MattW
Administrator
Ashes Cricket 2013 is a flawed representation of the sport wrapped in a package of impressive licensed content and sporadic visual detail. There was a great artist behind this game, unfortunately it falls well into the common trap of using licenses to smooth over basic game flaws. No one would give this game a second look without the Ashes license. After a first look, I can't see you wanting to give it a second.
To start with some of those positives, the stadiums that I have seen are impressive as is the variety of choices, allowing a tournament/tour mode that sees you play at a number of stadiums in each region of the world. 23 of them in total, with the 5 Ashes test stadiums in Australia and England all licensed.
The grounds are all well detailed and representative of their real life companions (I need to go look at Lord's to see if they've fixed the media centre). Unfortuantly, the detail on them doesn't extend to the crowd which is awful, and they seem to serve to slow the game down whenever the stadium is in view.
Sound is generally good, though buggy. Sometimes the sound stops altogether - other times it is absent for an event (silent appeals for example), but generally it's good. The commentary is also reasonable, though frequently repetitive with the co-commentator often saying the exact same thing directly after Nicholas.
The hud/menus are mostly aesthetically pleasing - a few odd bugs in them like exclamation marks sitting in bits that should be blank, but otherwise it's nice to get to the game's menus.
The common file formats of Unity3D mean that all the game files are open for editing - should you want to. That should mean the game is easily graphically patchable. "Cricket_Frontend_IphoneHD" as one of the files in the game should tell you all you need to know about the game.
The bowling system is an improvement over directly placing a donut on the pitch, but seems to offer no real evolution of the bowling controls. Assigning just one button to the delivery select option means there's no option to switch it up mid delivery, and there's no controls to add extra/reduced turn/spin to a ball compared to AC09's controls.
An unlabelled meter - all in yellow - is all that gives you fine control on the ball - it seems to control speed, and filling it up gives you a no ball. It doesn't seem like you have any control over spin bowling.
The batting controls are a dumbed down version of IC2010 - I kept holding down the triggers in vein but there's no front/back foot control. Perhaps some of it came down to performance issues - but the timing of when to play a shot was confusing, I was always either too early or too late for a shot.
You can have slightly more control over a shot power than on AC09 because it has the IC2010 style of pushing slightly on the analogue sticks for a less than full shot, but the sticks on my controller were way too stiff to do that with any precision.
No difficulty settings means the issues on timing can't be helped - so you'll need to just learn the timing. And once you do, you can hit every ball for six - the AI seems to love bowling short which means you're just good timing away from hitting a six.
Put it this way, perhaps I'm not enjoying the game because I'm bad at it, but if I got good at it, there'd be no where to go to get me a challenge. No online play means I can't play against people (there is local multiplayer, but if you've got a friend who likes cricket, go outside), and there's no difficulty settings to move up a level once I'm good.
The two camera options are interesting. The behind the batsman camera is certainly far more preferable to bat from, because the 'broadcast' camera is far too low down and behind the bowler to be a good batting experience. DB14's bowling camera is a better 'broadcast' camera than the broadcast one in this game.
The game starts to show some slight promise when you're batting behind the batsman - timing gets a little bit more natural (though you're still playing far before you think you should need to), however there's no reward for trying to bat carefully. Playing defensively is just as hard as slogging a six - the timing seems to be identical regardless of shot, so you get in the mode that you'd rather just whack it for six than to bother building an innings.
Fielding is abysmal - ignoring the inability to control, the ball just gets constantly lost, fielders stand stunned not knowing what to do about a ball a few metres from them and overthrows are very common.
The game's performance is terrible - I don't have top end hardware, but my graphics card exceeds the minimum, but the game is unplayable out of the box with no options other than a few resolution ones to choose from - with nothing below 720p. After forcing some graphical settings off on my graphics card control panel I could play, barely. For the quality of the graphics, the demands on hardware aren't acceptable - I'll probably buy a new graphics card soon and will revisit things after that, but I did expect a far smoother game - even if that meant I needed to turn advanced effects off, but there's no option to.
To add to that, just about every movement from a player is to rotate around on their axis without moving their legs or to snap to a different spot. They seem to have animated the ball and then just done whatever to make the play that goes around that fit. Or just have a fielder go hide in the stands when they aren't chasing the ball.
No replays except for occasional Hawk Eye means that the bugs in the fielding multiply - I frequently got out and had no idea where the ball went. I don't mind not having auto replays after every ball, but at least on wickets!
There is no DRS - just a manual appeal button for the bowling team. Despite this, the hawk-eye has the DRS like hud on it, teasing you at how it could have been made into one.
The horrible delay between balls is painful - games take ages because you're constantly waiting for animations to play out, you have to sit and look at the scoreboard on the ground, you watch the batsman take guard, you wait and wait. I can't imagine playing a test match like that.
One of the issues in rating this game is simply that it is only $20.99 - I paid more than that for Cricket Revolution, that didn't have commentary, had a worse batting system and fewer game modes. However at least it was backed up with some developer support, being patched multiple times after release and had online play.
By the 'only $20' yardstick, it still falls short. The game has too many bugs in the basic batting and fielding experience to be enjoyable, and the performance issues mean that what you save from the $20 pricetag you lose on needing the hardware to run it. Being officially licensed does bring you some nice stadiums - it's just what's on the ground that's the problem - everything that the $20 buys you is irrelevant from the core experience, which is a step backwards.
The main reasons in my view that buying a new cricket game because it's a new cricket game is often justified come from two sides - a new game usually means a buzz in the online community, it's usually easy to get an online matchup - and thus some of the normal AI flaws are ignored by some multiplayer. The total absence of online play rules that one out, a good patch adding Ashes 2013 content to Ashes 2009 or even Cricket 07 delivers a better gameplay experience to what is here, though in Cricket 07's case, not as visually nice, for AC09, it's hard to say.
The other reason is supporting the development of cricket games - knowing that the market is small and that sales might help keep promising series alive into extra editions that might get them closer to the ideal game. I will let you judge if you think what we've had from 505 games over the last several months is enough to ignore what we did get for most of the time before the delay, or if it is an irrelevant factor. But do what you just hopefully did and read reviews and watch the gameplay before making a purchase decision. There's another big player in the market now - I think it's fair enough at that point to not just support cricket games for being cricket games, but support the ones that are better for being better. In its somewhat buggy state on the world premiere day, Don Bradman Cricket 14 showed vastly more promise than AC13 does, and has significant features that are worth paying extra for.
To start with some of those positives, the stadiums that I have seen are impressive as is the variety of choices, allowing a tournament/tour mode that sees you play at a number of stadiums in each region of the world. 23 of them in total, with the 5 Ashes test stadiums in Australia and England all licensed.
The grounds are all well detailed and representative of their real life companions (I need to go look at Lord's to see if they've fixed the media centre). Unfortuantly, the detail on them doesn't extend to the crowd which is awful, and they seem to serve to slow the game down whenever the stadium is in view.
Sound is generally good, though buggy. Sometimes the sound stops altogether - other times it is absent for an event (silent appeals for example), but generally it's good. The commentary is also reasonable, though frequently repetitive with the co-commentator often saying the exact same thing directly after Nicholas.
The hud/menus are mostly aesthetically pleasing - a few odd bugs in them like exclamation marks sitting in bits that should be blank, but otherwise it's nice to get to the game's menus.
The common file formats of Unity3D mean that all the game files are open for editing - should you want to. That should mean the game is easily graphically patchable. "Cricket_Frontend_IphoneHD" as one of the files in the game should tell you all you need to know about the game.
The bowling system is an improvement over directly placing a donut on the pitch, but seems to offer no real evolution of the bowling controls. Assigning just one button to the delivery select option means there's no option to switch it up mid delivery, and there's no controls to add extra/reduced turn/spin to a ball compared to AC09's controls.
An unlabelled meter - all in yellow - is all that gives you fine control on the ball - it seems to control speed, and filling it up gives you a no ball. It doesn't seem like you have any control over spin bowling.
The batting controls are a dumbed down version of IC2010 - I kept holding down the triggers in vein but there's no front/back foot control. Perhaps some of it came down to performance issues - but the timing of when to play a shot was confusing, I was always either too early or too late for a shot.
You can have slightly more control over a shot power than on AC09 because it has the IC2010 style of pushing slightly on the analogue sticks for a less than full shot, but the sticks on my controller were way too stiff to do that with any precision.
No difficulty settings means the issues on timing can't be helped - so you'll need to just learn the timing. And once you do, you can hit every ball for six - the AI seems to love bowling short which means you're just good timing away from hitting a six.
Put it this way, perhaps I'm not enjoying the game because I'm bad at it, but if I got good at it, there'd be no where to go to get me a challenge. No online play means I can't play against people (there is local multiplayer, but if you've got a friend who likes cricket, go outside), and there's no difficulty settings to move up a level once I'm good.
The two camera options are interesting. The behind the batsman camera is certainly far more preferable to bat from, because the 'broadcast' camera is far too low down and behind the bowler to be a good batting experience. DB14's bowling camera is a better 'broadcast' camera than the broadcast one in this game.
The game starts to show some slight promise when you're batting behind the batsman - timing gets a little bit more natural (though you're still playing far before you think you should need to), however there's no reward for trying to bat carefully. Playing defensively is just as hard as slogging a six - the timing seems to be identical regardless of shot, so you get in the mode that you'd rather just whack it for six than to bother building an innings.
Fielding is abysmal - ignoring the inability to control, the ball just gets constantly lost, fielders stand stunned not knowing what to do about a ball a few metres from them and overthrows are very common.
The game's performance is terrible - I don't have top end hardware, but my graphics card exceeds the minimum, but the game is unplayable out of the box with no options other than a few resolution ones to choose from - with nothing below 720p. After forcing some graphical settings off on my graphics card control panel I could play, barely. For the quality of the graphics, the demands on hardware aren't acceptable - I'll probably buy a new graphics card soon and will revisit things after that, but I did expect a far smoother game - even if that meant I needed to turn advanced effects off, but there's no option to.
To add to that, just about every movement from a player is to rotate around on their axis without moving their legs or to snap to a different spot. They seem to have animated the ball and then just done whatever to make the play that goes around that fit. Or just have a fielder go hide in the stands when they aren't chasing the ball.
No replays except for occasional Hawk Eye means that the bugs in the fielding multiply - I frequently got out and had no idea where the ball went. I don't mind not having auto replays after every ball, but at least on wickets!
There is no DRS - just a manual appeal button for the bowling team. Despite this, the hawk-eye has the DRS like hud on it, teasing you at how it could have been made into one.
The horrible delay between balls is painful - games take ages because you're constantly waiting for animations to play out, you have to sit and look at the scoreboard on the ground, you watch the batsman take guard, you wait and wait. I can't imagine playing a test match like that.
One of the issues in rating this game is simply that it is only $20.99 - I paid more than that for Cricket Revolution, that didn't have commentary, had a worse batting system and fewer game modes. However at least it was backed up with some developer support, being patched multiple times after release and had online play.
By the 'only $20' yardstick, it still falls short. The game has too many bugs in the basic batting and fielding experience to be enjoyable, and the performance issues mean that what you save from the $20 pricetag you lose on needing the hardware to run it. Being officially licensed does bring you some nice stadiums - it's just what's on the ground that's the problem - everything that the $20 buys you is irrelevant from the core experience, which is a step backwards.
The main reasons in my view that buying a new cricket game because it's a new cricket game is often justified come from two sides - a new game usually means a buzz in the online community, it's usually easy to get an online matchup - and thus some of the normal AI flaws are ignored by some multiplayer. The total absence of online play rules that one out, a good patch adding Ashes 2013 content to Ashes 2009 or even Cricket 07 delivers a better gameplay experience to what is here, though in Cricket 07's case, not as visually nice, for AC09, it's hard to say.
The other reason is supporting the development of cricket games - knowing that the market is small and that sales might help keep promising series alive into extra editions that might get them closer to the ideal game. I will let you judge if you think what we've had from 505 games over the last several months is enough to ignore what we did get for most of the time before the delay, or if it is an irrelevant factor. But do what you just hopefully did and read reviews and watch the gameplay before making a purchase decision. There's another big player in the market now - I think it's fair enough at that point to not just support cricket games for being cricket games, but support the ones that are better for being better. In its somewhat buggy state on the world premiere day, Don Bradman Cricket 14 showed vastly more promise than AC13 does, and has significant features that are worth paying extra for.
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extra 5-6 months for this pile of crap ? It is Amazingly Horrible 
Mike Fegan and Trickstar should rather go sell Kitchens.
