A CDR REVIEW: Wii Cricket (Wii)

For Cricket and Wii fans the prospect of a Cricket game for this platform was very exciting, prior to the release of Wii Cricket. Having the Wii-mote act as a responsive bat, or using it in place of a ball was something any cricket fan could look forward to, considering till the release of this game, the only cricket titles out there you had to control via a regular gaming controller, or using keyboard keys (stickcricket.com being the best exponent of this mode of play).

But 2009 saw the release of Wii Cricket. And, sad to say, it was a disappointment in more ways than just the controls.

Gameplay:

Foreshadowing the 2009 Ashes series (in which cricket teams from Australia and England contest the Ashes trophy, a competition running since the late 19th century), and considering this game only received licensing from Cricket Australia and it’s English Cricketing counterpart, Australia and England are the only ‘official’ teams you can field. Otherwise you have to make do with teams made up of poorly named doppelgangers from South Africa, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand.

I'm not even sure who he's supposed to be imitating...

In addition, there are multiple grounds to choose from; however the majority of those are fields in England where the 5-test Ashes series was contested. The MCG (and a poorly rendered one considering it looked quite different at the time in real life), Eden Park (New Zealand), Eden Gardens (India), Wanderers Stadium (South Africa),  and Sabina Park (West Indies) being the other grounds matches could be played at. Choosing teams does allow you some variety but you probably wont bother too much, most teams are already allocated their 11 players according to their individual strengths and/or reflecting who was playing in what team at the time. The problem of course with this game being developed when it was is that you’ll have teams fielding players no longer playing, like Marcus North and the long-forgotten Ben Laughlin for Australia, or Michael Vaughn, former England captain. 

And even then, all characters are appallingly rendered, barely resembling their real-life counterparts.

Flintoff? I call bullshit.

An Australian player....but who?

And you can contest a variety of matches at these grounds between said teams, from playing out the full 5-Test series in England, or one-off test matches between any other countries, or custom matches like 5, 10, 15 or Twenty 20 matches are also available. And these are great if you just want a quick match to slog it out, otherwise, the 5-Test series is there for those looking for a more authentic experience. And if playing in single player mode, you’ll be bowling and facing every ball, it’s not physically draining, but if you have to put up with lazy AI as I’ll mention later, it can be a very long process. But the bad AI can work for you, and you can easily rack up enormous scores for individual batsmen and the teams, for example, using the bad AI I was able to notch 0/250 in a 10 over match, get Mike Hussey to a score of 526 (and the computer stops recognising your centuries once you get past 400), and had once scored a team total of 1513, with all but 3 batsmen registering centuries (and those 3 got half centuries each). And you can change the difficulty of the opposition, but this hardly makes a difference.

Teams are also rated in terms of their strengths, for example, Australia, India, South Africa and England being the strongest of the teams, with a balance of batting and bowling strength, whilst the lesser teams have to make do with average ratings, though you may find strong performers in the lesser teams, like Darren Vittare (Daniel Vettori) for New Zealand and Sumit Tenhukkar (Sachin Tendulkar) each having individual ratings of 9/10.

But in reality the difficulty of the teams is a non-issue. Of course, if you’re playing as 1 player you’ll be able to tame the bowling, or batting with relative ease, each bowler has the chance to bowl a perfect ball (or ‘perfect bowl’ as the game ridiculously labels it) every three balls if you string together said three deliveries at the right time, too soon and the ball is likely to be sent to the fence, too late and you won’t even bowl the ball and it will be ruled a no-ball (awarding the batting team with an extra run), which is completely removed from the rules of cricket; a ball not bowled is ruled a dead ball and the bowler can deliver again with no penalty. But if you can get those 3 balls bowled in time, a perfect ball is available, which only increases your chances of taking a wicket (and marginally at that).

And when batting you can take advantage of the oppositions lack of AI as opposition teams will switch between 1 of 5 different field settings depending on the circumstances of the game, for example, at the start of the match a routine field will be set, with catchers close in, and others stopping runs further out. If a wicket is quickly taken all fielders will be brought in closer to encourage new batsmen, low on the ‘confidence meter’ to try and hit out over the field, or remain on strike, slowly gaining confidence and stalling the play. But if two batsmen are slaying the bowling and sending the ball to all parts of the ground, all fielders will be on the boundary awaiting a catch, though you can easily overcome this by playing on the ground to the middle of the field, taking easy runs while the opposition lumbers in to field the ball.

                                        

Andrew Symonds, sans dreadlocks (which he had till well after the '09 Ashes), suitably not fielding the ball.

And this is a real blight on the AI, as the fielding captain, you’ll be able to set the fields anyway you like to overcome the difficulties presented in any of the scenario’s just mentioned, the computer simply lacks that ability and, frankly, human instinct to understand what to do in order to stop the human player having the advantage in every situation. Every opposition NPC will stand in their places, but using the remote, you can direct the ball to easily slip between them once you have taken your shot, and boundaries will be in abundance.

And during gameplay you’ll be subjected to repetitive commentary courtesy of Jonathon Agnew, Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Michael Holding and Shane Warne. But you’ll quickly turn this option off as quickly as possible due to the inane conversations the commentators go through hour after hour. 

Controls:

Wicket taking can be either the easiest task or the most infuriating challenge, and worst of all, it will not be up to you at all. The fielding NPC’s are highly inconsistent in their ability to take catches. You’ll find yourself shaking your head in disbelief as a NPC sits under a high ball for seconds, only to spill it at the last second, or stands still as the ball drifts within feet of him while the batsmen are lethargically running between the wickets, leaving fielding of the ball to an NPC on the other side of the wicket, or much farther away. But by the same token (and from experience), you’ll have wicketkeepers taking catches from directly behind the stumps mere fractions of a second after it’s been hit by the batsmen, or the ball literally passing through the batsmen’s legs to knock the wickets down. While this is amusing, it again goes against the supposed ‘realistic experience’ the game promises.

Bowling is an otherwise mediocre and tedious task, after 'shining' the ball by rubbing it against your crotch (who said cricket wasn't sexy?), or just waggling it really quick to determine the level of shine (imparting more or less swing and spin) the game instructs you to hold the remote, and other the A or B button, depending on if you want to bowl a slow or fast delivery, and swing your arm round as if delivering a ball in cricket. You’re also encouraged to tilt the remote at the screen once the ball has been bowled to determine the direction of the ball as it travels off the pitch, but this can be pointless at times. But rather than do that you can simply hold whichever button you want, and quickly flick the remote at the correct time to deliver the ball all the same.

Simple bowling mechanics, dark spot indicates where the ball will land, just roll your arm at the right time to do the rest.

Batting is also a letdown. The remote is not as responsive as you’d hope, and it’s a shame considering games like Wii-Sports, a launch game for this console, seemed to be much more responsive than for this game. You can’t even determine if your swings are going to register considering the batsmen don’t seem to lift their bats as well unless it was part of their pre-programmed animation. Determining the direction of your stroke is just a matter of pointing at the screen, all that’s left to do is swing as hard or as softly as you like (though the A and B buttons also determine if you’ll perform a block or slog shot). But if you take it seriously you can swing away happily and there is a sense of satisfaction if you slog down on one knee and the ball goes sailing into the crowd.  But for anyone who has batted, the abilty to cut the ball, or deftly deflect it is taken away, all you’ll need to do is select what direction you want the ball to go in, and swing.

Supposedly assisting you for both these parts of gameplay were specially crafted bat and ball replicas which you could slide your remote into, but the bat at least was not a help at all, maybe if you wanted to hold it aloft after scoring a half century or century. But it's practically useless considering the bat itself blocks the infra-red sensor in the remote, making it all but impossible to point it at the screen accurately, making shots impossible to plot. 

Pictured: Something of Zero Assistance.

How the ball attachment helps, I can't honestly state, but my guess would be zero.

Visuals:

As mentioned, the character models are awful, and barely any of them possess a passing resemblance to their characters. The crowd models are equally poor, being 2-dimensional cutouts continuously clapping no matter the circumstances. Most grounds have been replicated as best as possible, and some actually do look pretty good, like the Oval, or Lords, others look pretty generic, and again, the MCG looks dated and nowhere near comes close to an accurate representation of the actual field.

Conclusion:

Being a cricket fan and a player, this game is a guilty pleasure. It does have a great deal of problems, but if you have played like me and want to live out fantasies of amassing massive scores as a batsman, or taking big-wicket hauls, it can be fun on a rainy day. But it is also very hard to get past the poor rendering of players, the dated team lists, the barely responsive controls, dodgy A.I., and awful commentary.

I give it 4.5/10 poorly rendered cricket players.