Cricket 24 review: a trainwreck that can be fun at times

Published On: October 14, 2023

Thanks to the ongoing cricket World Cup, the excitement and fervour among fans have reached a feverish pitch. As most of us cannot play the game in a professional setting right now, a cricket-based video game is possibly a good way to experience how facing a thunderbolt delivery from Mitchell Starc must feel like on a 22-yard pitch. This is why Big Ant Studios from Australia couldn’t have possibly timed its release for Cricket 24 any better. However, just releasing the game at the right time doesn’t automatically translate into a successful spell, as gameplay holds the key. And if the game fails to engage its players, it can easily be looked past, especially when it comes with as many complexities as a cricket game usually does. Does Cricket 24 deliver on this front? Does it compromise the fun aspect of the game to replicate simulation? Read my detailed review below to find out.

Table of Contents

Game modes

The Ashes: This has been the most popular game mode for this cricket series from Big Ant Studios and even here, it is at the front and centre. Within this game mode, you can choose to play standard men’s or women’s series. Further, you get the option to play as Australia, England, or even as a star player. As you might have guessed, if you choose a team, you get to play out the full innings, whether it’s batting or bowling. If you are playing as a particular player, the rest of the game will be simulated around you and you will just have control over the parts that you are involved in. I found that the simulation took too much time for my liking and often frustrated me despite the fast loading times offered with the PlayStation 5 SSD. Playing Ashes is quite an authentic experience in this game and as you get fully licensed teams and some good player models, the game is at its peak in this mode.

Career mode: In the career mode, you get the option to either begin as an existing player or start a career as a rookie player. If you choose to be a rookie, you will have to start in club cricket. In this mode, as you play matches and earn points to improve your attributes, you increase your chances of being selected for higher levels. On the other hand, as an existing player, you start the career by receiving contract offers from multiple English county teams. Even here in the career mode, you can either control just your player or the whole team.

If you compare this career mode with the career mode present in some other sports video games, it would be unfair, so I would rather treat it on its merit. The interesting aspect you will find here is that if you choose to start from a particular state in India, say Delhi, you will find teams that are named after different localities such as Rohini, Dwarka, and more. The sense of familiarity will help you enjoy this game mode more than if you were to play for teams that were named ambiguously.

World Championship: This mode lets you create a championship series that can be either a One Day tournament, a T20 tournament, or even a Test match tournament. Just like in other game modes, you can choose for it to be a women’s or men’s series. This is the closest to a World Cup mode that you can find in this game. Interestingly, you can control the entire championship as well if you like, and can jump straight into any match if you want the desired result. Or you can go for a slightly traditional approach to controlling a particular team.

Domestic T20 competitions: One of the key USPs of this year’s game is that it features fully licensed IPL teams – Delhi Capitals, Punjab Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Rajasthan Royals, Gujarat Titans, Lucknow Super Giants. This also means that you get corresponding player names and even the player models look somewhat better than the game’s predecessor. Apart from the IPL teams, you also get to play The Hundred, which is a professional franchise 100-ball cricket tournament with eight men’s and eight women’s teams located in major cities across England. There is BBL and WBL, CPL T20 (Caribbean Premier League), PSL (Pakistan Super League), and Super Smash (T20 cricket tournament in New Zealand). As you might expect, these competition modes aim to offer as authentic an experience as possible.

Unfortunately, despite many attempts, every time I tried to start an Indian T20 league (IPL name license is absent it seems) tournament, the game crashed on me. I tried to play as a team, as a star player and even tried controlling the full tournament but every single time the game crashed. However, the presentation style and game experience from other leagues were reasonably good and authentic.

Gameplay

Gameplay is unfortunately the weakest aspect of Cricket 24. Before even booting up the game for the first time, I was really wishing more than hoping that this would finally be the cricket game that would be fun, enjoyable, and most importantly… without too many glitches. Alas! That was not the case. In my first match, I played a shot and the ball moved just a few yards away, but no player approached the ball till I ran for around 40+ runs and decided it was enough. As a result, my player was close to getting a half-century in one ball! If you don’t believe me, check the screenshot from the game below.

When it came to bowling, I somehow got the batsman run out despite him being very much within the crease and at one time when I was batting, my player just stood outside his crease and watched on as the fielder hit the wicket (see the image below).

However, the problem goes even deeper. These occasional glitches can still be fixed in future updates but the bowling and fielding aspect of the game feels unintuitive and uninspiring. While bowling I tried almost all variations on the ball but it seemed like I could never get it to be delivered the exact way I intended. I would go as far as to say that bowling in Cricket 07 from EA Sports was a far better experience than it is here. And the less we talk about fielding, the better. Everything from controls to graphical glitches and animations makes it feel extremely dull and boring.

The bright spot here, undoubtedly, is batting. Some of the shots, when connected with the right timing give you immense satisfaction and the sound of the ball hitting the middle of the bat feels great indeed. There is a learning curve in batting and as you play more, you learn the right shots that need to be played for certain balls but it feels more refined than bowling and fielding.

Graphics

This is one department that is extremely inconsistent in Cricket 24. While the game itself looks decent, when you get up-close shots of player models, you’ll be left disappointed on more occasions than one. Players with facial hair look unrecognisable and the beard quality is PlayStation 2-level at the best.

There are some players who look authentic but it would be a grave injustice to say that this game has good graphics just on the basis of a few player models. Big Ant Studios needs to get back to the drawing board after this one and figure out why the publisher could not produce a better game at a time when realistic graphics have become almost a norm in the rest of the industry. Even with a smaller budget, the game shouldn’t have been released in a state like this.

Verdict

I want to like Cricket 24, I really do. But I am disappointed to share with you that the game lets you down on several fronts and it almost feels like the release of this unpolished product was pushed to ensure it gets a boost in sales due to the hype around the cricket World Cup. Several patches later, the game might play better and get rid of its several glitches but in its current state, it is hard to play, and even harder to watch.