Review: Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup
Score:
79%
Another month, another cricket game for Symbian. But hey, the sun is high in the sky, the crack of willow on leather is echoing off the very walls of my house, so why the heck not? And this time it's extremely playable and about as realistic as a phone cricket game can possibly be. Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup is another developer labour of love and, as an armchair cricketer, it's got me hooked. Or should that be swept? Or cut?
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Being written in Java and less than 700kb in size, my expectations weren't high going into Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup. But from the opening screens, I started to be more and more impressed. There's attention to detail in the graphics and gameplay here that would befit a game with 'HD' in the title and coming in at ten times the byte count.
If your expectations of a computer cricket game are that all the bowlers bowl with the same action and that most balls end up being sixes or wickets, then throw those preconceptions out of the window. What we have here is a decent cricket sim, with multiple bowler styles, accurate batting shots, realistic bowling physics (length, line, spin, etc) and a dynamic which, with a bit of practice will see you knocking 1s and 2s as much as 4s and 6s. Even - shock horror, dot balls.
The help screens are the best place to start. They have to be scrolled down manually and this is a bit fiddly, but they cover the basics. Batsmen get to pick whether they intend a defensive, normal or lofted shot and then it's down to noting who's bowling, watching where they intend to pitch the ball (denoted by a marker on the wicket) and then tapping on a grid of arrows to signal the type of shot and direction. It all sounds a bit mechanical, but the finished shots often look very authentic, i.e. cuts, sweeps, pulls, drives.
When bowling, you pick an intended spot to pitch the ball and then use a (golf-like) tap system to set both the speed of your delivery and its spin (or 'cut'). With the variation in pitching spot and with a wide variation in speed and spin, there's quite a bit you can do to vary your deliveries.
There are facilities to pick your 11 for each country from a larger squad, but the names are all scrambled slightly (to avoid legal issues using the real names) so unless you have a particular favourite you're best off simply accepting the default teams and ploughing on.
And so into the game itself, there's a choice of a 'Quick match' (limited overs, 5, 10, 15 or 20 overs per side), a 'Knock-out' tournament, a 'World cup' (i.e. with leagues first) and then 'Practice', all with three levels of difficulty (I started on 'Normal'). Plenty of replay value here then.
Batting is always first in this game, giving you the chance to practice your strategy and timing. Using your judgement, you set your shot type, watch where the bowler's aiming and then play the right shot to defeat the field and score runs. Or you could be boring and defend...!
The actual ball mechanics aren't exact, in that we're not talking about collision detection between a fast moving virtual ball and a moving bat - instead the timing and nature of your shot are taken into account algorithmically with the characteristics of the bowler's ball, to create the likelihood of various outcomes and the most likely is decided by the game and shown, TV-style. Howzat!
Fielding positions are shown by yellow dots in the small graphic, top right, so that you know where to try and aim. If you hit the ball and it doesn't look like it's a shoe in for a 4 or 6 then you have to run, in this case by tapping the 'Run' button - the camera 'angle' adjusts to show the action at each point. Again, impressive, considering this is a Java game.
As you might expect, you'll miss the ball at some point and then the umpire's finger goes up. As a novice, I was only scoring 30 or so runs per team in a 5 over game, but I'd expect that to rise as I got more used to the timing involved.
The score is shown top-left, when needed, plus there's a breakdown of how the current over has gone at the bottom of the display.
4s and 6s are shown TV-style - we're not talking super hi-res graphics or frame rates, but they're perfectly adequate here.
Some examples of the attention to detail here. When the time comes to switch sides and become the bowling team, you get to see the opposition batsmen actually strolling out to the wicket. And the weather, temperature and humidity are all reported. I guess these could be included in the mathematical modelling, but I'm not 100% sure. In-game tips pop up every now and then, to lend a hand.
Time to bowl then. A dot/graticule animates in front of the batsman and you use the arrow icons on-screen to control where you want the ball to pitch. In theory, you can then bowl the perfect yorker every time but, unlike in the real world, the virtual batsman seemed to have no more trouble with these than balls on other lengths. Ah well.
Having set a line and length, you use the aforementioned tap-to-set meters for speed and spin/cut and you're then running in to bowl.
Looks like this one went behind for byes... As before, the action switches to a wide angle TV-style shot, to show the virtual cricketers running around.
Every frame of the batsman and bowler's shots and deliveries is well animated, within the resolution constraints of the screen and the use of Java - as with previous cricket titles, Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup is obviously something of a labour of love by the developers and time has been spent on making it look as good as possible.
You can pick which bowler to use for each over, i.e. you can change the bowling (e.g. bringing on a spinner) whenever you like. With the support for ball movement, using a spinner is particular fun.
For example, here I'm playing a leg spinner and aiming to give the ball a big tweak, Shane Warne-style...
And in the following over, I used an offspinner, note the (fairly) authentic off-spinner 'action' being animated and that in this case I'd chosen not to spin the ball (just to confuse the batsman)... [later: it didn't work, I got knocked for six!]
A quick 5 over game (i.e. 10 overs in all) takes about fifteen minutes to play, a nice little diversion. You'd have to be something of a cricket gaming nut to play through a full 20 overs per side or to go on to the other game modes, but then cricket fans have to have patience, given the nature of the sport, so.... 8-)
Unlike Cricket T20 Fever HD, Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup is genuinely playable. The interface is largely intuitive and doesn't get in the way. And, as a result, I was able to play through several full matches, getting quite engrossed in whether I could help my team win - which is testament that this game works as an immersive title.
Yes, this is a Java game, but don't write it off on that account - it's fully optimised for Symbian nHD, the developers have packed a stunning amount into less than a Megabyte and it's definitely worth £1.50 of your money if have any interest at all in cricket gaming.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 11 August 2011
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at