Don Bradman 14

[nightprowler10]

Bar not being set too high for DBC 14 to breach, is it?

Yeah as lolworthy as this is, this is not a good situation for consumers in the long run if there is no serious competition for Big Ant studios.

 

[sledger]

Who the hell would name their company "Big Ant Studios" anyway? Sounds like a company that would make children's garden toys.

 

[Burgey]

Must have been a low game indeed if it couldn't "meet the quality of benchmark".

 

[Langeveldt]

Who the hell would name their company "Big Ant Studios" anyway? Sounds like a company that would make children's garden toys.

Giving your company a childish name never hurt Google

 

[sledger]

Giving your company a childish name never hurt Google

Yes, but Google's name is derived from the word "googol", it's not some random cutesy idea.

 

[Langeveldt]

Their game looks awesome though. Just a shame their release has been a shambles.. Waited for Ashes Cricket to arrive and now won't release because of the massive dent AC2013 has made to cricket gaming's already appaling reputation.. By which time the Ashes will be over and there will be fewer PS3's and Xboxes kicking around anyway as people will be moving on to next gen..

 

[sledger]

When was the last truly decent cricket game? I remember playing quite a few on the PS2, the EA ones, and enjoying them. But I played a few of them again recently, and just had no idea how I could have enjoyed them. It's not that they are necessarily bad (although some of them were - IIRC EA Cricket 2005 was just terrible), but that they don't feel anything like real cricket whatsoever.

 

[Langeveldt]

My favourite game is International Cricket 2010, which if you make a few tweaks feels the closest to real cricket.. The International Cricket Captain series was a fantastic management series too..

The general consensus among fans is that the only decent out of the box game to have been released was Brian Lara Cricket 99..

 

[Cabinet96]

2010 is decent, just has a few flaws in the gameplay to do with how the AI plays. A few tweaks and it could've been a pretty good game, which is why them attempting to completely start from scratch for Ashes 2013 made no sense.

 

[Langeveldt]

2010 is decent, just has a few flaws in the gameplay to do with how the AI plays. A few tweaks and it could've been a pretty good game, which is why them attempting to completely start from scratch for Ashes 2013 made no sense.

Spinners getting hatfuls of caught behinds and caught at slip is the only real annoyance I've seen.. So I just reduced everyone;s reflex catching ability and to a degree that works fine

 

[Cabinet96]

There are other annoyances. The AI try so hard to exploit gaps in the field, to an extent which makes it stupidly unrealistic. No third man, you can be sure they're going for an uppercut, even if you bowl a full ball on the pads, etc. Also edges only ever go to second, third slip or gully, which makes setting fields really easy, even on the hardest difficultly.

The ball also acts to whatever shot you play. So you can theoretically go back or forward to anything, as the level of bounce will be effected by your footwork.

 

[Prince EWS]

When was the last truly decent cricket game? I remember playing quite a few on the PS2, the EA ones, and enjoying them. But I played a few of them again recently, and just had no idea how I could have enjoyed them. It's not that they are necessarily bad (although some of them were - IIRC EA Cricket 2005 was just terrible), but that they don't feel anything like real cricket whatsoever.

EA Cricket 07 went okay, particularly if you got it on PC and then downloaded the user-created modification patches. A much, much better game for its time than IC10 anyway, and I say that as someone who plays IC10 to this day.

 

[Prince EWS]

There are other annoyances. The AI try so hard to exploit gaps in the field, to an extent which makes it stupidly unrealistic. No third man, you can be sure they're going for an uppercut, even if you bowl a full ball on the pads, etc. Also deliveries only ever go to second, third slip or gully, which makes setting fields really easy, even on the hardest difficultly.

Yeah; bowling is just entirely pointless against the AI. Batting can be somewhat enjoyable if you set yourself rules to follow to enhance the realism.

One the great tragedies is the fact that it plays pretty well as a multiplayer game despite the obvious AI flaws, but online play component of that was completely broken, making it a lot harder to take advantage of that.

 

[Prince EWS]

2010 is decent, just has a few flaws in the gameplay to do with how the AI plays. A few tweaks and it could've been a pretty good game, which is why them attempting to completely start from scratch for Ashes 2013 made no sense.

It was developed by a different developer though, so they had no choice there. Of course you could hire that hiring a new developer in the first place was a bad idea but I'm not sure if Codemasters were actually particularly keen on making another cricket game.

 

[sledger]

EA Cricket 07 went okay, particularly if you got it on PC and then downloaded the user-created modification patches. A much, much better game for its time than IC10 anyway, and I say that as someone who plays IC10 to this day.

I heard 2007 was alright, but I think I had lost patience/hope by that point. I only played the EA games on PS2, so no patches were available etc... After suffering the horribleness that was EAC 2005, I wasn't prepared to punt another £35 to see if the 2007 version was much of an improvement.

IIRC on 2005 pretty much the only shots you could play that would lead to any runs being scored were ones where you charged down the pitch. The fact that you do this to a fast bowler during the first over of a test match and pick up 20+ runs didn't exactly enhance the experience. It's stuff like this that has lead to me to think that cricket just doesn't translate well into computer game form (granted you get decent management-type sims like ICC, but they're obvs a different kettle of fish). The majority of cricket games out there either seem to be unrealistic and fun, or (supposedly) more realistic and awful.

 

[Cabinet96]

It was developed by a different developer though, so they had no choice there. Of course you could hire that hiring a new developer in the first place was a bad idea but I'm not sure if Codemasters were actually particularly keen on making another cricket game.

Well Trickstar were working on both weren't they? I get confused because there were two companies working on each game.

Codemasters are focusing entirely on racing games now I think.

 

[Prince EWS]

Well Trickstar were working on both weren't they? I get confused because there were two companies working on each game.

Codemasters are focusing entirely on racing games now I think.

Yeah but given it was Trickstar and Codemasters for IC10, Trickstar couldn't use any of the stuff Codemasters had developed, and therefore had to start again.

 

[Langeveldt]

I heard 2007 was alright, but I think I had lost patience/hope by that point. I only played the EA games on PS2, so no patches were available etc... After suffering the horribleness that was EAC 2005, I wasn't prepared to punt another £35 to see if the 2007 version was much of an improvement.

IIRC on 2005 pretty much the only shots you could play that would lead to any runs being scored were ones where you charged down the pitch. The fact that you do this to a fast bowler during the first over of a test match and pick up 20+ runs didn't exactly enhance the experience. It's stuff like this that has lead to me to think that cricket just doesn't translate well into computer game form (granted you get decent management-type sims like ICC, but they're obvs a different kettle of fish). The majority of cricket games out there either seem to be unrealistic and fun, or (supposedly) more realistic and awful.

Ive never understood why it is so difficult.. I mean all the action happens in the same place, as opposed to football where anything can happen in any given part of the pitch..

Surely playing a certain shot to a ball in a certain area will produce differing outcomes with differing probabilities.. There are obviously a lot of combinations, but it isn't rocket science

 

[Shri]

Still waiting for a game that lets me bowl beamers and makes batsmen retire hurt.

 

[sledger]

Ive never understood why it is so difficult.. I mean all the action happens in the same place, as opposed to football where anything can happen in any given part of the pitch..

Surely playing a certain shot to a ball in a certain area will produce differing outcomes with differing probabilities.. There are obviously a lot of combinations, but it isn't rocket science

The EA games always used to struggle working out what was a "good ball", I think. You could get a delivery that was perfect in terms of line and length and belt it away for 6, but at other times leg stump half-volleys would be unplayable. A lot of the time you suspected that the game was coded by people who didn't really understand the sport.

Similarly, it wouldn't really make a difference whether a ball was good or not, since a forward defensive shot would keep out literally everything and only result in an edge once in a million deliveries.