![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/GGC1.gif\")
Bosh!<\/p><\/div>Consequently, then, you would expect that ‘Simulation’ would be more of a management\/captaincy game, covering bowling strategies, field placings, batting decelerations and the like. No! It turns out that Graham Gooch has none of these sorts of options at all. When bowling, you can’t even switch between different sides of the wicket. Egad!<\/p>\n
So what can you do in ‘simulation’ mode then? Well, not much. Effectively, the computer plays the game and you tell the computer how offensively\/defensively he should be playing. That’s it. It’s not a cricket simulator, it’s a ‘go round to a friends’ house after school and wait for hours as he ‘shows you how to play’ his new game’ simulator. I.E. No fun at all.<\/p>\n
Still, at least there’s arcade mode, right? Well yes, but even that is surprisingly limited. Anyone who is expected an open, fluid simulation where the player can carefully aim a delivery or shuffle in the crease to set up the perfect batting stroke is in for disappointment.<\/p>\n
Much like in simulation mode, the game largely plays itself: when batting, you only really seem to be in full control of the shot timing and when bowling your only choice is whether the bowler will bowl the delivery on the off or leg side. By fiercely tapping left and right you can encourage thew bowler to bowl a ‘better’ delivery, but you have no control over what that ‘better’ delivery is.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/GGC2.gif\")
when batting, you’ll probably see this a lot<\/p><\/div>
\nEither way, it’s fair to say that Graham Gooch cricket isn’t really very good. Though Crash were charitable and hailed the game’s realistic aspects, Your Sinclair’s 3\/10 is perhaps a better reflection on the quality of the game.<\/p>\n
That’s not to say it was all bad, though. Though it plays like a dog and has the sort of graphics and sound are at the level you’d expect from an early Speccy title (the players aren’t far off stick men,) there are lots of really nice touches here. The batsman taps his bat on the ground while waiting for the next delivery, for example, while the close fielders crouching threateningly as the bowler charges in. It’s clear from Graham Gooch that Audiogenic knew there cricket, and clearly wanted to make their game as aesthetically close to the sport as they possibly could. If you think of Grhaham Gooch as a cricket equivalent of Little Computer People<\/a>, it isn’t half bad. Jumping forward a generation, Audiogenic released their next cricket game, Graham Gooch world class cricket, onto the PC and Amiga in 1993. This game (and its expansion, cunningly titled Graham Gooch’s second innings,) found their way onto multiple systems and regions under, quite suspiciously, a number of different aliases:<\/p>\n Now, most importantly:<\/p>\n Phew! So, brief history lesson over, is there much difference between them? Slightly. The original versions only featured one variable per bowler (so for spin bowlers you could only control the amount of spin, swing bowlers the amount of swing and so on,) but that was the only real gameplay difference.<\/p>\n Generally they’re all much of a muchness then, so I’m sticking with ’96 on the megadrive because,aside from having the most complete feature set,it also features a theme tune that sounds suspiciously close to a chiptune rendition of BBC cricket theme Limbo Soul<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now doesnt this look a bit better?<\/p><\/div>So then, was this rag-tag bunch of cricket games actually any good? Yes! Pretty much all of the promising aspects of the original Graham Gooch are present here, while all of the negative aspects have been addressed. <\/p>\n In the 16-bit iterations, all of the hideous rigidity of Graham Gooch is missing and the player is in full control. batsmen can shuffle around during the bowlers run up in order to put themselves in a perfect position to to tonk the ball to the boundary, while bowlers can both bowl to a precise line and length AND fine-tune their variations.<\/p>\n But it’s not just having control of these aspects that makes Brian Lara Cricket so good. Audiogenic’s real skill was breaking the sport down into its component parts, and this skill is reflected brilliantly in Brian Lara Cricket’s game mechanics.<\/p>\n Just like the original Graham Gooch, the main component of batting is timing: If your timing is impeccable, you’re generally pretty much safe (even if your ball will be drilled along the floor to a fielder.) However, these are effectively modulated by your positioning and your shot selection (oh, and whether you’re using the B button to try and smash it for 6!) Move too far into the offside and it becomes nigh on impossible to time a cut. Try and hook a ball zeroing on the stumps and it generally won’t end well.<\/p>\n This makes for one of the most balanced batting systems i’ve experienced in the cricket game. If you’ve played the Xbox Brian Lara titles and expect to be smashing 30 off an over, you might be in for a bit of a rude awakening. Though it is possible to score buckets of runs if you’re careful, the game will bite you if your timing and selection are off.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cover Drive!<\/p><\/div>Similarly, bowling is broken down into 3 incredibly logical components. To decide where the ball will pitch, the player moves a cursor around on the wicket itself. In real life it’s not easy to hold a steady aim while sprinting in at full speed, however, so the cursor understandably slips and slides a little of its own accord, which makes sense.<\/p>\n Next the bowling player has to stop a fast-moving scale in order to get the required power\/swing\/spin on the ball. In real life, bowling is a pretty brutal action which requires you to charge in and then turn your body into a slingshot at just the right moment. The fast moving scale is a pretty reasonable analogue for the timing needed to release a good delivery in real life.<\/p>\n Finally, the ball’s speed is decided by rhythmically bashing the buttons in order to build up a speed bar. Again, this is a pretty reasonable representation of the rhytm needed for a bowler when they’re running in real life. All in all, it’s a pretty logical simulation of real bowling mechanics.<\/p>\n As with batting, those used to fielding on the PS2 or Xbox maybe in for a bit of a surprise. The batsmen won’t suicidally run themselves out, or take wild swings at a ball homing in on off stump. They’ll also punish short, wide bowling. Good lines and lengths are the key to bowling well here, as they are in real life. In comparison to the Speccy original, it really is a vast vast improvement.<\/p>\n It’s not just the game mechanics that were improved, either. All of the nice touches found in the original are replicated here, and expanded on. The player sprites are large, well drawn and animated with a real attention to detail. Any fours or sixes you scores are treated to a nice animated cutaway of the umpire signalling the runs. There’s also animated rain breaks, a beautifully animated coin toss at the beginning and – to add the bails on top of a an already pretty robust wicket – they also included the entire league of English Counties to go alongside the usual array of international teams AND the option to play in traditional whites or colourful one day outfits. It’s a pretty complete experience.<\/p>\n It’s not all plain sailing mind: If the game has one troublesome Graham Hick to bat alongside its masterful Graham Gooch, it’s the artificial intelligence. Now this isn’t to say that the AI is bad at all (in fact, if you’re playing a five day test match, it’s pretty good.) The problem is that it seems to have been setup only for test matches.<\/p>\n You see, a big challenge for anyone making a cricket game is to take account of the differences between one day and test cricket. In test cricket, the batsman can generally take as much time as they want. If the bowler sends down 6 really threatening balls an over, he can just block them and not attempt to make any runs. Because bowlers will eventually tire, there will always be runs to be made later.<\/p>\n One Day cricket, however, requires a much different approach. Because of the vastly reduced number of overs, the batsmen have to make use of every single ball. In one day cricket the batsmen can’t block every yorker (delivery bowled at the batsmen’s feet.) They have to get creative to succeed.<\/p>\n It’s this lack of creativity that harms the AI in Brian Lara ’96. Even if you take the overs down to 10 a side (so just 60 individual deliveries,) the AI can’t adapt. As long as you’ve got an accurate yorker up your sleeve (that’s at the batsmen’s feet. not straight at the stumps,) the batsman will always block and you can restrict them to a very low total indeed.<\/p>\n I also question the speed at which the fielders can move around the field. It is slightly irritating how, when you are confronted with an attacking field where all of the fielders are close to the batsmen, the fielders still seem to be able to take catches relatively close to the boundary when you try to go over the top.<\/p>\n These, however, are largely nitpicks. When you factor in the wide variety of options, the robust mechanics and a loving attention to detail, the 16-bit Brian Lara\/Graham Gooch\/Alan Border is definitely one of the most accomplished cricket title of all time. But wait there’s more! At the end of 1998 Codemasters, having brought the Brian Lara development team over from Audiogenic, released what would be their last Brian Lara Cricket, flinging it out on the PC and Playstation.<\/p>\n Coming from ’96, it’s disappointing that some of the features didn’t make it across the generation gap. The county teams are, sadly, out and bowling has been slightly simplified.<\/p>\n All of that is forgivable the second you see the game in action though.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this size, it looks almost like it could be a tv clip.<\/p><\/div> Yes, I know graphics don’t make a game, but when it comes to sports sims its these little touches that make a big difference. Especially when they actually hint at the deeper mechanics underpinning the game. <\/p>\n After all, a quick game reveals that the team didn’t just stop at capturing the on-field mannerisms of the actors, they’ve clearly worked hard on making sure they’ve captured the whole kinetic spectrum: The ball flies through the air at about the right speed you’d expect, it travels into the field\/stands at a rate that feels consistent with your success at playing the delivery, and the fielder is able to cover a reasonable feeling amount of ground before returning the ball at a rate that allows the batmen to take a predictable number of runs.<\/p>\n It’s sounds like pretty basic stuff, but this is where simulations are made or broken. If edges bobble unconvincingly high, or robotic fielders stubbornly refuse to take a couple of side steps to field the ball or everyone ends up scoring at an unrealistic 18 runs an over, the entire artifice comes crashing down – regardless of how playable it it as a game. The constant barrage or nice touches, however, mean that ’99 gets away with its sim credentials intact.<\/p>\n Even the run out cam is pretty snazzy<\/p><\/div>That isn’t to say there weren’t out-and-out improvements to actual the game mechanics. As a fully 3D game, Brian Lara features a fully 3D camera: Rather than play from the normal broadcast angle (which, while adding to the realism, really isn’t the best way of judging where the ball is going) you also have access angle behind the batsmen (or even from the view inside his helmet, if you’re feeling brave!) which makes timing the ball slightly easier.<\/p>\n And you’ll need all the help you can get, too. Where the ball may have been a little floaty in Audiogenic’s earlier titles, in ’99 the flight of the ball is quicker and much more direct. Though you now have a dedicated defensive shot button, it doesn’t make life tremendously easier for you. Batting in ’99 is essentially a sharper more demanding version of ’96. As well it should be.<\/p>\n If batting is trickier bowling is no easier either. Though in one sense bowling has been simplified (in-swingers and out-swingers are now mapped to different face buttons, with the bowler’s own characteristics providing the amount of swing,) the AI is less forgiving. Put the ball somewhere where it can be hit and it WILL be hit.<\/p>\n In fact, speaking of the AI, this has been improved too. Where the AI in ’96 was unable to adapt to different playing conditions, One Day batsmen in ’99 are much more aggressive risk-takers than their test counterparts, and bowlers actually bowl to set plans (even if the plans themselves aren’t always that great.) This is a major, major improvement.<\/p>\n The game does, however, have one flying-controller-worthy fault in its control mapping. Despite having four face buttons, Codemasters decided to map the run button to the same button as the standard grounded strokes. This means that there’s a good chance that an absent minded tap will leave your batsmen suicidally charging down the wicket with the highly insensitive ‘cancel run’ button giving you no chance to save him. This is a very silly blemish on a otherwise a very solid cricket game. Arggh.<\/p>\n Aside from that though, ’99 is essentially a perfected version of ’96. It even included members of the bbc commentary team (though one of those is Geoffery Boycott.)<\/p>\n So there you have it, three increasingly competent cricket games released on three very different systems. Audiogenic definitely deserve acknowledgment for their contributions to cricket games. <\/p>\n Though the Brian Lara Cricket name was to live on, ’99 was the last game to be made by the Audiogenic team, and the series suffered for it. Later developers Swordfish and Trickster brought their own elements to the series, but from the weird umpire signals, ‘confidence’ meters and cold dead eyes of the players everything was just a little bit broken. I’d have loved to have seen what Audiogenic could have come up with had they been allowed to continue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nBrian Lara Cricket ’96<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BLCMD1.gif\")
<\/a>![\"Out!\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BLCMD2.gif\")
<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nBrian Lara Cricket ’99<\/h2>\n
![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BLCPS1.gif\")
<\/a>
\nYou see, the Codemasters chaps grabbed all of the Playstation’s 32 bits, and grabbed them with gusto. Sure, the textures may have that slightly soft, square ‘Playstationy’ look to them, but there is a breathtaking amount of motion capture on offer here, and its good quality work too: The fielders dive around with an elasticity not found in even the 360 iterations of the series and The batsmen also play realistic-looking shots as they boff the ball around the field. In fact, if you look at the gif above, even the umpire shuffles around as he waits for the bowler to make his delivery. It’s impressive stuff.<\/p>\n![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/BLCPS2.gif\")
<\/a>
![\"cricket\"](\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/4548_medium.jpg\")
<\/a>