With 2023’s Cricket World Cup kicking off in India this month, Big Ant Studios has taken the opportunity to release Cricket 24 alongside. Similarly with EA Sports FC for football and MLB The Show for baseball, Cricket 24 is a yearly instalment in cricketing video games but on a much lower budget than its stablemates.
In comparison to the previous entry in the series, Cricket 22, there is very little noticeable difference. The enjoyable core gameplay all remains literally identical, with a great variety of options for performing various aggressive, defensive, and unorthodox shots while batting, and delivering cutters, swingers, bouncers, and spin balls while bowling. Fielding, however, still feels unpolished, with inaccurate controls and lacklustre animations that often left us in hysterics at the hilarity of the fielders throwing the ball between each other instead of at the stumps, all while facing the complete wrong direction.
The noticeable additions this year are in the licensed content with more franchise formats and teams. The Indian Premier League, The Hundred, The Big Bash League, and several other franchise tournaments make the cut, bringing the total number of playable formats to a whopping 23.
Visually the game looks outdated, lacking detailed textures in many areas. This isn’t made any better by the frequent glitches; players going invisible, the camera clipping into the environment, commentary not aligning with gameplay, and many more issues. Combined with the occasional crashes and desolate online lobbies, you’re left with a below par score on a flat pitch.
Cricket 24 fails to build upon the series’ solid opening partnership from its previous instalments in a significant way. Its enjoyable core gameplay is practically identical to Cricket 22, with the only noticeable addition being franchised tournament formats. Its abundance of bugs and glitches, and barren online lobbies, leaves little reason to take another swing at the series if you’ve already played an innings of a previous title.
