One of the largest sports in the world, cricket often gets little attention outside of the British Commonwealth. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t video game treatments of one of the world’s most popular sports and, indeed, we can probably expect more in the future. Published by none other than Electronic Arts, the EA Sports Cricket series of games delivers upon what the title promises: a robust simulation of what it is like to play cricket. And now you can download it too.
How to Download EA Sports Cricket
You can download the free demo of EA Sports Cricket 2005 by clicking the Download button below. The video below illustrates the gameplay in EA Sports Cricket 07 and the gallery of screenshot comes also from the same 2007 version of the game, which was also the last of the series.
The Game Review
Beginning with their first game in 1996, EA Sports Cricket was the premier video game based around the sport of cricket and held most of the official licenses for teams from around the globe. Like most sports games, this one balances the simulation aspect with the sports gameplay aspect of the game. In later titles the cricket series t even allowed players to edit rosters and create their own teams, often generating user-made dream teams with players that were missing from the main release.
While more well known for its Madden and NBA Live series of games, EA nonetheless has staked out numerous claims in various other sports as the de facto brand name experience for those sports. Because of its long history making sports games EA often has a prominent position in the development of video games in new sports that aren’t as well known in international markets, cricket being among them.
Launching as a series of PC games before also making their way to consoles, EA Sports Cricket titles are geared towards the markets for which they are developed but also have an eye out for the sports gaming enthusiast who purchases anything and everything the company releases. This gives this title a level of accessibility that is rare in sports games that gamers don’t have a personal connection with and it is part of the magic of this family of games.
Graphics are ostensibly true to life though never winning any awards for EA. EA Sports Cricket mainly focuses on solid gameplay and simulation. Given the number of statistical possibilities and variances in a cricket match, EA had their work cut out for them when developing the cricket series of titles. As time went on EA decided to drop a lot of the official licensing found in the EA Sports Cricket in favor of a simulation-based approach that empowered users to create their own teams and scenarios.
Though jarring for fans of the sport, this is probably one of the best ways to introduce non-fans to the world of cricket. This level of simulation forces players to truly become involved on a granular level with their team and the result is that the gamer learns a lot more about cricket in the process. After all, as any gamer can tell you, in a title that favors statistics there is certain to be a team that is just quantitatively better than the rest and players tend to favor these teams. Creating your own team and fielding it to see what happens not only kills this aspect of the game but also makes each and every match a new experience unto itself.
