Finally, yes finally... Xbox owning cricket lovers have a console version of their favourite sport. A few years back I was lucky enough to be invited to an EA press function where they were showing off all their upcoming games. Tucked away in the corner was EA Sports Cricket 2004 running on, well unfortunately it was running on a PS2 and even worse, an EA staff member confirmed that there would be no Xbox version! Well, we finally have one and even better, it features all new graphics based on the FIFA engine!

Developed by EA Canada, yes one of the easy beats of world cricket (sorry, couldn't resist), the games development team comprises of people from cricketing nations around the world and even the lead designer and producer of the original Brian Lara/Shane Warne Cricket games. When that little snippet of info was revealed in our interview earlier this year expectations for the game hit fever pitch! Finally, could it be true? a new cricket game that not only looks hot but one with tight controls that's fun to play? Unfortunately while the graphics are great, the rest of the game is as disappointing as the last day of a close test match being washed out by rain.

To EA's credit Australian cricket fans have been very well looked after with the ability to compete in both the Pura and ING cups. For English fans being able to play a County Test Season as well as the One Day based National League should keep them happy and a lot of work has gone into this side of the game. To get the hang of the game even practice nets are available and a meter lets you hone your skills until you have your batting timing and bowling skills nailed, a cool feature in the nets is the ability to choose what sort of deliveries you want to practice against. You can choose the line and length of the balls you want to face or just set it to random.

The game features loads of authentic Cricket grounds from around the world and EA have done a great job recreating them as well as the players. Even up close a lot of the well known players look particularly good and are instantly recognisable. The bowling and batting animations are all very well done and feature smooth transitions and the batting shots look very nice when checking out the replays. Unfortunately though due to some of the most frustrating controls and punishing difficulty levels to be seen in a sports game for years all the time spent in the nets getting your timing right amounts to absolutely nothing when playing actual matches.

Featuring (as mentioned) all new graphics supplied by the FIFA game engine, those of us that played FIFA 2005 will be right at home with the look and feel of the menus. Unlike the FIFA series though, the graphics are about the only thing that seems to get better with every new cricket game. The batting controls are extremely clunky to the point of sheer mind numbing exhaustion. You can move your batsman left and right in the crease but for some reason you are unable to move forward to change the length of deliveries. The only time you can do this is when playing an ‘advance down the wicket shot' and this plus the almost useless ‘six hit' leave you wondering if EA have ever seen a One Day Cricket match in real life with batsmen advancing down the pitch to try and fool the bowler. The ‘six hit' gives your shots more power and by holding down the L trigger (and getting the timing spot on) you can loft the ball over the infield and hopefully into the stands.

The only issue with this is that while we all love watching players like Ricky Ponting or Adam Gilchrist smacking the leather over the fence, the majority of runs in cricket are scored along the ground and the batting controls and difficulty in EA Sports Cricket 2005 make this ridiculously hard, even worse, it's so hard that the batting side of the game is nothing short of frustrating and at times just stupid, many people have even complained in forums around the globe that its just plain broken.

During every single match that I played the majority of shots played along the ground would go to the infielders, every single time! Eventually frustration would get the better of me and to try to get the run rate going the lure of the ‘six hit' would be too much but the slightest mis-time then sees every single attempt go up in the air to a fielder as well.

To begin with I assumed this was my lack of timing as the game has all the shots. Simply by moving the Left analogue stick while you attempt your shot you can try sweeps, drives, cut shots and leg glances. Pressing A while pressing the Left stick attempts a front foot shot, Pressing Y attempts a back foot shot and pressing B attempts an ‘advance down the wicket' shot. In the nets this all seemed to work fine but in actual matches the same problems would just surface again and after facing over after over to score almost no runs unless you risk a ‘six hit' the eject button was beckoning me to press it and just give up but there's two sides to cricket and after the total frustration of the batting, it was surprising to see the bowling handled a bit better.

Like the batting shots, all the bowling deliveries you know of seem to be there. Outswingers, Yorkers, bouncers and even the slower ball for the pacemen as well as top spinners, googlies and leg and off breaks for the spinners. For the Warnie fans even the almighty Flipper and Zooter available as special deliveries. To start your delivery you move the L stick and then press the button that corresponds to the delivery type to start your run up, the power meter will rise and then you press that same button again before it goes into the No Ball zone to keep the delivery legal. No matter where you put the ball though, and although my own batting efforts were nothing but a waste of time, the A.I. seemed to have the knack of being able to hit almost everything I sent down to the fence or over it. Sometimes you see bowlers getting spanked around and unable to ‘buy a wicket' well now I know how they feel now!

The sound in EA Sports Cricket 2005 does a fairly good job with some immersive crowd noises and sound effects. It's a shame to report though that the commentary sounds like something out of a game from 5-8 years ago. It's stuttery, disjointed and never sounds smooth at all. The hundreds of lines and words all recorded separately by Richie Benaud just never flow when the game attempts to put them together as complete sentences. For a game that uses the FIFA engine (that has great commentary) it was nothing less than a bit of a shock to hear how bad it is in this game, it's like stepping back 5-8 years or playing the first AFL game.