Now that we are fast approaching the start of Cricket World Cup 2007, I thought its the best time to write a review of the latest cricket offering from EA Sports. The new edition of the game is brilliantly done and is a lot better than EA Sports all previous cricket titles. Obviously, there are areas for improvement but we expect EA to come up with better titles year after year. I’ve posted the complete EA Sports Cricket 2007 PC Review at TechEnclave. Given below are the extracts from the same review.

This edition of the game, released days before the beginning of The Ashes comes in a 2CD pack. The installation is straight forward and usual EA Sports setup. There is nothing extraordinary here. Once the game is installed, you get down to the business and a serious one at that. You’ll be greeted with another customary EA Sports Cricket interface. No shocks here and no visible changes from the last edition either.

The batting and bowling control remains almost unchanged from the last edition. What has changed is the way they work. As a batsman, you can select your shot direction, back foot or front foot and the power behind that shot. It’s far easier to play the game with a gamepad where you can use one analog stick to determine the shot direction and power while using the other for controlling the player’s foot movement. This new control system is termed by EA Sports as the ‘Century Stick’.

The sound effects and background music seems to have improved though only slightly. The EA Trax system has been incorporated well into the system. The songs from various genres play in the background while you’re browsing the interface or the pause menu. The sound effects include crowd chants, the sweet sound of the ball hitting the bat and players encouraging each other. The crowd effects actually vary according to the region you’re playing in and from test matches to ODI.

EA Sports Cricket 2007 comes with many different game modes which ensure replay ability. Apart from the usual ones like The Ashes, World Cup and World Series, you can take part in the fully licensed version of Twenty-20 Cricket. This game introduces a range of bats from brands like Gray-Nicolls, Kookaburra, Puma and Slazenger. The teams for Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand are fully licensed while that is not the case for the other teams.

Finally after so many attempts, EA Sports have been able to come up with a decent all round game. Add to the fact that its World Cup season, I expect the game to sell good in major cricket playing countries like India, Australia and England. The next cricket release from Codemasters still has some more time to go before it hits the shelves and hence it’s a win-win situation for EA Sports. I’d recommend this game to all cricket lovers and for the first time, I’d say it’s worth your money. Get the game and relive the moments from the World Cup again and again.

Read the complete EA Sports Cricket 2007 PC Review at TechEnclave.