Ashes Cricket 2009

The unmistakable thwack...

Ahh cricket, that most English of sports. While football may be considered our national game there's something quintessentially English about cricket. The very thought of it conjures images of rural village greens, the pleasing sound of leather on willow, spectators relaxing in the sunshine nibbling on cucumber sandwiches and clapping politely when the local blacksmith dismisses the vicar from the neighbouring village with a particularly well bowled Yorker.

It's a quaintly old fashioned image that still holds true today (trust me, my father's been playing village cricket throughout the Cotswolds for over forty years and that's no idealistic stereotype) but it's the cut and thrust of the professional game that's once more captured the interest of the nation this summer, with the return to these shores of that most beloved of cricketing battles, the Ashes.

While England have just done a rather splendid job of throwing away their series advantage by surrendering the fourth test with barely a whimper we've now all been given the chance to do it properly with the official videogame of the series, Ashes 2009, from Codemasters.

It's not Codies first entry into the world of digitised cricket by any means, they were the people behind the well respected Brian Lara series, but it is their first crack at in a couple of years (although development duties are handled here by Transmission Games). The official license of the current England vs. Australia Ashes tour provides the focus of the game with the ability to recreate the entire five test series front and centre. For those wanting a different flavour of cricket there's plenty of other choices if a full test series seems a little daunting (and time consuming) with both one day and twenty over (basically the hugely popular Twenty20 games just without the official license) games available along with a full roster of international teams to play with.

Its probably wise to stop by the training sessions before venturing into a proper game as, unlike more familiar gaming sports, there's a knack to playing the game that's easier to grasp with a little help. The training exercises aren't the most thrilling in the world, there's no attempt to inject any mini game type fun into things as we've seen in recent tennis games for example, but they give you a basic grounding in the skills needed to bat and bowl which is what they're for after all.

Once on the pitch for real though, no matter what kind of match you're playing, the idea is the same. Score as many runs as you can while not losing wickets while batting and concede as few as possible while taking wickets when bowling. Simple.

First up is batting which, lets be honest, is generally the more enjoyable discipline in cricket games. Controls work remarkably well here, as the bowler runs up an on-pitch target appears indicating where he's aiming to pitch it and your job is to perfectly time the pressing of whichever face button that corresponds to the shot you want to play. Get your timing wrong and you risk edging the ball for a catch or missing entirely so it's never as easy as it seems. You direct your shots via the left analogue stick, a targeting 'cone' sweeps around an on screen mini-map of the field showing you the area you're currently aiming at. The better the batsman the narrower the target area is allowing you to place your shots with more accuracy between fielders. Finally, the left shoulder and trigger buttons can be used to dictate if your batsman is playing off the front or back foot, a choice that can be left to the AI if you so wish.

Running between the wickets to rack up runs is a manual process triggered by a button press (press once for a single, twice for two, etc.) after the ball's been struck and works well enough although the way the camera follows the ball can make it hard to judge how many you should take. If the camera zoomed out when the ball had been hit to show the whole field you'd get a far better idea of how close fielders were to the ball and thus be able to judge if there was time for a quick single, etc. As it is there's a kind of enforced pause while the camera follows the ball and you wait to see if its going directly to a fielder or not before you feel safe enough to risk running.

If all that sounds complicated then its a testament to Codemasters that it really isn't in practice, it helps if you've a bit of cricket know-how to start with but trial and error will soon teach you when the different shots are possible, not to mention advisable. Batting is generally a lot of fun and once you get away from the lowest difficulty, racking up decent scores becomes a real achievement.

Of course you can't play a game of cricket by just batting the whole time, you'll also have to take your turn in the field and try to bowl the other side out. How to recreate the fine art of bowling has puzzled games developers since the year dot and while Codemasters have had a decent stab at it here it's by no means perfect. It's a deceptively simple two button press system, press once to pick your delivery type (also restricted by the kind of bowler you're using) and then once more to determine the quality of the delivery with an on screen meter your guide to perfection.

It's not that it doesn't work as such; it is simply that it doesn't make bowling particularly enjoyable. It's not easy by any means but it feels at times like you're grappling for the perfect delivery for little reason. There's a sense that no matter what you do there's an AI batsman stood at the other end who's going to do pretty much whatever the algorithms controlling him tell him to, that could be to hit your next ball for 6 or edge it to second slip for a catch. What ball you've tossed down the wicket to him seems largely immaterial which is a shame, but also perhaps unavoidable when you're trying to recreate a skill that in real life relies as much on the psychological battle of wills between bowler and batsman as it does on anything else.

Fielding is handled automatically however you do get a say on field placement and catching someone out involves a kind of quick-time event. With the camera moving to behind the fielder the ball flies towards you complete with a colour changing surround. Press the catch button when the circle is red and the catch will be dropped, press when orange and you'll be in with a chance, green however will make sure of the wicket. It does jolt a little with the change of perspective but it's a nice little touch and keeps you feeling involved when the bowling starts to drag.

Visually Ashes Cricket is a bit of a mixed bag, it looks nice enough with everything suitably crisp and high-res, but the animation often looks choppy and incidental details like the grounds, crowd and menu presentation lack the kind of style we've become used to from other sports games. Also, despite having the official license and correct player names etc the player likenesses are, to be kind, weak. Commentary comes from the likes of Jonathan Agnew, Tony Greig, Ian Bishop, Sir Ian Botham and Shane Warne and manages to strike the kind of relaxed, men down the pub style cricket fans are used to fairly well. It's not perfect of course, there's some jarring repetition at times, but it's nice to hear natural sounding banter and discussions breaking up play now and then.

In some ways the easy criticisms of Ashes 2009 mirror those thrown often at the real game by those unaccustomed to its charms. It's slow, rarely what you'd call action packed, full of complex rules and batting is ten times more enjoyable than bowling. However if you love the sport itself these cease to be a problem and instead become signs that Transmission Games have done their job admirably. There's still work to be done to make bowling and fielding as satisfying as batting while the visuals could definitely do with a tart up in all departments, but otherwise this is as enjoyable a cricket game as we've yet to see.

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By Paul Newcombe