PS3 Games Review

There are few sports that polarise opinion in quite the manner cricket does, and it is likely to be the same for International Cricket 2010. It provides a faithful and nuanced translation of the game to consoles, with satisfaction to be found picking the perfect spot to cream a ball for six or frustrating batsmen into rash shots. However, it's unlikely to win over any but the most ardent cricket fans thanks to its poor visuals, lacklustre sound, frequent bugs, and incomplete squad lists.

IC2010 gives you the opportunity to take control of an international cricket team of your choice and take on the rest of the world in any form of the game you like. As with last year's Ashes effort, only the England and Australia teams are licensed, which means that players from other nations are represented by approximate names. Cricket fans will be able to identify most of them readily enough, and their stats are appropriate. Licensed or not, anyone dashing enough to sport a real-life beard is relatively hard to recognise as the best IC2010 can manage is a smattering of stubble.

Bowling is pleasingly engaging this year after the detached feel in previous years. If you want to take wickets against quality opposition, you generally need to bowl to a plan, and seeing such a plan work is a satisfying experience. If you bowl a number of in-swinging balls, for instance, you may not get a batsman out--but a fourth ball that is cunningly shaped away from the batsman will often find an edge. This isn't always the case. Because of the way that batting confidence works in the game--once a batsman has found his rhythm and got his eye in--even the most amateurish of cricketers can become rather obdurate. Thankfully, quality bowlers have enough tricks up their sleeves to keep this interesting, and disciplined bowling with clever variations generally yields results.

Unfortunately, while the core gameplay is passable and somewhat realistic despite the bugs, the game has problems on the periphery. The commentary is uniformly abysmal, despite being provided by such big names as Jonathan Agnew, Shane Warne, and David Lloyd. Each commentator has a very small range of stock phrases, which are often incorrectly applied, and most of them sound either very bored or simply perplexed by the scripts in front of them. The commentary is so banal, repetitive and poorly delivered that players looking to gain any enjoyment from IC2010 should turn it off immediately once they start the game.

One bright spot is the licensing agreement with Hawk Eye, which works well. The regular pitch maps, end-of-over bowling analyses, and wagon wheels help with bowling in particular; knowing precisely where your wicket-taking balls pitched and how they bounced is invaluable as you work out how to improve. This isn't as overused as it was last year either--though it would be nice to be able to generate customised reports using the Hawk Eye system when you want to know specific pieces of information.

The game's multiplayer options are interesting--the offline cooperative play lends itself well to long sessions, but competitive play is lacklustre. Online animations are frequently curtailed and uneven, while fielding bugs are even more obvious when you have a human opponent to take advantage of the game's foibles. Fundamentals of gameplay still work, even with some lag, but there is never any incentive for a losing player to complete a game because the game doesn't penalise those who quit early.

As the game plays out in something approximating real time, completing even a Twenty Overs game can take several hours. This does mean that if you can overlook the game's foibles--which are major but not game breaking--you're likely to get many hours of something approaching enjoyment from the game as long as you shut the commentary off. However, the game's poor graphics, subpar sound, and frequent bugs will put anyone but the keenest of cricket fans off.