Big Ant Cricket 14 - Upcoming video game offers new features to appeal to cricket gamers

Big Ant Cricket 14

With EA Sports’ FIFA franchise having enjoyed stupendous success over the years, all cricket gamers have been awaiting the release of a good cricket video game since a long time.

There have not been many decent or realistic cricket games since Codemasters’ Brian Lara/Shane Warne Cricket ’99, which is claimed to be most realistic game till date by many critics.

Recent games like Ashes Cricket ’09 and International Cricket ’10 got mixed response for their gameplay and animation. While they were upgrades from the earlier versions during the past decade, they have been also criticized on a number of other points.

While EA Cricket 2007 is still the favourite of most cricket gamers, it continues to be played today due to some great modders in our community who have tried to make the game more playable and fun. Still, some in-game flaws haven’t been rectified.

Talking about the upcoming games, Big Ant’s version has looked promising with the info shown to us so far. This game should not be confused with Ashes Cricket 2013 which is developed by Trickstar and published by 505 games.

Big Ant Cricket 14 is going to be released for PC, PS3 and Xbox360 and is expected to be out before October 2013. For the PC version, the game won’t work with a keyboard and a mouse, as an external gamepad is required to play the game.

The gamepad is required as this game will not feature traditional batting and bowling (no bowling with a marker, finally) controls. This may be a different experience for the fans as they are familiar with the older set of controls. It remains to be seen how fans react to the new controls.

Here, any gamepad with two analog sticks and D-Pad will work. Vibration mode will ensure that you get a vibration when edged (or during bat-ball contact), which may also assist you in taking BARS (discussed later). You can get further information on controls here. The interesting thing is that you can even field in this game!

This game is going to feature a complete career mode (first time ever in a cricket game), where you can start your career at 16 years of age and end at 36, with a complete realistic experience of a 20-year long career. There’s a choice to start your career as a batsman, bowler or even a keeper.

In the career mode, you’ll have five different levels with your advancement to the next level based on the skills you possess. You may even get a national call-up when you are enough experienced and skilled. From the information available, the last level will be Test matches, which will be difficult to reach. The game will be simulated until you’ll have a part to play in the game. When fielding, you may field or else simulate.

This game also features ‘Cricket Academy’, a type of a player editor where you may create your own player with many options to make your player realistic. Its beta version has been released. Users have already started making international cricketers, which can be shared and downloaded by other users (you may see some creations here). Cricket Academy also allows users to create tours, tournaments and to view various stats. It even allows you to assign different gears to players.

Other features included in the game are – dynamic weather changes, rain, D/L method, BARS (Big Ant Review System), free hit, Super Over, online play (with ability to save games), local multiplayer, real physics based engine, etc.

During the course of the play, factors like fatigue, stamina and injuries have also been taken into consideration. A user may even create unlimited teams and players.

As such there will be no licenses in the game but Cricket Academy is expected make up for it as the users will be able to download previously created players and teams by other users.

Added features, videos and screenshots on the next page.

Here’s a look at some features in the game:

‘A day in the life’, showing the dynamic weather system the game:

‘Sneak Peek’, a sneak peek at the game showing some of the shots:

Also, have a look at the ‘Cricket Academy’:

Last Friday, Big Ant released 8 screenshots of the game. Here are my some of my favourites:

1. A view at the BARS:

2. Let’s get back to the old days (you can apply some filters and revisit the 70s and 80s era):

3. Here’s an overview of the ground:

Looking forward to this game!