Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #847 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2006-11-23
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: PlayStation2

Manufacturer's Description
With its fully licensed squads, groundbreaking Century Stick control system and more natural camera perspective, Cricket 07 will bring players the most immersive gameplay experience to date. Thanks to the groundbreaking EA SPORTS Century Stick control system, batting has become more intuitive, responsive and rewarding than ever. For the first time in a cricket game, players can enjoy full control over foot choice, shot, direction, power and timing, all governed through the use of both analogue sticks. A back or front foot stroke is selected with the left stick, and then shot timing and direction are judged with the right stick. Power is determined by how far the stick is moved a slight tap can nudge the ball for a quick single or a firm push can send the ball fizzing away to the boundary. Allied to new cameras that deliver a more natural behind-the-stumps batting perspective and a wider view of the field, cricket has never been so easily accessible. With embellished gameplay, a wealth of tournaments, genuine equipment and authoritative new commentary from Mark Nicholas and Richie Benaud, you won't experience cricket this authentic without donning whites and walking down the pavilion steps yourself.

Groundbreaking Control: Use the intuitive dual analogue Century Stick batting system to select foot choice, shot direction, power and timing. With button controls to loft shots and advance down the track, you're free to crack a full array of shots all around the wicket. Success with the bat also relies upon your batsman's individual skills, allied with his confidence level. A confident batsman maximises his potential to time his shots sweetly maintaining high confidence can make or break his ability to build a big innings.

New Cameras: Innovative views from behind the batsman offer a realistic batting perspective, and a reworked Broadcast camera gives you a wider view of the play for more authentic coverage.

Quickplay Cricket: Play cricket your way by setting your own pace. Crank up the game speed, ease back the difficulty setting and revel in the razzmatazz of Limited Overs or fully-licensed Twenty20 extravaganzas by playing a fast-blast match of hard-hitting sixes or slow the pace down, slide the difficulty up and steel yourself for a five day Test.

Greater Depth: A new picture-in-picture display with a shot timing gauge coupled with a running assistance indicator and radar help you make those snap decisions out there in the middle. On-the-fly Dynamic Field Positioning and Quickswitch bowling give you the ability to ratchet up the pressure on the batsmen by changing the field and the bowler's line of attack without a break in play.

Tournament Options: Lead this year's eagerly anticipated 3 mobile Ashes campaign Down Under, replay the legendary 2005 npower Test Series or unlock a stack of rewards by accomplishing Ashes challenges. Take part in the frenzy of the fully-loaded, fully-licensed English and Australian One Day blitz of extreme Twenty20 cricket, dive into a complete schedule of Australian State and English County tournaments, tour the world, win the World championship or compete for glory in Test matches and One Day Series games with all the top cricketing nations of the world.

Authentic Content: For the first time in an EA SPORTSTM Cricket title, renowned bat manufacturers Gray-Nicolls, Puma, Slazenger, Kookaburra and Gunn & Moore bring their weight of authenticity to the day's play. Relish the big game atmosphere with new broadcast visuals, wicket textures and astute new commentary from the masterly broadcast team of Mark Nicholas and Richie Benaud as you play out a nail-biter against the faithfully realised backdrop of a legendary international venue or a cherished domestic ground.

Customer Reviews

Innovative
Cricket 07 is undoubtedly one of the best cricket games there is. With the new innovation added to the batting side of the game, Cricket 07 is a cut above other cricket games. You control the batsmen with the two (or one, depending on the settings) analogue sticks. This is far better than using the circle button etc to execute cricket shots because you really feel you are actually playing the shot using your own skill with timing, placement, and power. This new addition however does not make the game too challenging as the difficulty settings range from 1 star to 5 and so you can tailor how hard and sereiously you want to play the game. One star is very easy where even if you horribly miss-time the shot you can get away with a single and not an edge. 5 star, for me, is impossible. To get the timing right you have had to have played the game for months and months on end.
The bowling side to the game is good aswell. New special balls have been included such as the "wrongen" with murali and Hogg. There are sponsors such as Gray Nicholls, Kookaburra, GM, Slazenger and Puma but unfortunately no Woodworm, this adds a further realism to the game. In fact Cricket 07 feels so real. The commentary is a little basic but the familiar voices of Mark Nicholas and Richie Benaud add authenticity to the game. The graphics are good, and quite smooth with the camera behind the batsmen but not as sharp with the standard view behind the bowler. A great improvement on the prequel.

The major negatives to this game is that it requires so much space on memory cards. 1057Kb is needed to save a match. Another 1057Kb to save a tournament, another 600Kb+ to save a roster. Whats even worse is that only New Zealand, England, South Africa and Australia are licensed. Other teams such as India have false player names, for example, Tendulkar is called Tendehar. You can edit this in the edit mode but you have to save this to the roster and not the "profile" so you use up 600Kb+. 1057Kb is also needed for a profile aswell. What is really great though is that there are all the tournaments. The ashes mode is great, the world championship is authentic and there are plenty of other tours to take part in. There is also county cricket for England and Australia.

Overall it is worth getting if you're a cricket fan. However, it is not worth getting if you are unfamiliar with the sport.

Fiendishly addictive...
I haven't enjoyed a cricket game since I was beaten by a pal at Graham Gooch cricket on the Amiga in the mid-90s (afterwhich I snapped the disk in rage), so when I received this as a gift I was dubious as to its merits.
However, I quickly found it to be the single most fun game I've ever played on ANY machine and it's so devilishly addicted I genuinelly want to play it constantly. It's very intuitive to play and the use of the analogue sticks to direct your shots and decide to play off the front or back foot becomes second nature in no time.
Play a 10-over match on two-star setting and you'll be crashing 20-30 off an over with practice, but if you up the difficulty to four or five stars it really becomes a test, so purists will love nudging and nurdling for seven hours to get their half century in five-day tests.
It can get repetitive, especially in easy mode when you learn to bash every shot for six, and bowling can be desperately dull when you're struggling to take wickets, but for a quick 45 mins of action, a 10-over game takes some beating and if you play it with friends it ellicites a sense of competition I've not experienced since my teen days.
As Mark Nichols says - very often - during the in game commentary, as far as cricket goes, this game is 'BRILLIANT - you couldn't imagine anything better.'

99 not out - Brilliant effort but not quite the finished article
After previously buying Cricket 05, and Brian Lara International Cricket 2005, I found major flaws with both of the games. With Cricket 05, it was far too hard, in contrast BLIC 2005 was far too easy. With Ashes fever hitting the UK (admittedly before the series had begun) Cricket 07 was the first item on my Christmas list. Since putting it into my Playstation on Chrsitams Day it has barely been taken out.

I am currently playing the game on level 3 difficulty, out of 5, and although it is getting a bit easy you cannot continually play attacking shots to every ball or you will get out.

Graphically, the game is very good, with the only problem being that EA assured us that there were many player likenesses, something that I struggle to find often. However, it must be said that you hardly ever notice it during the game.

There are some glitches, such as displaying the batsman at the non-strikers ends score instead of the batsman at the strikers end, but again it hardly ever bothers you when you are in the full swing of a match.

The bowling in the game is much the same as in Cricket 05 (which incidentally was the games main strongpoint) Although many feel that the bowling aspect of the game is boring, but with the revamped field editor it can be incredibly rewarding to set your own fields and plans of attack and then carry them out yourself. For example, Australia's Michael Clarke seems to have a weakness when hooking or pulling, so I immediately place a fielder at Backwards Square leg and test him out with a few bouncers.

One main problem though involves the stats for many players, particularly at the International level. Ashley Giles has been given a spin attribute of 92, only 6 less than the great Shane Warne. Also, Chris Read has been given an average batting attributes of around 80. Simon Jones cannot bowl a delivery that swings. It seems that EA do not truly represent some players in their games.

Overall however this is a fantastic game, and although I have given it 5 stars there is room for improvement. If EA keep strictly along these lines in developing this series the next installment could be completely mind blowing.