very incomplete experience, especially when you compare it to the full scale console release that came before hand. However, with sights firmly set on using the World Cup license to drive sales in India, this World Cup's game is more of the same from a conceptual standpoint, but this time delivers a far better experience for your $10 than last time.
A lot of this game shows its origins as a mobile phone game - especially during the excruciating initial tutorial that forces you to play it with keyboard and mouse. You bowl by drawing the delivery path on the screen, after choosing length with a quick button press, followed by ensuring you don't deliver a no-ball by timing the release with another one. Obviously this is quite a smart way of implementing bowling on a touch screen, quickly drawing a path would be rather easy with your finger, but I can't call it bad when doing it with analogue sticks on a controller. Obviously DBC's controls are the gold standard, but this is an improvement over the typical pitch marker based bowling schemes of old.
Batting is reminiscent of old cricket games - with the 360 analogue control on a field radar and a pitch marker to tell you where the ball will be, however this is combined with shot making being narrowed down to two - 'grounded' and lofted. I put grounded in quotes because it's not particularly grounded, you can get caught outside the circle playing a 'grounded' shot - it just means it's slightly less risky than the lofted shots. It would be the aggressive shot button in any other cricket game - meaning that you're only getting short and very fast scoring cricket here.
The other downside for the batting is a lack of any timing feedback, so it's hard to get a sense of where the right timing is. I find however that most of the time that sticking to the grounded shots and pointing towards the gaps can get you a fast enough run rate to win. The field seems to change every couple of balls, but basically just fill the gap you last hit in, almost always leaving another one wide open.
It's not difficult to win, but I do find the matches enjoyable. The World Cup mode defaults to 5 over matches, with no obvious option to change that - however in playing longer matches in the quick play mode, it's easy enough to bowl the AI out early, and I don't think there's enough depth to the batting for anything other than chasing a total to be enjoyable. Luckily the game seems to realise that and the AI chose to bat first in all the matches I've played.
There's one other game mode that is perhaps the star of this game - the 'Ultimate Team' style World Tour mode - which is the best use of the World Cup licence to date. The concept is a nice World Tour, playing other composite sides in 2 over matches - with a requirement for a number of local players in your side. This is a great concept, however let down by the difference between a skilled and unskilled player being hard to notice in gameplay, as well as having no way to compete against other people - with no online features in the game.
Every match you win in the World Cup mode scores you a card to expand your squad and you can purchase them with credits from a store. Those credits come obviously straight from the mobile version of the game which would have them as microtransactions - however those are replaced with the up front purchase of the game on PC. The game tells me on loading screens and when trying to purchase things that I can get credits from playing the game or completing daily objectives - but I have found no trace of those so far - with the cards for winning matches the only way I have found so far to get more.
Perhaps I simply haven't found it yet - but this adds to the suggestion that the PC port was an afterthought. The screenshot above shows the result of using the merger of two bronze cards to make a silver card - you have to arbitrarily wait time or pay gold. That makes sense as a way to make money on phones, but is just annoying on a paid PC game. The other area that it shows is that the menus can't be navigated with a controller, apart from using the analogue stick to move the mouse, which means frequently in matches you need to reach over to your mouse to dismiss a menu. In addition to this, the running controls aren't explained on screen - A to run, B to cancel if you're wondering.
I reference the price up early deliberately, this is a game I review with the context of price front of mind. What is missing from this game is acceptable when the price is considered, and while I think it certainly needs some further development to make it a game more suited to being on PC, it's an enjoyable game that makes good use of the World Cup licence. I haven't had a chance to try the game on mobile - I have a Windows Phone and the game is Android and iOS only. I also generally prefer just paying up front rather than being bombarded with attempts to get me to pay for coins - so it's probably a better experience on PC with that aspect considered.
I don't know how much of this game you would play if you have Don Bradman Cricket - but there's things here like the ultimate team style mode and the licensed players that stand out, and the pricetag is low enough that you're not much out of pocket if you don't enjoy it. I'll probably be going back to it after finishing this review just to see how the World Cup I started plays out, and to explore the World Tour mode further, with the short matches being enough to hide the larger flaws.
Overall, I'd probably consider this a recommendation - though if you're that 97% minority with Android/iOS, maybe give it a go on your phone first.
[nggallery id=40]
ICC Pro Cricket 2015 is available for PC on their website and on Google Play for Android and the App Store on iOS. A copy of the game was supplied for review.
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
ICC Pro Cricket 2015 Review
We've had a video game featuring the Cricket World Cup for every edition since 1999, but the one for the 2011 World Cup took a very different turn from 2007 - Cricket Power, a modification to Cricket Revolution, was a very incomplete experience, especially when you compare it to the full scale console release that came before hand. However, with sights firmly set on using the World Cup license to drive sales in India, this World Cup's game is more of the same from a conceptual standpoint, but this time delivers a far better experience for your $10 than last time.
A lot of this game shows its origins as a mobile phone game - especially during the excruciating initial tutorial that forces you to play it with keyboard and mouse. You bowl by drawing the delivery path on the screen, after choosing length with a quick button press, followed by ensuring you don't deliver a no-ball by timing the release with another one. Obviously this is quite a smart way of implementing bowling on a touch screen, quickly drawing a path would be rather easy with your finger, but I can't call it bad when doing it with analogue sticks on a controller. Obviously DBC's controls are the gold standard, but this is an improvement over the typical pitch marker based bowling schemes of old.
Batting is reminiscent of old cricket games - with the 360 analogue control on a field radar and a pitch marker to tell you where the ball will be, however this is combined with shot making being narrowed down to two - 'grounded' and lofted. I put grounded in quotes because it's not particularly grounded, you can get caught outside the circle playing a 'grounded' shot - it just means it's slightly less risky than the lofted shots. It would be the aggressive shot button in any other cricket game - meaning that you're only getting short and very fast scoring cricket here.
The other downside for the batting is a lack of any timing feedback, so it's hard to get a sense of where the right timing is. I find however that most of the time that sticking to the grounded shots and pointing towards the gaps can get you a fast enough run rate to win. The field seems to change every couple of balls, but basically just fill the gap you last hit in, almost always leaving another one wide open.
It's not difficult to win, but I do find the matches enjoyable. The World Cup mode defaults to 5 over matches, with no obvious option to change that - however in playing longer matches in the quick play mode, it's easy enough to bowl the AI out early, and I don't think there's enough depth to the batting for anything other than chasing a total to be enjoyable. Luckily the game seems to realise that and the AI chose to bat first in all the matches I've played.
There's one other game mode that is perhaps the star of this game - the 'Ultimate Team' style World Tour mode - which is the best use of the World Cup licence to date. The concept is a nice World Tour, playing other composite sides in 2 over matches - with a requirement for a number of local players in your side. This is a great concept, however let down by the difference between a skilled and unskilled player being hard to notice in gameplay, as well as having no way to compete against other people - with no online features in the game.
Every match you win in the World Cup mode scores you a card to expand your squad and you can purchase them with credits from a store. Those credits come obviously straight from the mobile version of the game which would have them as microtransactions - however those are replaced with the up front purchase of the game on PC. The game tells me on loading screens and when trying to purchase things that I can get credits from playing the game or completing daily objectives - but I have found no trace of those so far - with the cards for winning matches the only way I have found so far to get more.
Perhaps I simply haven't found it yet - but this adds to the suggestion that the PC port was an afterthought. The screenshot above shows the result of using the merger of two bronze cards to make a silver card - you have to arbitrarily wait time or pay gold. That makes sense as a way to make money on phones, but is just annoying on a paid PC game. The other area that it shows is that the menus can't be navigated with a controller, apart from using the analogue stick to move the mouse, which means frequently in matches you need to reach over to your mouse to dismiss a menu. In addition to this, the running controls aren't explained on screen - A to run, B to cancel if you're wondering.
I reference the price up early deliberately, this is a game I review with the context of price front of mind. What is missing from this game is acceptable when the price is considered, and while I think it certainly needs some further development to make it a game more suited to being on PC, it's an enjoyable game that makes good use of the World Cup licence. I haven't had a chance to try the game on mobile - I have a Windows Phone and the game is Android and iOS only. I also generally prefer just paying up front rather than being bombarded with attempts to get me to pay for coins - so it's probably a better experience on PC with that aspect considered.
I don't know how much of this game you would play if you have Don Bradman Cricket - but there's things here like the ultimate team style mode and the licensed players that stand out, and the pricetag is low enough that you're not much out of pocket if you don't enjoy it. I'll probably be going back to it after finishing this review just to see how the World Cup I started plays out, and to explore the World Tour mode further, with the short matches being enough to hide the larger flaws.
Overall, I'd probably consider this a recommendation - though if you're that 97% minority with Android/iOS, maybe give it a go on your phone first.
[nggallery id=40]
ICC Pro Cricket 2015 is available for PC on their website and on Google Play for Android and the App Store on iOS. A copy of the game was supplied for review.
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
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