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In my younger days I used to play Cricket for the local junior team. The team wasn’t very good, but it did mean that my wickedly slow-paced deliveries and sedate ‘only hit two fours in my career’ batting style didn’t seem out of place. In fact, my all round play made me one of the key players. Since I developed a rather crippling bout of laziness at the age of 12, my cricketing days were over (as were my days playing most sports). With the memory of my twin brother’s fluky hat-trick burnt into my long-term memory, I sat down with him, attempting to show him who’s boss when a controller is involved.
Just as is the case in real cricket, Brian Lara is split into two areas, batting and bowling. While there is some skill required in mastering the two key areas, neither are too challenging to pick up. Batting is remarkably simple, with your batsman only able to shuffle sideways in his crease. It’s a little disappointing that you can’t move down the wicket, but it has made the controls nice and simple to pick up. The key to successful strokes is timing. Hit the ball slightly late and run the risk of edging the ball to a fielder, but time the shot just right and see the ball run to the boundary. It’s as simple as holding the left analogue stick in the direction you wish to hit the ball and hitting the ball with one of the three shot type buttons: standard hit, slog and defensive. Attempting to slog the ball will almost always result in a miss-hit unless you time the ball well and have high batsman confidence. The more shots you time well, the more confidence your batsman gains, increasing your chances of pulling off a good shot.
Bowling is, rather surprisingly, a lot more fun than batting. This is because you feel much more in control than you do when batting and seem to have a lot more options available to you. As you start your run-up an aiming circle appears on the wicket and you place this where you wish to pitch the ball. As you approach, a speed metre appears on the screen, with the metre increasing the closer you get to the delivery line. The later you release the ball, the faster it will be, but leaving it too late will result in a no ball. Depending on the type of bowler you are using, the four face buttons on the controller deliver different types of delivery. Seam bowlers can deliver standard straight balls and seam the ball to the left or right. Spinners can spin the ball (with the spin obviously depending on whether he’s a leg or off spinner) and also throw a straight ball in to try and fool the batsmen.
Adding extra depth to bowling is the swing control and special deliveries. On the PlayStation 2 version that we tested, the R1 and L1 buttons can be used to add swing to the delivery once it has left the bowler’s hand. This can be used in conjunction with seam or spin to make for some almost unplayable deliveries. Just as with batting, consistent deliveries will increase your bowler’s confidence, eventually allowing you to bowl a special delivery. These are activated using the R2 and L2 buttons and let you bowl balls such as the Yorker, Bouncer and Googly. Another key part of bowling is field placement.
The game gives you a number of preset field placements, and for anyone unfamiliar with the game, these will prove to be perfectly adequate. If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Michael Vaughn you can move people around as you see fit. This is particularly useful when your opponent starts slogging the ball in the last few overs of an innings. Fielding itself is pretty simple, but still requires concentration to stop the opposition from sneaking in any extra runs. When a fielder picks up the ball (this is done automatically) a bar quickly pops onto the screen. You must stop the marker as near to the middle of the bar as you can in order to throw a flat, fast ball back to the keeper. Badly timed throws will be less accurate and loop to the keeper, giving the batsmen some vital extra time. It’s worth noting that the ball is only returned to the keeper and you have no control over this.
Codemasters haven’t secured the license for all the official players, nor have they got the likenesses, but it doesn’t really matter. England’s Flantiff bowling to Australia’s Laymer is still enjoyable and some of the fake names raise the odd smile. What Codemasters have got is HawkEye. Anyone familiar with Cricket will know that this brilliant piece of technology allows the commentators to see if an LBW appeal is a legitimate one. It’s great to see this in the game and adds an air of authenticity to the proceedings. We haven’t seen the umpire make a bad decision yet, but we wait in hope. It would, after all, make the game that bit more realistic.
There are a lot of game modes too. We’ll go into more depth with these in our review later this month, but you’ve got one day internationals, test matches, double wicket (kind of like what you may have played as a kid, where wickets deduct runs), nets and a challenge mode that throws you into a number of famous situations and asks you to achieve certain targets.
We’ve played a bit of EA’s Cricket 2005 and while Brian Lara isn’t complete, this version of the game is already far more accessible and a lot more fun to play. The whole game has been put together with a lot of care and anyone with an interest in the sport should have some money put aside for Lara’s return at the end of the month, which just so happens to coincide with the start of the Ashes.
For a look at the game in action, take a look at our gameplay movies.
Movie 1: Some big hitting and a job for the TV umpire
Movie 2: HawkEye has been implemented well into the game
Movie 3: The bowler has the upper hand here with some fine deliveries
Movie 4: Practice makes perfect
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