I understand that some people don't 'get' cricket. Take my girlfriend for example: Cricket is so boring, I don't understand what's going on, Why is he out?, What's an LBW?, Why are you wearing my underwear?. These are just a sample of the utterances I've heard from my girlfriend while I was watching the most recent England test match. The appeal of cricket is simple you get to sit around with your mates, drinking and chatting entire days away under the guise of a sporting event. As an Englishman, I've been able to watch our team bash the colonies on occasion, and even when they don't win you can get in a great amount of male bonding and backslapping by appreciating the quality of play by the opposition.
Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 is a representation of real life cricket. There are no super moves or mutant players, it's just cricket. The game allows you to play any format of the game you want test matches, limited over matches, day/night games, as well as several different tournaments and some classic challenges (Where you re-enact a famous cricket session, or try to change history) and features between ten and fourteen nations depending on which game type you choose (Ten in test, fourteen in tournament). Although the national team names are all correct, the player names are not correct in all the modes. The current international squads aren't fully licensed, so exhibition matches are played without the correct names (but there is an editor to correct them), but the ICC Cricket World Cup and Champions Trophy are both licensed from the most recent tournament, meaning that all player names from those tournaments are there, but the squad is a bit out of date.
Cricket is certainly not an easy game to represent in digital form batting is almost a martial art in the way that a player has to control each and every shot of a ball bowled at up to 100mph (sometimes bowled at their head), and nine tenths of bowling is about deceiving the batsmen. Batting in Brian Lara is pretty good, with you having to choose which shot to play by pushing the d-pad in a direction and pressing a face button. The face button decides whether you play a defensive shot, an attacking stroke along the ground, or a lofted shot. Timing of the shot is determined by when you press the button, the better the timing, the better struck the shot, although timing varies depending on the shot you pick, the batsmen's confidence and the way the ball is bowled. How harshly you are judged on your timing can be set in the game there are four modes, ranging from slog mode (where you are able to hit anything anywhere) to test mode. It's a good system, but needs a little fine tuning a mistimed shot rarely means that you'll miscue it to a fielder it just means that you get bowled or hit the ball nowhere edges through to the slips and wicket keeper are unbelievably rare for something so regular in the modern game. More annoyingly, even when you hit a shot perfectly, there's still a good chance of hitting it down the throat of a fielder if you play a lofted shot the game may be deciding I have positioning for a shot, but it's very hard to tell. Finally, it does seem a little easy to pick your shot and hit it in that direction test mode will restrict you on this, but it's still ridiculously easy to flick a ball for six down fine leg a practically impossible shot in the real world. All in all though, the batting is good, forcing players to measure their innings, but allowing you to punish loose balls.
Bowling is also good, but flawed you position where you want to bowl the ball, and then as you run up to bowl a ball, a meter rises up the nearer the top you stop it, the faster the ball, but go over and you bowl a no ball. Each bowler has a range of different balls they can bowl, with all kinds of bowling available. Where the ball pitches is shown by a dot on the pitch, with a small arrow indicating which direction it will move off the pitch. When your bowler gets their confidence high enough, you can bowl special balls such as the 'yorker', where the ball is bowled further up the pitch than the dot initially shows (it moves suddenly when the ball is bowled), hopefully catching the batsmen out. The special balls are a cracking idea, and you really can deceive your opponent with them, but I'm not so sure about giving a no ball when you go over the line every time I would have liked to explore the idea of the bowler bowling a loose ball, but it's no great issue. You can just deceive your opponent with the variations in pace and bounce too when you do get a delivery right at the top of the meter it will stay a little lower after pitching, move a little quicker and be much more likely to clatter the stumps if the batsmen misses. As I've said earlier though it's very hard to induce a batsmen into a miscue that will be caught. On the good side, LBW decisions are backed up by a replay with the Hawk-Eye system, always an interesting point of debate.
Finally, a quick word on fielding you can set your field from a number of set plans, or create your own, but there is no way to slightly alter a preset plan you might want to plug a hole that your opponent is exploiting in a preset field, but the only way to do this is to set the entire field up manually especially annoying when your opponent is happy to hit it down fine leg every shot and you just want to cover that boundary. Fielders go after the ball automatically when they pick up the ball, a meter appears, with an arrow moving across it closer you stop the arrow to the centre, the better the throw, and so the better the chance of a run out. Annoyingly though, every ball is thrown to the wicket keeper's end, and it seems impossible to hit the stumps directly. When a fielder has a catching chance, the same meter appears, with you needing to stop the arrow near the centre to take the catch as it moves quite quickly on test mode, when the pressure's on you can get a fair few dropped chances.
Presentation wise, the game is nothing special, although it is the best looking cricket game I've seen. The grounds look OK, with plenty of real world grounds represented, as well as accompanying ambient effects (e.g. police sirens and car horns occasionally at the Surrey Oval). Players have a somewhat cartoon look about them, and are not likenesses of the real players, possibly the biggest disappointment of the game. Having said that, when you play some of the classic challenges, you get the whole old-black-and-white-film-reel look, errant pubes on the screen and all, with some of the classic players very recognisable. Players are animated very well though the various shots and the way the balls are fielded look excellent in motion, with the only down point being that batsmen freeze in position at the end of their shot follow-through if they don't have to run. Sound effects are OK, and some good commentary is provided by Jonathen Agnew, David Gower and Ian Bishop among others. Actually, they don't often comment on the game in hand it's more likely that David Gower will ask Bish how the game has changed since he played, with Bish then rambling on for a couple of minutes about nothing in particular. Quite realistic really, and it actually takes a good long while to get repetitive. My favourite bit of the presentation is that when you get a duck, a duck with a cricket helmet on waddles and quacks along the screen, with the colour of the helmet changing depending on the nationality of the batsmen (It still makes me chuckle).
Ultimately, whether you buy Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 is down to whether you want a cricket game. If you do want to play your friends at cricket, then this is the game for you. It's not perfect, but it is cricket, it does play well, and will last a good few dozen hours before the weaknesses really become annoying. Actually, I thought Codemasters had gone completely doolally when I heard that they had dusted off the Brian Lara franchise for the first time in over five years, but as I write this Brian Lara tops the all format games sales chart, so I guess that I must know sod all about selling games. Good work Codies.
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