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Ashes Cricket 2009
Does Codemasters' sim bowl a perfect yorker, or is Ashes Cricket 2009 heading back to the pavilion early?
Written by Chris Schilling, 27 August 2009
The Wii has been crying out for a cricket game pretty much since its inception, and certainly since the arrival of MotionPlus. So it's a disappointment to find that Codemasters' latest doesn't even support Nintendo's new peripheral. Sadly, it's not the only problem the game has.
But let's start with the positives. Batting is mostly enjoyable, despite shot-making being determined by pointer positioning rather than the tilt of your remote. As the bowler takes his run-up, you can use the plus and minus buttons to sidestep left and right in accordance with a shadow indicating where the ball will bounce, while pressing down on the d-pad allows you to point where you'd like to hit your shot. Obviously you'll need perfect timing to whack it into the target area, and you need to be mindful of swing or spin, so it's not just a case of lining up and swinging the remote. You'll need to hold A while swinging for a defensive prod, or B for a lofted shot which requires even more precise timing.
Bowling feels a little hit-and-miss. Before your run-up, you can shine the ball on your thigh by shaking the remote, which affords a greater amount of spin or swing, but at the cost of making your aim a little shakier when pointing the remote at the screen to determine where you're pitching the ball. A meter gradually increases during your automated run-up, with the idea being to release the ball as late as possible for the most accurate results, tilting the remote to add swing, or leg- or off-spin for the slower bowlers. Consistent bowling gives you the opportunity to bowl a 'perfect ball' by pressing A and B at the same time, but oddly the opposing batsmen seemed to relish whacking those balls for boundaries while struggling with weaker, less accurate balls. Occasionally you'll get the perfect reverse swing, as your opponent hoists an easy catch to the slips, or even nail a plumb LBW with a clever bit of spin, but all too often it seems random whether you'll pull this off or not. It doesn't help that the wickets you do get seem more down to opponent ineptitude rather than your own skill - we clean bowled a middle-order batsmen who bizarrely aimed a stroke several feet wide of the wicket from a straight yorker.
A set of brief Scenarios offer some nice bite-sized challenges (like hitting three sixes in an over, or protecting a key wicket over a certain number of balls) and probably represent the game at its best - mainly because the longer you play, the more flaws you'll spot. Like a 20/20 game, it's fun in short bursts, but seems to lack that vital bit of finesse.
