All said and done, Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 is easily the best cricket game of all time. If they fix some o
Unlike the earlier cricket games, the fielding isn't entirely left for the AI to do. In automatic mode, the fielder gets to the ball on his own but you need to get the arrow in the right area on the meter for a flat and fast throw to effect a run-out or to hold on to a catch. That adds an extra dimension to the game. Also field positions can be changed at will to suit your bowler and line of attack. Not a new feature but useful all the same. You can use the preset positions or manually adjust each player. Another new addition is the implementation of Hawkeye technology, which is a 3D representation of the movement of the ball. You will see a Hawkeye presentation after every LBW appeal or at the end of an over to display the line and length of each ball bowled in that over. You also get the Wagon-wheel for a batsman after he scores a 50 or a 100 exhibiting the range of shots and areas where he scored his runs. Though it doesn't exactly affect your bowling or batting, it is a damn cool addition and very impressive too. Other than that you have updated teams and a fair range of statistics. Umpiring is pretty good. The umpires make the correct decisions at least 9 out of 10 times. Thankfully the third umpire makes no blunders here and neither does he need half a dozen replays to arrive at the decision. In case of LBW shouts, the Hawkeye often vindicates the umpire's decision and occasionally makes a fool out of him too. Yes, there are those odd umpiring errors but none of a 'Bucknorian' magnitude that would make you smash your screen. Classic Matches, a feature exclusive to BLC series continues to prevail and I am quite pleased to see it. For those who don't know, Classic Matches mode is one that gets you closest to changing the cricketing history. Some of the historic moments are recreated and you are put right in the thick of things. You are either supposed to emulate a great feat or change the course of history. E.g. One of the Classic matches assigns you the task of winning a test match for England, the very match that England lost and gave birth to the famous Ashes. You have to bat in the last innings and score the necessary runs. To add a classic touch, the match is presented in Black and White and you can easily spot W.G. Grace with his unusually long beard. Every challenge you accomplish, unlocks a few restricted goodies in the game and more Classic matches of course. It is certainly worth a shot.One thing you will notice when you start any non-ICC affiliated tournament or match is the intentionally messed up player names. E.g. Tendulkar will be spelt as Tendalki, Singh might be Song and so on. The reason behind it (I was told) is that ICC has granted Codemasters the license for using the actual player attributes only in ICC affiliated tournaments like the World Cup and Champions trophy. If you choose any of those, you will see the correct names as well as the updated squads. I don't understand the legal nitty-gritty's of the matter so I don't want to comment on the same. Like in its EA counterpart, the key bindings cannot be altered. But in this case, the choice of keys is perfect and needs no alteration. But still, it wouldn't be a bad idea to allow the users their own combination of keys that suit them fine. All and all, the game-play, though not perfect is certainly the best one has ever seen in a Cricket game.
I had mentioned before that Game-play was the forte of Codemasters while aesthetics belonged to EA. In this title, Codemasters have managed to incorporate the best of both worlds. The human models look realistic, the grounds beautiful and the motion capture couldn't have been better. The players may not resemble their real world counterparts, but look human all the same. Even the spectators are no longer a two dimensional paint on the periphery. The appeals, the ecstasy, the disappointment, the celebration and the sledging all look convincing. Everything looks good and what more; it doesn't even tax your system. The minimum system requirements for this game are a 1 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX/ Radeon 7000 graphics card, a ROM drive and 4.4 GB of disk space. Except for the disk space, these are extremely modest specs. Even the recommended specs aren't extravagant - a 2 GHz or equivalent CPU, 512 MB RAM and a GeForce FX or a Radeon 9xxx series graphics card. Just for the record, I played the game on an AMD Athlon XP (Barton) 2500+, 512 MB RAM and a PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro graphics card. I also tried running the game on an onboard GeForce 4 MX and the game worked smoothly on both the setups. Thankfully, the reach of this game won't be hampered by system requirements. The sound of bat on ball or the rattle of stumps or the appealing is as good as the real thing and honestly it is perhaps the easiest thing to do in a cricket game. The lively crowd adds to the ambience. The commentary is quite good too and you can expect that when you have a string of famous personalities to render it. The commentator box comprises of David Gower, Tony Greig, Bill Lawry, Jonathan Agnew and Ian Bishop. No Geoffrey Boycott, what 'Roobish'! That is perhaps the only element missing from the earlier version. Many would agree with me that, that man is in a class of his own with his Crickeeet, Wickeeet and Roobish expressions. The commentary is occasionally out of context but not as much as in case of the EA version. There was only one major con in this otherwise brilliant title and that was the lack of network play. Yes, there is a multiplayer mode where two players can play the game on the same PC by sharing the keyboard or using 2 different peripherals but there is no network or internet play option. That is one thing I would definitely love to see in a cricket game - competing with my friends in the UK and USA over the internet and with my friend in the adjacent building over the local network.