i think that the reason that cricket 2004 is not a perfect representation of cricket is that cricket is a singularly tricky game to simulate effectively. to me, HB studios have done an excellent job of recreating some of the REAL themes of cricket (although i should say from the outset that i play the ps2 version which sounds like it is much less buggy than the pc version):
- you have to play your batsman in properly
- you have to discipline yourself just like real batsmen do
- you have to practice again and again and over time you will develop a 'feel' for batting and a real 'style'
- bowling is not about 'the perfect ball' but rather about unsettling the batsman with programmed variation, setting innovative fields and bowling to them
- thinking hard about the game will bring rewards and benefits, adjusting your line after being thumped around can suddenly bring wickets crashing down
there are three main reasons for me why cricket is so hard to emulate/simlulate:
1) in terms of 'action' you are talking about a half-second every ball where you make batting decisions - and based only on the pitch of the ball really (i.e. not really looking at the bowler's action to 'pick' his leg-cutter or slower ball but playing pretty much every ball on the pitch of it) - unlike something like fifa where you are involved in decision-making and action for every second of the match, or john madden, where you're in charge of decision-making for a whole play.
2) for every improvement you make to the bowling (i.e. making it swing more) then the batting suffers, and vice versa - the easier you make it to hit boundaries then the more frustrating it is for bowlers. then to cap it all off you have to have rough parity between the batting scores and bowling scores in order to make it interesting at the end of matches!
3) the sheer length of a cricket match! 5 days of around six hours a day is 30 hours for one test match - as compared with what? 90 minutes of football or 3 hours of american football? and for all those that know and love test cricket you know that the full five days are usually full of tactical battles, shifts in momentum and highs and lows. you cannot condense a five day test to half an hour's computer play in the same way you can compress 90 minuutes of soccer into five minutes, because it is the length and depth or cricket that gives the enjoyment and the variety! the main indicator of this for me is the temptation to play a 'quick' ten over match - but then of course the batsmen are just going to attack the whole way and the cricket is effectively ruined!
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i have been playing the game for a while now and every time i get frustrated with the limitations suddenly i'll work something else out. of course there are things that i would change (for one a clear concise explanation of how the dot on the ball works when bowling different deliveries would be very useful!) but in general i am amazed at how much like real cricket you can make cricket 2004 play...
and whoever said that HB studios don't seem to know anything about cricket, you obviously have no idea how hard it would be to conceptualise and execute a perfect simulation of cricket on a computer. this is the closest to a reasonable cricket game i have ever played...
: But the ppl at HB Studios could have atleast taken notice of the complaints(i m talking abt various bugs) and atleast could have dealt with the matter tactfully(read:diplomacy) ;D: rather than lying back and not reply to anything at all.
