Name - EA Cricket 2004
Release Date - March 12th 2004
Genre - Sports
Developer - HB Studios

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Features

- Officially Licensed
- 56 teams with over 1000 players
- 61 stadiums around the world

- Change the weight, look and playing attributes of your

- Practice Nets
- C&G Trophy - Frizzell Championship
- International Tour - County Championship
- TV overlays and statistical graphs
- Expert commentary from Jim Maxwell & Richie Benaud
- Infinite camera angles and instant replays of your best and favourite moments

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Available Teams/ Tournaments

National
- Australia (A side also available)
- Bangladesh
- Canada
- England
- India (A side also available)
- Kenya
- Namibia
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Pakistan (A side also available)
- South Africa (A side also available)
- Sri Lanka
- West Indies
- Zimbabwe

Domestic

Australia
- Pura Cup
- ING Cup
- New South Wales Blues
- Queensland Bulls
- Western Warriors
- South Australian Redbacks
- Victorian Bushrangers
- Tasmanian Tigers

England & Wales
- C&G cup
- National First Class League

- Derbyshire
- Durham
- Essex
- Glamorgan
- Gloucestershire
- Hampshire
- Kent
- Lancashire
- Leiecestershire
- Middlesex
- Northamptonshire
- Nottinghamshire
- Somerset
- Surrey
- Sussex
- Warwickshire
- Worcestershire
- Yorkshire

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Well cricket 2004, the follow on from the very dissapointing cricket 2002. Produced and developed by the ever-growing HB studios. The game itself, is very hard to describe. The opening menus are very easy to use and finding your way into a game is fairly simple. The choices are far and wide and there is many, many different and interesting game types. The gameplay, whilst having short-comings has a sense of 'character' to it. The players faces are un-defined and have 99% of the same features a play from a different county of a similiar ilk has, the bats are blurry around the edge and its hard to actually define the crowd from the outter boundary rope and yet through all this the gameplay is utterly addicting.

Im not sure whether its me and just me that enjoys the game play but that I certainly do. Whether its the pleasure of a Glenn Mcgrath length ball thundering through the covers on the 1st morning of a lord's ashes test match or a sweep to Murali saving a game on a dustbowl there is a certain feeling of enjoyment throughout the game.

The over-riding issue though is infact the sheer scale of bugs this game has. The original release is perhaps one of the most bugged up games any company have ever released. Had it not have been for the instant possibility of patching this game up, im fairly sure HB studios would have been put under severe scrutiny for releasing a game blatantly short of the finalised product that we've come to expect of games in the 21st century.

I'l go into the bugs themselves after I give a detailed run down on all aspects of the gameplay.

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Batting
The batting itself is enjoyable, but only enjoyable for a short period as batting against the computer AI in easy or normal mode becomes a strole after the first few overs and in some cases, I find myself hitting 300+ in the first sesion of a test match. There is an array of shots available to the batsmen, that can be toned and practised in the practice nets (on the main menu, gives tips on batting, timing, shot selection etc). We have the leg glance, sweep, straight drive, square cut, on drive - basically all the clasical and recognised batting cricket shots. The statistical options are of a good standard, with numerous different ways of summarising your batting performance, the spider etc.

There is also an option to autoplay should you become bored either an over, a session or the whole innings if you wish to do so.

Advantages - The batting is easy to control and if your looking for a run-fest there's not much playing in to do before it becomes easy to bat, even on hard level. Genreally speaking the batting is ok, the quality of shots is good and on the outfields are realistic in the sense that the weather affects the speed at which the ball runs.

Dis-advantages - The batting becomes boring after a while because of how easy it really is. Its impossible to play certain deliveries such as the yorker, even if your 200 Not Out off 400 deliveries. The AI's bowling is to predictable and the field settings are abysmal.

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Bowling
This is the really big let down in the game. Bowling with fast bowlers is ridicolously hard and bowling with spin bowlers is horrifically easy. For example, As i once played on normal I bowled only fast bowlers at the Aussies from the lunch break to the tea break with the Australians finishing 108/0 from 29 overs, I then bowled only spin bowlers from Tea until the end of play and the Australians finished the day on 154/8 with all 8 wickets coming from my 2 spinners and 4 batsmen being dismissed within there first 20 deliveries.

I also find the pitch and the way the ball reacts to be as equally frustrating. There are 5 pitch settings, Normal, Green, Hard, Damp & Dusty now just for an example. On a normal wicket around the world, the new ball will still swing for the first hour or so and then perhaps die down and the batsmen will setlle in, however on Cricket 2004 the new ball does precisely nothing on a normal wicket, with not even the slightest hint of swing. Its unrealism like this that just wrecks the bowling side of the game for me.

Advantages - There really aren't many. I suppose you could say that if you want to win a game by taking 20 wickets then you; certainly do that if you bowl your spinners

Dis-advantages - The AI batting goes into complete defensive mode the second you move your field settings and thats that then, they either collapse to your spinners or the run rate goes down to 1.00 at most. The pitch reacts poorly in comparison to real life, normal wickets are horrific to bowl on and literally offer nothing, whilst the much touted green wicket dont swing as much as they should in real life.

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The BUGS themselves
- The fielders catch balls that have either seemingly passed them or are 15 yards wide of them.
- The wicket keeper lets the ball go through his hand horrifically frequently
- The AI batting isn't realistic enough to the situation
- Frequently bowlers bowl more than the amount of overs they are allowed to in a 1 day game
- The commentary is horrific, explaining how an over was so expensive when the over was infact a maiden
- There's no edges in the game to the wicket keeper
- The middle order of 99% of teams crumble
- New batsmen repeatedly get out via the same dismissal with the spinner bowling
- Fielders drop a ridicolous amount of catches
- The AI field settings dont change until you are 90 not out from 30 balls.

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Like I said, if you find a patch that has the bugs removed or patched out then this is a great game, but until then enjoy the character it offers, but be prepared to get seriously frustrated with the incredibly poor amount of system bugs that HB haven't sorted out.

Overall Rating Un-patched 3/10
Patched 8/10