Brian Lara IC 2007 - WHY...
So imagine my excitement as the next gen offering drew closer and closer on the XBox360 (yes I know - ages ago: bear with me). Finally it was in my hands and got banged on sharpish. Oh.
What I was expecting was all of the quality of the 2005 version but with beautifully rendered visuals, more bowling refinement and extra batting freedom.
What I was not expecting was a gob-smackingly lazy offering, clearly rushed out to coincide with the World Cup.
Okay, so there are a couple of new batting shots. Woo. Everything else (and I mean EVERYTHING) is inferior to the 2005 version.
You feel totally detached from the action thanks to a distant camera; this is especially noticeable when bowling which, even when you (easily) take a wicket leaves you feeling cold.
Fielding is bizarre - even when you manage to stop the guage in the right place, your guy still often throws right through the stumps and on for extra runs and WHY does the wicket keeper keep snicking off the bails, even when the batsman hasn't run (then appeal, then cut to unpire refusing, again). And don't even get me started on catching. I'm no championship gamer but please, you need superhuman reactions for even the simplest of slips catches and half the time in the outfield you don't know if your catching or fielding - and why make it a different button to catch or field?
Batting is the "best" part of the new game. Shots are quite satisfying, as it running and diving for safety and the addition of sweep shots and dancing up the wicket is a nice touch. But what if you're out for a duck? This sums the game up for me: they couldn't even be bothered to include a duck animation - even the original PS1 game did that. Now I know that that doesn't exactly cripple the game but come on...
And then there's the commentary. WHY did they include Bill Lawry's embarrassing durge? I'll take nails on a blackboard every day of the week!
So why am I writing this now? Well, after my initial irritation with the game I traded it in within a month. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was missing playing cricket and, since you can pick it up for £15 second-hand, I thought "Hmm...it can't have been that bad". So I went and bought a copy. I played it that evening and OH MY GOD! It was even worse than I remembered and got traded back the next day (more for fear of chucking my controller through the telly than to get any serious money back).
And then I picked up the trusty old PS2 2005 version for the first time in a couple of years. Ahhhhh, bliss. And I thought "How is this possible?". For a company with the pedigree of Codemasters, especially in this field, to take solid gold, throw god knows how much more processing power at it, and produce a vastly inferior game.
So please Codemasters, make this sad gamer happy again - have another bash at it. You know you want to.