Received my copy of ICC a couple of days ago, just wanted to try things out before I made any conclusions about the new game.
So, there are definite improvements from ICC 3, for me anyway those include:
- More 6s (could be even more but at least its a start)
- More players for smaller countries like New Zealand
- Much quicker gameplay, unlike the static gameplay on ICC 3 at times
- Youth players are given to county sides to trial with a month or so to go in the season, being free of charge at this stage, and then when contracts come around, you get the chance to sign them after at least giving the players a chance to prove themselves
In saying that, some things still have not been implemented, like:
- Duckworth/Lewis, and no rain affected OD or ODI matches
- No T20 World Cup
- No Chappell-Hadlee Series (from a New Zealand perspective)
And there are also the annoying errors, e.g.:
- Mills a RM and Styris a RFM
- Langer, Craig McMillan, Andre Adams, Bond, Vincent available for international selection amongst others
- Manjural Islam (now as M.Islam) appears to still be on the game, unless theres another M.Islam with the same handedness and bowling style?
- Albie Morkel defensive
Some players are also much better than they are in real life, Brendan Hiini and Jesse Ryder for instance are top allrounders and they've dominated the England vs NZ series from observing the scorecards of that tour whilst playing as a county team. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is replaced with Parthiv Patel straight away in the Indian team, and Shantry (England), Siddle (Australia) and a host of top Indian bowlers are proving match winners a few years into the game. Rashid is still a star, though is rated an allrounder and plays a much bigger role with the bat than in previous versions.
All in all though, I'm actually really enjoying the new version, trying to develop a team to play online which is going reasonably well at the moment. Have a heap of spinners (Munday, Rashid, Saqlain Mushtaq and Murtaza Hussain - who are actually English players now), along with a mix of young and experienced batsmen.
