Cricket Captain 2019

The match engine has become an absolute embarrassment. I feel like it's been updated once since 1999. This game is fun for long term fans, but all the changes have been tinkering around the sides. A test championship, historic players, updated rosters mean very little. So many things need to be worked on. Training is completely meaningless. Youth development is non-existent. Transfer system is so bare bones and outdated. Match engine is hideously outdated. Attributes need to be added to the game. The commentary hasn't been updated in 20 years. In almost every way the game would feel out of date in 2003. International cricket and one day modes feel basically unplayable. Internationals - Star players are permenantly out of form. Try picking a south africa test squad with Faf, De ♥♥♥♥, Steyn, Rabada, Ngidi all below one star of form. Or an England squad with Anderson, Broad, Stokes, Root and Bairstow below one star. One Days - On an absolute road with the sun shining. Bat first, score 210/9 and lose. Happens in every one day game i play. I can't see how i'm going wrong, it just feels like a balancing issue. Try and score at more than 4 an over and all your players WILL get out instantly. It's so so badly done. Your team cannot score more than 30 runs with an SR above 75 but the oppos no6 bat can hit 90 off at an SR of nearly 200. With the Big Ant franchise producing high quality cricket games, Childish Things need a major revamp to stay relevant. You've been churning out the same game every year and it's getting tired. I love this franchise but please don't let it die of old age. I'm sure you guys have major resource limitations compared to other developers but as fans we need to see more effort from you. Football Manager has adapted and evolved and Childish Things need to take inspiration from this. Devs will never do anything to improve this franchise.

Think about Big Ant's cricket series. A robust online community allows players to import player data for current teams within the competitions they're playing - for FREE - thus keeping the game current years after going out of date. Failing that, it also allows players to edit the same stats in order to bring it up to date (and then upload it for the benefit of others). These games are flawed and expensive (often running to around £50) but with each new installment, you get a sense that the studio behind it is trying to bring new features to create a more interesting and realistic experience. Now consider Cricket Captain 2019. It's not the competition for Big Ant's games, they're completely different games (although B.A. include management elements to their games), but where Big Ant provide updates for free, Cricket Captain 2019 which, in itself, is little more than a database update feels like severely over-priced DLC for Cricket captain 2013. For years, fans of the game have highlighted the issues this series faces and the "mixed" rating on every one of their Steam releases is a testament to how badly these games are aging. But as we draw nearer the 2020s, and games strive to become bigger, better, and more bombastic, Cricket Captain seems content to peddle the same game year after year and expect us to thank them for it. Cricket Captain 2018 was probably the nadir of the series, as it represented complete neglect of the fans that had tried so hard to get through to the game's creators that there needed to be a major sea change or the series was going to fall apart. We pleaded with the devs to overhaul the game, take a few years to really deliver a great product, and in 2019 we get a game with no changes which is somehow more flawed than ever. A lack of balance is still the most prominent issue. Pitches and weather mean nothing to the opposition, and even on flat pitches you'll find your batting line up falling apart while the other team demolishes your bowling attack. As with previous installments, this makes the one-day games unplayable. So, if you do play the game, your best bet is to stick with First Class cricket. Slight changes have been made to the interface, namely a brighter colour scheme that will irritate anyone with eye problems or who is prone to headaches, and an aggression metre that shows how many runs an over a player will be trying to bat at. This second feature is a good change, though it doesn't work. Instead, a player allegedly shooting for 7rpo will still score 9 off 40 balls. When two-thirds of your game is unplayable, it probably shouldn't be released, let alone set out for £20. Similarly, no obvious metric of skill and talent - with averages, both in terms of youth and senior players, being so unreliable - it is near impossible to utilise coaching to improve players, and often you'll find a player initially succeeds only to fall away dramatically no matter how much you focus your coaches on them. With so many pointless stats - especially a new interface in which the usual stats page for players is cluttered with three more stats - it doesn't seem so outrageous to be able to see player ratings that clearly govern the player quality and the baffling AI selection. Both of which are affected by a pointless difficulty selection, which now includes a "very easy" mode - which does not speak to the actual difficulty level. In a game such as this, difficulty should really be governed by the quality of the team you select - and it is. Playing a poor team like Zimbabwe or Ireland on Very Easy doesn't mean you have a better chance in games or a better chance of developing world-class players. It's just a token gesture as you get rolled over game after game because you can't actually develop your players in a meaningful way. And these just touch upon the major issues that make this game a genuine displeasure to play. While the balance is the major issue - something that hasn't changed for years - there are a plethora of smaller issues that niggle and irritate throughout any meaningful period of play. And all of them are carried over from older games in the series - a hangover of the same game being released every year - and have been laid out before. None of this lack of improvement is in the face of ungracious fans, either. We've been willing this series on, hoping it will turn itself around, filling reviews and message boards with goodwill and offers of assistance. But all of it's been ignored so that the same £20 database update can be released every year. While previously I might have echoed that goodwill and joined the chorus imploring the developers - a small team compared to games in other sports - to take some time and really make the best product they can. After this year's game, and the continued disappointment it brings, perhaps it's time Childish Things handed the development of Cricket Captain to a different, more engaged development team - or at the very least brought in some new talent with new ideas - because it is clear they've taken this game as far as they are willing to. And the more the release the same game again and again, the more of an insult it will be to its players and fans.

I don't think I've ever written a review. I love Cricket Captain, but there is honestly not been any major differences between last year and this year. There has not been a graphics update in years, it's not worth buying if you already have 2018.

Disappointing, again. Little to no real changes for 10 plus years now. Needs an overhaul badly. Requesting a refund and going to get my cricket fix, playing Cricket 2019 on PS4 instead. Not my preferred choice but can't justify putting time into this and paying £20, for what is on the whole a dated game.

I feel at this stage the developers feel like they can basically just take the piss out of us as fans of cricket and cricket games. This is one of the only cricket coaching games out there and it's just pure complacency and downright laziness. The game is barely even reskinned from last year. Everything else is exactly the same. Just like the year before that, and before that and so on. The sad thing is Childish Things know they can get away with it as we cricket fans don't have a great deal of choice when it comes to games on the market. It's hardly saturated out there and I feel like their slogan should be 'buy it, deal with it or ♥♥♥♥ off.' I have absolutely asked for a refund as I may as well play cricket captain 2018, hell I may as well play 2012 and I have the same game. Only difference is the name of the players. Utter rubbish.

The best cricket management game available! I enjoy that improvements continue to be made and new features added. The OD and T20 game is more realistic than ever, plus many of the graphical animation oddities have now been addressed. The online game is now more stable as well. Highly addictive and highly recommended.

This game lets itself down by omission. What is in the game is ok. It's average. It's not bad... but far from anything that would impress you. But it's what's NOT here that is striking. For 20 pounds, customers deserve a LOT more. They deserve player stats, they deserve better graphics. More nuance and MANY more captaincy options are needed. In this current state , this is a £9.99 game. ( or $15 Max) .

At first I thought the game was good because I was doing terribly with England, which aligns quite nicely with real life. It turns out the game is just completely nonfunctional. This game makes no sense. There is no indication on how good players are expect from their form which seems to be completely random. The AI can score at 4 an over no problem, if you try and up your batters aggression above two an over you lose wickets instantly. No only does it ruin test games but it makes white ball games almost impossible to play. It's an unbalanced mess which is missing basic featured you'd expect is a sports management game. DO NOT BUY

Red ball cricket is alright but white ball even on easy is awful. Don't buy. Would be better to burn your money.

A game worth playing...