Kev
Chairman of Selectors
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2004
- Online Cricket Games Owned
I've played the demo, been to Codemasters (twice) and now its out. So am I getting it? Thats the big question (well 'big' in terms of 'actually, who really cares'). Over the last few days there have been streams of review threads expressing disapointment in the game so I thought I'd start this one before I've paid money for it and am generally more likely to be in a better mood.
Throughout the review (or is it a preview, or can you review something you dont have???) I shall be comparing the game to what we have already (ie EA Cricket07 and BLIC05).
BLIC 05 was a game that I didnt really get much use out of, I bought it quite late in its life cycle really only to have a go at modding it. At the time I didn't really enjoy playing it at all, I didn't have a gamepad at the time and it was just no fun with the keyboard. I think I once made 150 using only 3 shots, the spider from that knock summed the game up nicely. Batting was a waste of time, far to easy and the shots always went in the same place so not only was it too easy to hit a four or six but you would know that you were not going to get caught as long as the AI didnt have a fielder in that exact spot. In all honesty I went to Codemasters the first time with absolutley no intention of buying BLIC 07.
Just before I went to Codies, I purchased a USB converter for my PS/2 gamepad and decided to try out BLIC 05 again, I couldnt believe the difference, strangely I didnt score as freely as I did wth the keys but it was much more enjoyable, shots going all over the ground. I was also impressed by what I saw at codemasters, Graphically the game had come along (Its leaps and bounds ahead of C07) and although only a small team of programmers seemed to be working on it (and they were a bit shoved in the corner) they at least seemed to be comitted to what they were doing (A big bonus over the outsourcing to Swordfish that happened for BLIC 05).
Enough waffle, lets address some of the comments that I've seen here on the boards. (These are not exact quotes, I'm too lazy to go find them).
Depressingly Stupid AI, Cricket07 wins this one.
Really???? Ok the AI does indeed look depressingly stupid but does it score over EA? Has anyone seen my story thread for Cricket07? I cant get the AI to score at all, quite often the AI scores at less than 100 runs in a day and 50/40 over matches are routinely ending with the AI scoring less than 100 (much less) and having wickets in hand. It seems that the AI in BLIC07 is a bit agressive but at least my bowlers wont bowl entire stints without conceeding a run.
Batting is too Easy.
Ok, BLIC is not trying to be a simulator its a game that you pick up have a 20 over blast then put down, in contrast EA Cricket07 its equally flawed, just the other way. With EA (especially on 5 star) the game decides you have edged a ball on a random basis even if you perfectly time and select a shot, when your numbers up, your numbers up. The only way to counter this is to play huge amounts of leg glances and defensive shots. At least batting in BLIC07 should be fun and that afterall is what a game should be.
Unrealistic Tests.
With the above two points taken into account, playing a test match on this game is never going to work. This is a bit of a shame as I'm sure a lot of us (myself included) prefer the longer form of the game. But as I said earlier, BLIC is a game not a simulator. Pick up Fifa or Pro Evo and play a 90min match, nobody moans that the score on that game would be fantastically unrealistic they accept it as a game, maybe we need to do the same for cricket.
Bounce.
I've read that you still have to bowl way to full to counter ball bounce, to be honest I think you have to do this on Cricket07 too. This area highlights a main problem with cricket games. People who play cricket want to bowl and bat like they do in real life, unfortunatley the key to sucess often comes from learning to bowl differently on a game than you would in real life. I dont approach bowling (or batting) from a realism point of view, I just try to find spots and strategies that work for the game, sadly they wouldnt work if you were playing cricket for real but I think this problem exists on all games.
AI Field Stragegy.
Lets face it all cricket games suck at this. Cricket is a fantastically complex game when it comes to strategy and it takes a long time to get good at this. Cricket games follow a series of rules laid down by a programmer who ultimatley knows less about cricket than most people on these boards. Its never going to satisfy us.
Catching System
Colin raised a very good point, that it should be easier to make some catches than others. Like him, I can't believe I didn't think about this when we were demo'd the game. When we first saw BLIC07 slip catches had this wierd slow motion effect applied, honestly I hated it and I'm glad its gone. OK you are going to drop quite a few but I reckon with practice people will gradually take more and at the end of the day if you took them all the AI would be all out for much less. Of course when I am getting spanked all over the park when playing online, dropping a sitter will be particularly gutting but at least BLIC07 makes an attempt to get you involved with the fielding whereas I leave that up to the computer for Cricket07 as the semi auto catching thingy it has sucks eggs.
All shots go to the boundary
There's a simple reason that in cricket games the ball always reaches the boundary if a fielder doesnt get to it. Its to stop dead situations where the ball stops just short of the rope but no fielders are assigned to chase the ball. In Cricket2004 it would sometimes happen that dead situations would occur and you had to run something like 7 or 8 runs before the game moved on. Ensuring the ball always runs to the rope is a cheats way of getting around this but its less annoying than the game stopping dead.
Graphics.
BLIC07 beats Cricket07 into the ground here. Cricket07 stadia still look almost exactly the same as they did in Cricket2002. OK Blic07 isn't state of the art but there really is nothing to say here except it looks far slicker and also feels slicker thab Cricket07.
Poor Performance on Slower Systems.
The game (and computers) have moved on, get over it. Spend less of your cash on games that you moan about and upgrade your graphics cards instead. For the price of 3 PC games you can buy a pretty decent graphics card.
Online Performance.
As I understand the game uses Gamespy if you have a PC. I've never played any game online before so I don't know much about this, from what little I know about this, I am not a big fan. However I do believe that we can bypass the need for gamespy maybe with some VPN software, I've used this in the past for business purposes and its very stable, of course it does have the downside that you must set it up at both ends and you should really only do this with someone you trust an as such you must take steps to protect your system as its escentially like plugging someone elses PC into your network. Oh Cricket07 doesn't have online at all so BLIC wins this one.
Conclusion (of sorts)
So will I get it? Well, I still believe its a better game than Cricket07. But I'm not going to rush out and get it. I'm going to wait a while for the fuss to die down and see how we go. Gives me a chance to finish my Cricket07 season before I snap the disk in half at least
Throughout the review (or is it a preview, or can you review something you dont have???) I shall be comparing the game to what we have already (ie EA Cricket07 and BLIC05).
BLIC 05 was a game that I didnt really get much use out of, I bought it quite late in its life cycle really only to have a go at modding it. At the time I didn't really enjoy playing it at all, I didn't have a gamepad at the time and it was just no fun with the keyboard. I think I once made 150 using only 3 shots, the spider from that knock summed the game up nicely. Batting was a waste of time, far to easy and the shots always went in the same place so not only was it too easy to hit a four or six but you would know that you were not going to get caught as long as the AI didnt have a fielder in that exact spot. In all honesty I went to Codemasters the first time with absolutley no intention of buying BLIC 07.
Just before I went to Codies, I purchased a USB converter for my PS/2 gamepad and decided to try out BLIC 05 again, I couldnt believe the difference, strangely I didnt score as freely as I did wth the keys but it was much more enjoyable, shots going all over the ground. I was also impressed by what I saw at codemasters, Graphically the game had come along (Its leaps and bounds ahead of C07) and although only a small team of programmers seemed to be working on it (and they were a bit shoved in the corner) they at least seemed to be comitted to what they were doing (A big bonus over the outsourcing to Swordfish that happened for BLIC 05).
Enough waffle, lets address some of the comments that I've seen here on the boards. (These are not exact quotes, I'm too lazy to go find them).
Depressingly Stupid AI, Cricket07 wins this one.
Really???? Ok the AI does indeed look depressingly stupid but does it score over EA? Has anyone seen my story thread for Cricket07? I cant get the AI to score at all, quite often the AI scores at less than 100 runs in a day and 50/40 over matches are routinely ending with the AI scoring less than 100 (much less) and having wickets in hand. It seems that the AI in BLIC07 is a bit agressive but at least my bowlers wont bowl entire stints without conceeding a run.
Batting is too Easy.
Ok, BLIC is not trying to be a simulator its a game that you pick up have a 20 over blast then put down, in contrast EA Cricket07 its equally flawed, just the other way. With EA (especially on 5 star) the game decides you have edged a ball on a random basis even if you perfectly time and select a shot, when your numbers up, your numbers up. The only way to counter this is to play huge amounts of leg glances and defensive shots. At least batting in BLIC07 should be fun and that afterall is what a game should be.
Unrealistic Tests.
With the above two points taken into account, playing a test match on this game is never going to work. This is a bit of a shame as I'm sure a lot of us (myself included) prefer the longer form of the game. But as I said earlier, BLIC is a game not a simulator. Pick up Fifa or Pro Evo and play a 90min match, nobody moans that the score on that game would be fantastically unrealistic they accept it as a game, maybe we need to do the same for cricket.
Bounce.
I've read that you still have to bowl way to full to counter ball bounce, to be honest I think you have to do this on Cricket07 too. This area highlights a main problem with cricket games. People who play cricket want to bowl and bat like they do in real life, unfortunatley the key to sucess often comes from learning to bowl differently on a game than you would in real life. I dont approach bowling (or batting) from a realism point of view, I just try to find spots and strategies that work for the game, sadly they wouldnt work if you were playing cricket for real but I think this problem exists on all games.
AI Field Stragegy.
Lets face it all cricket games suck at this. Cricket is a fantastically complex game when it comes to strategy and it takes a long time to get good at this. Cricket games follow a series of rules laid down by a programmer who ultimatley knows less about cricket than most people on these boards. Its never going to satisfy us.
Catching System
Colin raised a very good point, that it should be easier to make some catches than others. Like him, I can't believe I didn't think about this when we were demo'd the game. When we first saw BLIC07 slip catches had this wierd slow motion effect applied, honestly I hated it and I'm glad its gone. OK you are going to drop quite a few but I reckon with practice people will gradually take more and at the end of the day if you took them all the AI would be all out for much less. Of course when I am getting spanked all over the park when playing online, dropping a sitter will be particularly gutting but at least BLIC07 makes an attempt to get you involved with the fielding whereas I leave that up to the computer for Cricket07 as the semi auto catching thingy it has sucks eggs.
All shots go to the boundary
There's a simple reason that in cricket games the ball always reaches the boundary if a fielder doesnt get to it. Its to stop dead situations where the ball stops just short of the rope but no fielders are assigned to chase the ball. In Cricket2004 it would sometimes happen that dead situations would occur and you had to run something like 7 or 8 runs before the game moved on. Ensuring the ball always runs to the rope is a cheats way of getting around this but its less annoying than the game stopping dead.
Graphics.
BLIC07 beats Cricket07 into the ground here. Cricket07 stadia still look almost exactly the same as they did in Cricket2002. OK Blic07 isn't state of the art but there really is nothing to say here except it looks far slicker and also feels slicker thab Cricket07.
Poor Performance on Slower Systems.
The game (and computers) have moved on, get over it. Spend less of your cash on games that you moan about and upgrade your graphics cards instead. For the price of 3 PC games you can buy a pretty decent graphics card.
Online Performance.
As I understand the game uses Gamespy if you have a PC. I've never played any game online before so I don't know much about this, from what little I know about this, I am not a big fan. However I do believe that we can bypass the need for gamespy maybe with some VPN software, I've used this in the past for business purposes and its very stable, of course it does have the downside that you must set it up at both ends and you should really only do this with someone you trust an as such you must take steps to protect your system as its escentially like plugging someone elses PC into your network. Oh Cricket07 doesn't have online at all so BLIC wins this one.
Conclusion (of sorts)
So will I get it? Well, I still believe its a better game than Cricket07. But I'm not going to rush out and get it. I'm going to wait a while for the fuss to die down and see how we go. Gives me a chance to finish my Cricket07 season before I snap the disk in half at least
) is hardly much of a gamble. That's why I ordered it yesterday in spite of all the bad press surrounding the game. I'd never pay ?40 for the 360 version though. That would be madness as far as I'm concerned.
