Cricket 24 reflections: Big Ant Studios starting to adopt AAA bad habits

Here’s hoping then that Cricket 24 is only a blip and not a sign of the studio taking a distinctly AAA direction with its cricket franchise. (Image: Big Ant Studios)

Cricket World Cup 2023 is underway, the PlayStation 5 Indian Edition Cricket 24 Bundle is on sale and preorders are in the process of being fulfilled, and I’ve spent a fair few hours on Cricket 24.

On the first count, things are off to a rather insipid start, in terms of spectator numbers anyway. On the second, Sony seems to be convinced by the idea of shifting major volumes of its current-generation console through the medium of a bundle that includes India’s most popular sport (arguably). After all, why else would promotions for the bundle occupy so many reams of newsprint in the form of newspaper advertisements?

On the third count, I’m still convinced that it’s a game from October 2021 that I’m playing. I’d noted in a laconic first impressions piece that that game looked and felt like “a rebadged Cricket 22” and I haven’t really deviated from that view.

(Image: Big Ant Studios)

So, what’s wrong?

Not a great deal, per se. Cricket 22 had improved on its predecessor (Cricket 19) in some tangible ways, ranging from presentation to gameplay. Certainly, there was some extremely dodgy AI and the balance between bat and ball is as skewed as it is in the real-world equivalent. However, in a review for another publication, I had described it overall as the best cricket game ever made.

This lavish praise must obviously be construed in the context of the fact that cricket is an awfully difficult game to replicate in videogame form and that efforts to do so thus far have been more miss than hit — such exceptions as Cricket 2005 and Brian Lara Cricket ‘99 notwithstanding.

When I heard Big Ant Studios was all set to launch a follow-up to its 2021 effort on the same day as the Cricket World Cup was to kick off, my mind flashed back to EA Sports’ FIFA: Road to World Cup ‘98. I recall it being a great way to capitalise on a wave of interest in the sport, by adding all the official branding.

That ‘Indian Edition’ PS5 bundle was suddenly beginning to make a whole lot of sense. But then I played the game and later went on the internet. Now, it appears there’s this Indian edition that features all but two Indian Premier League teams (apparently rights could not be secured in time for Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Superkings) in the branding and marketing materials.

The Australian and British editions are dubbed ‘Official Game of the Ashes’. Then, there are apparently ‘standard’ and ‘international’ editions of the game too. A detailed examination has revealed that there is no real difference between any of these. I shall revisit this point a little later in the piece.

Shortly after exploring the game’s extremely unintuitive menu screens, I found to my dismay that while there were official versions (including presentation) of The Ashes, the Big Bash League (Men’s and Women’s), the Hundred (Men’s and Women’s) and even the Pakistan Super League, there was no official 50-over World Cup branding. Further, while it may have been devoid of official branding, it wasn’t even called a ‘World Cup’.

Moving along, the gameplay has barely changed in any tangible way since the previous iteration. Batting remains the most polished aspect of the game — equal parts challenging and fun to master, however, there is still a major problem that the developers have failed to correct. The fielding and bowling AI fails to recognise scoring patterns and adapt the bowling or field positions accordingly.

What this means is that after an initial process of feeling out the bowling and finding gaps, you can continue to spam runs with that strategy and amass totals. Difficulty levels squeeze the margins of error for timing and placement but don’t seem to affect the AI very much.

Bowling and fielding are also the same as last time. The variety of delivery types is still rich, but the outcome is largely down to chance than skill, and the fielding is too slow to actually affect game states. Further, the catching minigame remains erratic and prone to all sorts of glitches. Elsewhere, career mode seems to have been streamlined. While the RPG-ness of proceedings is still around in some patchy form, gone are the variety of gym minigames to build different stats.

(Image: Big Ant Studios)

Bad AAA habits

I could go on about every other feature that has stayed the same or thereabouts, but I’d be guilty of wasting your time and mine. In the interest of moving swiftly on, it’s instructive to cast the mind back nearly a decade. In 2014, a plucky Australian development studio that had until then put out two Rugby League games and one Aussie Rules one (in terms of sports games), released Don Bradman Cricket 14.

After watching EA Sports and Codemasters give up on the sport of cricket in 2006 and 2010 respectively, Big Ant Studios’ effort came like a breath of fresh air. Sure, it lacked the polish and ‘officialness’ of the EA Sports and Codemasters titles, but it showcased what an intuitive and immersive cricket game truly could be like. It would be no exaggeration to say that it bested the studios that made Cricket 07 and Brian Lara Cricket in all three onfield departments of the game.

Flash forward to 2023 and the Australian studio seems to be slipping into behaviours that are neither plucky nor very good news for fans of cricket games. For starters, there’s the aspect mentioned above: Very minor changes between iterations. With its erstwhile FIFA (and now EA FC) series, EA Sports very frequently published virtually identical games year after year that featured a new cover star (although not always) and some updated team rosters. Cricket 24 looks like a game straight out of that school of thought.

The most tragic aspect of this is that while a great deal of promotion has gone into playing up the presence of official IPL teams, Big Ant Studios cricket games have never had to rely on official licenses. Their fantastic creation suites coupled with the tireless online community have meant that extremely accurate versions of real-world players and teams are swiftly created, downloaded and rated for quality. The time and effort taken for a Rajat Shahbaz to turn into a near-photorealistic Rohit Sharma was relatively minuscule.

Then there’s the way innovative and unique features seem to have been culled over the years. Let’s start with the aforementioned gym minigames that were around in Cricket 22. As anyone who has ever played a ‘career mode’ in a sports game will tell you, after a while playing as the same team (or worse, same player) begins to become an awful grind and you begin to seek out ways to break up the monotony. The minigames (ranging from lifting weights and box jumping to yoga and a rowing machine) helped build a different stat each but also challenged different aspects of your skill with the controller. These included reaction speed, button-mashing abilities, timing and deftness of control. But that’s gone now.

Cricket 22, on its part, brought with it the jettisoning of the scenario mode introduced in Cricket 19. Codemasters had used a similar mode in a couple of their titles, MLB The Show 23 utilised it to great effect to showcase the Negro Leagues of American baseball, WWE games do it all the time, and so on. The premise is simple: Recreate a historical moment, sequence of events or match. Sports provide a treasure trove of glorious and ignominious moments from history and leaning into those is a great way to keep the magic of the game alive and kicking. And yet, Big Ant Studios decided to do away with this mode.

The culling of unique features bleeds into my next point, which is the manner in which AAA developers try to keep zany and weird modes down to a minimum so that work can start on the next iteration as soon as the current one is released. And why bother with developing snazzy new modes and concepts when you can just push out more of the same, safe in the knowledge that people will buy it.

Judging by how similar Cricket 22 and Cricket 24 are, there was no reason for Big Ant Studios to rush out a sequel so quickly. Also considering that its big-ticket promotional event is The Ashes, which occurs every year, the studio could easily have waited another year to put out a new game. Alas, that was not to be. This seems even more galling when you consider the fact that the IPL teams, Cricket 24’s biggest selling point (in India anyway), are something the online community has long since created on Cricket 22.

(Image: Big Ant Studios)

Hopefully not a sign of things to come

In the 22-odd years since its inception, Big Ant Studios has come along in leaps and bounds not only because of, but to my mind, especially because of its cricket games. Here after a long time was a developer truly pushing the envelope when it came to digitally replicating leather-on-willow action.

Here’s hoping then that Cricket 24 is only a blip and not a sign of the studio taking a distinctly AAA direction with its cricket franchise.

Game reviewed on PlayStation 5. Review code provided by publisher.