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GAME REVIEWED: International Cricket Captain (Special Edition Ashes Tour)
RELEASED BY: Empire Interactive
PRICE: £39.99
REVIEWED BY: G-String
REVIEW: -
When I first showed this to my friends, I thought their sides were going to split. They couldn't believe that someone would create a management game about cricket. I myself was having a little laugh myself, but I set these thoughts aside and tackled the game. The game places you as the manager/coach of a England county cricket club or the manager of England in the Ashes Tour. Whichever you choose the gameplay is the same. All the features are there as they would be in any football management game: weather conditions; injuries; aggressiveness; coin tossing; players on form; players not on form. It's all here in a Cricket game?!? Once you get to grips with all the overs, innings, wickets, bowling, and batting, you can get into the swing of the game. Once you know something about cricket. Many of you will not know the slightest thing about cricket except that one side bats and the other bowls, so with the help of my friend, Duncan Tossell, I've created a crash course for you.
There are two teams. One bats the other fields. A bowler has to bowl to the batsman for an over at a time. An over consists of six bowls. After an over, the bowler changes. The batsman has to score runs by hitting the ball to the boundary for 4, making runs between the wickets (1 for 1 run), and hitting the ball out in the air past the boundary ( for 6). If a fielder catches the ball after the batsman has hit it, then he's out. If they hit the stumps before he reaches them, he's out. If a bowler hits the wicket behind the batsman, he is outta there. An inning is when all of the batsmen are out, or when all of the overs have been used up, which ever comes first. That should get you started. . . . .
Within the game, you are not just a manager. When your team is bowling, you can choose whether to play the game bowl by bowl, or over by over. You can choose where the bowler aims, and how offensive or defensive he bowls. If your on the batting team, you can only choose how offensive and defensive they are. This gives you a bit more control, a bit like being a player manager sort of thing. The highlights occur during the game and these can be set to what you want to see: every ball; all runs; boundaries; Wickets & Chances; Wickets only; or none. I prefer to put the highlights onto Wickets Only because as you may or may not know, each game lasts for 2 innings for each side. The game can drag on a bit, but then I'm not the devoted cricket fan, so I'm not the best person for the game.
One of the noticeable things of the game is that it takes up about 130MB of disk space. This may not seem a lot, but after one match, the saved game was 4.5MB. And this is a management game. This could be a good point or a bad point whatever way you look at it. Good because there's a lot of information in the game, Bad because it takes up a lot of room. Another thing, do you remember FIFA International Soccer 1996? Remember how the players looked and moved, synchronised? Well, the highlights seem to be of the same design. I thought maybe the programmers would have paid more attention to this. However, they did try to make the players look like the real people. Cricket Players like Brian Lara, G Small are all coloured both in real life and in the game and they've tried to match the exact tone of the skin. Something which surprised me really.
You can set the team up to whatever routine/set-up you like. There are no restrictions I can find. The commentary is quite good, it is done by the BBC's Jonathan Agnew. The product is the only one to be endorsed by Wisden (whoever they are) and features the NatWest Trophy, the Cornhill Insurance test Series, and the Britannic Assurance Championship as well as the county championship. I didn't really understand much about all the different team structures, but I did try. Duncan helped me out here a lot. Thanks!
To come to a close I have to say that this is for the Cricket Fan and no one else. I didn't particularly enjoy it because the gameplay was so slow. It wasn't really my cup of tea, or coffee, or cider. I will give it credit for having an appealing design and being easy interface but I'm relying on Duncan for advice here. If you're not a cricket fan this gets 50%, if you are a cricket fan it gets 75%.
SCORE:
75%
MINIMUM HARDWARE REQUIRED:
CPU: 486DX2
RAM: 16MB
120MB HD Space
1MB VCard
Windows 95/98
Sound Card for Commentary
LINKS: www.empiresport.com