Cricket 22 (2021)

The updated career mode, the licence for the Ashes, The Hundred and Big Bash, as well as the inclusion of the women’s game make it an overall impressive package, but it’s still plagued by the same issues that Cricket games seem to have experienced since forever.

Cricket 22 is a good entry into the genre. Would I say it has improved on the last instalment? Yes is the answer, but clearly, it hasn’t exceeded the 2019 version massively. The addition of more modes, licencing and online options does make it a much better game overall.

Even though Cricket 22 is an excellent cricket video game, the sport of cricket just doesn’t translate well into video game form. You can’t just play a quick arcadey match when the sport is so slow, everyone around you (players and commentators) look and sound unenthusiastic, and matches take forever to complete. It’s just like chess: sure, it can be fun in real life (I guess), but not everything was meant to be turned into a game.

The biggest downside, then, is just the underlying lack of budget: cricket is popular enough, but it’s not baseball, and it’s clear that Big Ant Studios just didn’t have the resources to nail key gameplay mechanics, like fielding, which feels flat and unrealistic due to the limited selection of animation cycles in its library.

Though its held back by rough production values and gameplay inconsistencies, Cricket 22 is a decent enough game that fans of the sport should enjoy.