Twenty20 cricket may be relatively new to the international sports scene but video game lovers will be well familiar with the style as short run fests have always been the best way to play cricket video games. In the battle between bat and ball, cricket video games have always favoured the bat, it has always been more fun to slog a six than bowl a good line and length for hours with little reward.
This preference for batting is a necessity forced by the nature of games. Real life mastery of cricket is next to impossible, even the best players can be fooled or make mistakes. Video game mastery comes with far less effort and sooner or later good players will be able to hit every ball to the boundary as creating a game where certain deliveries are unhittable or worse, always take a wicket, would break the game once mastered. This limitation results in a game where mastery of batting means bowling of any quality can be sent to or over the boundary, an attitude that was against the spirit of cricket for over one hundred years.
Yet in the last ten years the spirit of cricket has changed. Twenty20 embraces flash over endurance and by embracing Twenty20 cricket Big Ant Studios have created the most enjoyable cricket game ever made in Don Bradman Cricket. Big Ant has answered the riddle of bat and ball, giving bowlers more options than ever before to challenge batsman who themselves are equipped with all the tools modern players use to score at a blistering rate. Gone is the focus on a consistent line and length, instead bowlers have an unprecedented variety of deliveries and the ability to make subtle adjustments to speed and pitch. Every ball can be hit for six but picking the correct shot to do so and getting the timing right is tougher than any game before it.
In a rare feat for virtual cricket, Don Bradman makes both batting and bowling entertaining. Batting is handled using dual stick controls, the left stick controls your batsman on the crease and selects the front or back foot, the right stick plays your context sensitive shot based on foot placement, delivery length and timing. At its most simplistic you flick the right stick in the direction you want to ball to go. Further adjustments are made with the triggers to slog, defend or play a tricky shot like a reverse sweep or scoop. The best view of the action is from behind the batsman, a viewpoint used to great effect in baseball games that highlights the movement of the ball off the pitch and in the air. This camera is what makes the batting mechanics tick, you are doing the game and yourself a disservice if you bat from any other view.
Bowling removes the cricket game staple of selecting exactly where the ball will pitch, instead you select a length then let your timing and the bowlers stats decide exactly where the ball lands. Pre delivery you select the seam and swing direction and you can add a little extra juice to a delivery (or take some off) with the triggers. Flicking the stick back and forward completes your bowling action, a more intuitive system than the fast moving power metres most cricket games rely on. You can still mess up your timing and bowl costly no balls (the new free hit rule punishes no balls more than previous cricket games released before that rule was standard) but your mistakes always feel like your own. Spin bowling is particularly notable, a skilled spin bowler will have a batsman in fits with loft, float and turn. Poor timing will draw edges and LBW decisions and even playing defensive shots against a good spin bowler can be difficult.
Both batting and bowling systems are balanced and fun, while learning batting timing can be frustrating the reward once you master shot selection is worth the effort. Knocking out middle stump with an in swinging yorker is just as satisfying as drawing the batsman into an ill-advised slog that they edge to the keeper. Very poor shot timing will yield cheap wickets but for the most part dismissals are earned or deserved. As a bowler I always felt like I had the tools to shut down even the strongest batsmen, varying length, pace and movement to draw a false shot. Bradman regularly drew from me the “spinners agony”, the grunt of frustration as a batsman plays the shot you want but makes just enough contact to score runs rather than getting the edge you have been setting him up for. Even the most settled batsmen can never feel comfortable, just like real cricket one poor choice of shot can end an innings.
As a batsman you will have moments when you feel you are wielding willow the width of a tree trunk but similarly there are times where clean contact completely eludes you. Don Bradman Cricket regularly replicates the highs and lows of real cricket, from the joy when you can do no wrong to the frustration of not being able to find your timing. Bowlers have distinct styles that keep you on your toes; facing the all-time West Indies pace attack is a very different experience to facing Glenn McGrath’s impeccable line and length. Spinners and medium pacers aren’t just change of pace options, both provide their own challenges that require completely different timing and shot selection. I can’t speak highly enough of the way Big Ant Studios have handled batting and bowling in Don Bradman Cricket, both are top of class.
Less convincing is fielding which I found is better left to the automatic or semi assisted modes. Catching requires a quick flick of the stick to secure the ball, easy when a ball is skied to the outfield but far too short a window for return or slips catches that are frequently dropped. I found the assisted fielding also dropped too many simple catches and took the wrong angle to cut off boundaries at times, but some camera issues make manual fielding more of a chore than it needs to be. There are dive and flick back moves available but fielders have serious issues near the boundary, often stopping a ball just short of the rope only to step over it in their throwing motion. The AI has impeccable timing running between wickets, I didn’t see a single AI run out in my time playing, while a combination of eerily fast and accurate short flick throws and some poor camera angles mean you will suffer plenty of run outs in your early games. It is nice to have to wait until a ball pierces the gap to call for a run but not knowing when the ball clears the field due to camera issues is frustrating and the superhuman ability of infielders to run out even a retreating batsman is frustrating.
The cricket itself is largely excellent, but there are some other concerns. Like most local sports titles Don Bradman Cricket suffers from bugs and glitches, ranging from the harmless like fielding animations not linking smoothly to the unacceptable like clearly caught balls not being given out and (admittedly infrequent) batting ‘lag’ that sees shot inputs registered late, often with disastrous results. There is also some rare slowdown, not enough to be a serious problem but it does affect your timing and in a game where all it takes to end a big innings is one bad shot to have it happen due to game engine failings hurts, especially when the game is hardly pushing the graphics capabilities of the Xbox One. The AI is solid, offering a reasonable challenge but proving largely indifferent to game situation, reluctant to hit out even when needing 12 runs an over. This isn’t a big deal when you are competing against them but in the career mode watching your AI batting partner hog the strike to block out the dying overs of a crucial Twenty20 match is infuriating.
While career mode is entertaining and largely a positive innovation for cricket games, poor AI isn’t my only issue with the flagship mode of Don Bradman Cricket. My biggest concern was the lack of respect for my time, the simulate options do let you avoid fielding but having to watch your AI partner bat in real time is a drag, some kind of fast forward or at least avoiding the fluff cut scenes between deliveries and overs would be appreciated. When your contribution to a game can be as short as a single ball faced the loading times grate on you, as do the endless number of cut scenes and the fade out that disguises load times when a combination of left and right handed batsmen requires field changes.
The good in career mode significantly outweighs the bad. Your player performance having a direct impact on stat improvements is great, I love being rewarded for good shot selection with improved ‘off side’ or ‘front foot’ stats, much like real cricket you develop strengths and tailor your style to them. The variety in match types through a season require you to take many different approaches, test match batting rewards patience and waiting to punish the bad ball while 50 over and Twenty20 matches give you the chance to lash out. Test bowling can be a real grind, but it does allow you to stick to a line and length to trap a batsman, a well-timed inswinger or slower ball often draws the wicket. Don Bradman Cricket is weighted toward the shortest forms of the game but it does an admirable job replicating the traditional format and experiencing them as a single contributor rather than playing an entire match is a great way to get that feeling without requiring a player to commit to five days of cricket. A good, long innings can still take a couple of hours and playing an opening bowler can often be a grind against well set batsmen, but skipping the boring hours of fielding and watching others batting is a welcome way to experience cricket.
Although this is a review of the Xbox One version, Don Bradman Cricket debuted nearly a year ago for last generation consoles and PC. There is little effort here to bring the game to current generation standard, animations can be stilted and erratic and the grounds and crowd lack detail. Player likeness can be forgiven their issues as technically the game doesn’t feature many official licenses, instead relying on an ingenious system where the default unlicensed teams can be linked to downloaded, user created sides that conveniently include the correct player names and stats with reasonable facsimiles of their likeness made using the player editor. Upon first play the game prompts you to link the game to the most popular downloaded rosters meaning many players will never even notice the lack of official licensing. It does leave you at the mercy of the voting mechanism, a few of the ‘highly rated’ user created teams feature great likeness yet poorly edited player stats, but for the most part it is a fantastic solution to licensing issues.
Commentary is absolutely abysmal, the game may have been better without it. Matthew Hill and David Basheer are inaccurate, repetitive and rarely insightful, often contradicting themselves within a single sentence. I faced more difficulty than I should have setting up local multiplayer games, each player requires a profile and too often we ended up in games pitting the AI against itself rather than a two player game. There is also an inexcusable issue on Xbox One where controllers that are disconnected do not register inputs when reconnected, you can pause the game and navigate the menus but not control any player on the pitch requiring you to quit and load the match to resume play. There are some small UI issues too but nothing that significantly hampers enjoyment of the game. A tip from experience is to play the game on Pro difficulty from the start, Amateur makes for a more ‘hit and giggle’ experience but in no way prepares you for the depth of the harder difficulty modes, I spent a few hours on Amateur difficulty then spent that time again unlearning what it had taught me. Pro can be brutal but persist, it is worth it.
Cricket lovers shouldn’t let past poor experiences deter them from Don Bradman Cricket, this is the real deal. Yes it suffers from many problems local sports games have experienced before, but the core is done so well that you can forgive a few technical deficiencies. Too often locally made sports games required patience, dedication and a strong blind eye to enjoy, flaws had to be overlooked and house rules required to make multiplayer feasible. Don Bradman Cricket comes with no such caveats, it stands tall as a cricket simulation and as a fun, entertaining game.
Don Bradman Cricket was reviewed using a retail disc on Xbox One, purchased by the reviewer.
Review: Don Bradman Cricket
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