The Ashes. Australia v England in 5 gruelling test matches. One of cricket’s biggest rivalries, perhaps only surpassed by the intense passion of the India v Pakistan contests. Living in Australia, the Ashes is the big one, the one series any cricket fan doesn’t want to miss, and now, we have a video game that does the scale of The Ashes justice.
Ashes Cricket, developed by Melbourne-Based Big Ant Studios, is the third cricket game (after Don Bradman Cricket 14 & 17) to be produced by the studio in the past 4 years, but the first to include such star power that Ashes provides. This hits you immediately when presented with one of the star players of the Australian or English sides before you even get past the first menu. The realism of the player faces is visually stunning, and you are yet to journey into the game yet. As the name “Ashes Cricket” suggests, only the players of the Australian and English sides have official in game likenesses. For the men’s teams, there are likenesses for 32 Australians and 28 English players, and on the women’s side of things there are 17 Australian likenesses and 16 members of the English women’s side, for a total of 93 licenced players between the two sides. This also extends to the stadiums, with all the Ashes stadiums to be used this summer having official licensing.
A similar approach to the bowling was taken, with motion capture data from the Bupa National Cricket Centre used to recreate the bowling actions of the Australian players. It’s easy to dismiss these as minor features when there are so many similarities between players in both their batting and bowling actions. As an active cricket viewer and fan of the sport it’s fun to spot the minor differences and little details that separate each bowler and batsman in their actions, you become more invested in the game because you feel like you are playing as the best cricketers in the country. This attention to detail for the Australian and English players is at a high enough standard to rival that seen in a high budget sports game. Ashes does a damn good job at making sure it gets everything at its disposal as good as it can be.
You’re now at the crease, down a few wickets, with Steve Smith to face Stuart Broad steaming in at the MCG, what are you hearing? One of my complaints about Don Bradman Cricket 17 was the lack of atmosphere at each match, Ashes has dramatically improved this. The crowd has volume, not just being loud, but they feel like they want to be there, you can hear the chants of the “Barmy Army” in the background when the English get on a roll, the “Gary” chants whenever Nathan Lyon comes into the attack. Even visually you see little things like a player warming up before they are about to be brought into the attack. But wait, who could forget our own chirpy wicketkeeper Matthew Wade behind the stumps. Bowling spin has never been more pleasant than when you bowl a cracker of a delivery and you get some encouragement from your behind the stumps, and yes, this does include the occasional “Nice Gary”. Nothing feels forced or out of place, this crowd belongs at the cricket. Even the in-game UI has been given a fresh look to give it more of a broadcast feel.
In saying how long I spent bowling, it doesn’t feel like a bore either. The contest between bat and ball always felt balanced, and that’s because of how the game caters to how you play. I felt I was getting runs to easily, so I made the change from medium to hard, with bowling however I don’t think I’ve quite reached that level and so I keep playing on medium. As I said earlier, the animations and player likenesses work well, the controls feel more responsive and easier to work than before. I love cricket as much as the next person, but after 2 hours of bowling, I couldn’t believe I was still enjoying myself. The fact it took me so long to dismiss the opposition made me appreciate each wicket I took so much, because I wasn’t sure how far away the next one was. When I came in to bat I felt I couldn’t waste any of my wickets, they were all so valuable, and since I’d turned up the difficulty it become harder to score. You can tune your experience to suit your needs.
Along with being able to play through The Ashes series, familiar game modes return from the Bradman games, with casual, competition, online and tour modes all playable. The fan-favourite ‘Career Mode’ also makes a return, where you take your player through the ranks of club level, all the way up to being captain of your country, while competing in plenty of international competitions along the way. With the Women’s sides included I would be foolish not to give them the mention they deserve. Along with fantastic likenesses, Ashes does a great job of capturing the subtle differences between the Men’s and Women’s game. Even the pretty good representation of the Women’s game has improved since Don Bradman Cricket 17 now with motion capture data from Australian female cricketers as mentioned earlier just adds to the authenticity of Women’s Cricket in Ashes.
While Australia and England players are the highlights of the game, there is a stack of other teams in the game, across worldwide international and domestic competitions, none of them include any official players, team kits or branding. This is where the Academy will come into play. For players unfamiliar with Big Ant’s prior cricket games, the cricket academy is where all the user created content is made, with the ability to share any content across PC, Xbox and PlayStation users. This is where players can fill in the gaps of those missing teams and create players, teams, stadiums bats, logos, and even umpires. With a dedicated player and team creation community in the Don Bradman franchise, and while at the time of review, there are no users online to add content to the community, I see no reason why that wouldn’t follow through to Ashes and in no time, there will be plenty of user creations for players to download.