Hi guys,
I just wanted to get down my thoughts from playing this game for about 7 hours. I've been playing on PS4 via digital download, and I have the day 1 patch. I haven't played career at all yet, so this review is based on just taking a look in the academy and playing some casual games in all formats. I've focused mainly on the batting aspect of the game.
I wanted to write this review because it seems like a lot of users are falling on extreme ends of a spectrum - either they are massive fans of Big Ant and don't seem able to admit any fault in the game or its devs, or they're calling the game an irredeemable piece of trash (which it isn't). I think I fall somewhere in the middle and hope this review will help people who are actually on the fence, and might produce some useful feedback for the devs also.
I've probably forgotten a lot of stuff, so I'll edit each category as I remember.
The Good
- Customisation is great, players, uniforms, stadiums and bats look great and it's easy to forget almost immediately that the game isn't licensed. Props to Big Ant for finding a creative way to get around the licensing issue.
- The difficulty sliders are great. I can play each ball on its merits, something I couldn't do in DBC 14.
- The new shot modifiers are quite cool and allow you more control when batting.
- Spin bowling is probably a bit better with the new mechanics.
- I'm enjoying batting in general. As I'm above, I'm able to play each ball on its merits and finding it very challenging to do so, but am able to have success, and when I get out it's usually because I've made a judgement mistake that I can fix (playing down the wrong line or choosing entirely the wrong shot).
- You can hit sweeps and reverse sweeps in the air now which a nice improvement.
- Charging against spin a lot better, and it's now possible to hit advancing shots along the ground. Smashing a spinner down the ground with an advancing off drive is satisfying.
- Graphically, the game is really pretty. No complaints here.
The Bad
- Commentary is fairly poor, mostly due to the commentators just saying the wrong phrase with alarming regularity. For example, I was bowled out in a T20 yesterday, only to be informed that the opposing team might now choose to enforce the follow-on. Good to know. Another very common example is that when a bowler comes on for the first time, the commentator will wax lyrical about how good their previous spells have been.
- As lots of others have said, it's too easy to pick up singles when batting. You can middle it to a man in the circle and still get through for one. Also, pressing R2 for Sprint during a run doesn't seem to do anything.
- Difficulty settings are set in 3 different places (bowling/batting difficult, match difficulty, difficulty sliders), and it's pretty confusing how this all works. I think there needs to be a screen explaining what the difference is and what each setting actually does. It may be common knowledge to frequenters of this forum, but it's really unclear for people who are just picking up the game blind as I was.
- The 'reaction catching' functionality has promise, but seems way too easy at this stage.
The Ugly
- I've had many, many crashes since playing, and I have one which is 100% reproducible which occurs immediately whenever I try to start a new 'Australia T20 Clash' competition (if there's a way I can show this to a Big Ant team member I'd be happy to). Competitions seem very buggy in general for me, I was able to start a T20 international competition, but then experienced crashes while trying to play the matches in it.
- 'Get Best' didn't work for me initially when starting the game, and doesn't work now when trying to replace a whole league, meaning I have to do teams one by one. The error is 'Academy Services are unavailable' or something like that. Is this happening for everyone or just me? This is putting me off starting career mode, as I understand that you can't alter teams and players in a career mode once it has been started.
Overall
Obviously I have no insight into Big Ant's marketing and development process, but this feels like a game which was released a few months too early in order to coincide with the Christmas holidays. Quite a few people seem to have the issues stated above in regards to the regular crashes, which is pretty galling for a product at this price range, even if it turns out that it's only happening for a reasonably small percentage of users.
With that said, I don't feel like I've wasted $100, as Big Ant do have a good track record of fixing issues and even making improvements going forward, and I'm enough of a sports video game nerd to put up with the annoyances in the short term. If you're not, you might want to hold out until the above gets fixed (and also to ensure that it actually does, there are no guarantees of course). But if you're a long time fan of cricket video games, there's a lot of promise here, and with some patches and improvements this game is very likely to exceed the heights of DBC 14 and give you many hours of leathery, willowy enjoyment.
I just wanted to get down my thoughts from playing this game for about 7 hours. I've been playing on PS4 via digital download, and I have the day 1 patch. I haven't played career at all yet, so this review is based on just taking a look in the academy and playing some casual games in all formats. I've focused mainly on the batting aspect of the game.
I wanted to write this review because it seems like a lot of users are falling on extreme ends of a spectrum - either they are massive fans of Big Ant and don't seem able to admit any fault in the game or its devs, or they're calling the game an irredeemable piece of trash (which it isn't). I think I fall somewhere in the middle and hope this review will help people who are actually on the fence, and might produce some useful feedback for the devs also.
I've probably forgotten a lot of stuff, so I'll edit each category as I remember.
The Good
- Customisation is great, players, uniforms, stadiums and bats look great and it's easy to forget almost immediately that the game isn't licensed. Props to Big Ant for finding a creative way to get around the licensing issue.
- The difficulty sliders are great. I can play each ball on its merits, something I couldn't do in DBC 14.
- The new shot modifiers are quite cool and allow you more control when batting.
- Spin bowling is probably a bit better with the new mechanics.
- I'm enjoying batting in general. As I'm above, I'm able to play each ball on its merits and finding it very challenging to do so, but am able to have success, and when I get out it's usually because I've made a judgement mistake that I can fix (playing down the wrong line or choosing entirely the wrong shot).
- You can hit sweeps and reverse sweeps in the air now which a nice improvement.
- Charging against spin a lot better, and it's now possible to hit advancing shots along the ground. Smashing a spinner down the ground with an advancing off drive is satisfying.
- Graphically, the game is really pretty. No complaints here.
The Bad
- Commentary is fairly poor, mostly due to the commentators just saying the wrong phrase with alarming regularity. For example, I was bowled out in a T20 yesterday, only to be informed that the opposing team might now choose to enforce the follow-on. Good to know. Another very common example is that when a bowler comes on for the first time, the commentator will wax lyrical about how good their previous spells have been.
- As lots of others have said, it's too easy to pick up singles when batting. You can middle it to a man in the circle and still get through for one. Also, pressing R2 for Sprint during a run doesn't seem to do anything.
- Difficulty settings are set in 3 different places (bowling/batting difficult, match difficulty, difficulty sliders), and it's pretty confusing how this all works. I think there needs to be a screen explaining what the difference is and what each setting actually does. It may be common knowledge to frequenters of this forum, but it's really unclear for people who are just picking up the game blind as I was.
- The 'reaction catching' functionality has promise, but seems way too easy at this stage.
The Ugly
- I've had many, many crashes since playing, and I have one which is 100% reproducible which occurs immediately whenever I try to start a new 'Australia T20 Clash' competition (if there's a way I can show this to a Big Ant team member I'd be happy to). Competitions seem very buggy in general for me, I was able to start a T20 international competition, but then experienced crashes while trying to play the matches in it.
- 'Get Best' didn't work for me initially when starting the game, and doesn't work now when trying to replace a whole league, meaning I have to do teams one by one. The error is 'Academy Services are unavailable' or something like that. Is this happening for everyone or just me? This is putting me off starting career mode, as I understand that you can't alter teams and players in a career mode once it has been started.
Overall
Obviously I have no insight into Big Ant's marketing and development process, but this feels like a game which was released a few months too early in order to coincide with the Christmas holidays. Quite a few people seem to have the issues stated above in regards to the regular crashes, which is pretty galling for a product at this price range, even if it turns out that it's only happening for a reasonably small percentage of users.
With that said, I don't feel like I've wasted $100, as Big Ant do have a good track record of fixing issues and even making improvements going forward, and I'm enough of a sports video game nerd to put up with the annoyances in the short term. If you're not, you might want to hold out until the above gets fixed (and also to ensure that it actually does, there are no guarantees of course). But if you're a long time fan of cricket video games, there's a lot of promise here, and with some patches and improvements this game is very likely to exceed the heights of DBC 14 and give you many hours of leathery, willowy enjoyment.
