All five English Ashes venues feature. Lords even gets a digital take on its famous wind vanedip into for the odd ten-minute spell.
Matches can last multiple hours, and
when you go for 30-plus minutes
without taking a wicket, it’s all kinds
of demoralising. With defensive
batsmen who play the right shot
more often than not, trying to bowl
over their stumps is both a tricky and
upsettingly banal pursuit.
Bailing out
For the most part, presentation is
fairly good, with Cricket 19 doing a
particularly good job of capturing that
haunted look Joe Root so often adopts
when he’s guarding his wicket. That
said, the pre and in-match cutscenes
are more problematic than sending
out poor old Liam Plunkett as your
opening batsman. Not only are these
cinematics blighted by distracting
frame dips, they also suffer from
horrendous screen-tearing. Oh, and
a special, super sad shoutout to
the ground with mountains in the
background that are so offensively
blurry, they look like they’re being
rendered on a Nintendo 64.
It’s a real shame because Big Ant
actually chooses some interesting
camera angles to deliver the sort of
presentational pomp you’d expect
from the latest FIFA. Whether it’s a
crowd excitingly shuffling into a test
ground, the umpire delicately placing
the bail on the stumps, or a captain
coming out mid-match to offer their
ailing bowlers a couple of water
bottles, there are some lovely little
bespoke moments that make you feel
like you’re watching real-life cricket.
On the audio front, proceedings
are also patchy. While the players
make authentic on-pitch calls, the
commentary lacks love. Michael
Slater’s often inaccurate comments
are made worse because it sounds
like he recorded his voice down a
well... after he’s ingested a bunch of
horse tranquillisers.Such uneven presentation neatly
sums up what’s both right and wrong
with Cricket 19. It can be a confident,
assured approximation of the sport,
capable of both sharp excitement yet
also long periods of boredom. Bear
with the bowling and there’s some
Ashes excellence here, but when
you’ve gone an hour without a wicket,
that simply ain’t cricket. QCHALLENGE
ACCEPTED
To spice up the
action, Scenario mode
returns, offering
bespoke challenges
under unique
circumstances.
Serving up one-off
scenarios, there’s
some fun to be had in
chasing down big
scores under
pressure. One
challenge may make
you, say, defend a
112-run target
against England in a
Women’s T20, while
another could see you
chasing 303 runs in a
crunch Ashes match.
You can also create
custom scenarios,
and judging by past
entries, the online
cricket community will
quickly cook up all
sorts of inventive
objectives.“This isn’t a
ame you can
ust casually dip
into for the odd
ten-minute spell”
FAR LEFT Batting
against spin is
generally
trickier than
outwitting a
pace bowler.
RIGHT Character
models are
mostly good,
even if they’re
all a bit
dead-eyed.OXM VERDICT
Occasionally
thrilling, often
banal, this
cricketer may
stump you.6
LEFT Get into
the groove, and
scoring regular
boundaries is
quite easy.More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 081REVIEW