Review: Playtest Review/Preview(Review Links, Updated in First Post)

[lazy_chesnut]

Asian faces are not going to be real life likenesses due to a lack of licensing. In 2007 I think they had the Champions Trophy licensed, so all the licensed faces were available somewhere in the files. Now, however, the only licensed faces and names are England and Australia.

[TRF]

To the best of my knowldge, and anyone who went on Monday correct me if I'm wrong, there's little chance of a demo isn't there?

[exprezzo]

Originally Posted by stevo1

Batting

- I thought it was really good and fluent. I played a bit against angryangy and you really had to work for your runs. You couldn’t just go out and try and hit every ball for six, you had to take into account a number of factors, like swing (outswing, inswing) cut (off-cutters, leg-cutters.) And for spinners, doosra’s, off break’s, etc.

- I liked the fact you could place the ball pretty much where you wanted it to go. I was impressed when I played a sweep for 4 and it felt satisfying that you had played a good shot.

- I was also impressed that you really had to ‘time’ and ‘perfect’ your shots. Like for example in a match against angry, he bowled about 2 short balls which I tried to smack for six, but my timing was all wrong and therefore I ended up getting smacked twice in a row in the upper body. But he decided to go short again, so I gave myself a bit of room and to my delight hit him for six over point.

- The shots also look really good, especially when you play a good cover drive, it was just one of those things that felt really good. And the animations looked really promising aswell.

-


Bowling

- A lot of it has already been mentioned by lazy chestnut and kamy, but I’d like to say that it was really promising. There were plenty of options to choose from the HUD. They were divided up into three sections. Swing, Cut and Reverse (obviously for pace bowlers.) I’m not to familiar with the Xbox 360, but I think if you hit down on one of the triggers it gives a bit of info about the bowler and some other factors, like when reverse swing will play apart (it was usually when the ball was about 75% worn, but it depends what game mode you play, ODI,T20 or a Test match.)

- As lazy chestnut mentioned the bounce sometimes did seem a bit “tennis bally”, I can recall one batsmen playing and missing when the ball was quite full but it went over the top of the stumps by a fair way, although that could have been where I was playing, so I may be incorrect on that one.

Fielding

Fielding was good, but I really sucked at it when a few catches presented (I think I only caught one for the whole night.) Enough has been said about it, but I did like it.

Other Points

Stadiums looked fantastic at amazingly detailed especially the MCG! The pitches looked very realistic, especially the cracking, wear and tear, etc. Also unfortunately didn’t get a chance to play an ODI or T20 under lights.

Menu’s were fantastic, especially choosing the “skin” and having the Australian colours and the Channel Nine opening theme, really great feature.

Finishing Points

Wish I had the chance to play it for a bit longer, because really it was just fantastic once you started playing it. Also it was good to see another dimension and all the effort that the guys at Transmission had been putting into this game. It is so much better than the 05 & 07 versions, just like to thank Heath and Rob again for the oppourtunity and explaining a ████ load throughout the night!

EDIT: *Angry and I played on the same team against the AI in a test match, they were going at about 10 an over on hard difficulty. Don't worry thought we were both spraying the ball all over the place and they punished us, you basically really have to bowl well and try to get their confidence down and attack and try and take wickets.

thanks a lot

exprezzo added 4 Minutes and 7 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by savvart

Finally, someone with a sense of humour instead of all the silly children on this site who wish to complain and cry.

I am so looking forward to this game as it really is a step up from 2007 and isn't that what we want from our games - improvement....

ha,ha,ha,ha !!!!

[lazy_chesnut]

Originally Posted by TRF

To the best of my knowldge, and anyone who went on Monday correct me if I'm wrong, there's little chance of a demo isn't there?

They said that there probably would be, but most likely not before release, especially for the console versions, as there are a whole lot more hoops through which to jump with Sony and MS.

The feeling I got from Jamie was that a PC demo is more likely to come out earlier. He did mention the potential problem of demo expanders and the like, so I wonder if we could help this by agreeing not to discuss expansion of the demo on these forums?

[exprezzo]

exprezzo added 3 Minutes and 36 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by lazy_chesnut

They said that there probably would be, but most likely not before release, especially for the console versions, as there are a whole lot more hoops through which to jump with Sony and MS.

The feeling I got from Jamie was that a PC demo is more likely to come out earlier. He did mention the potential problem of demo expanders and the like, so I wonder if we could help this by agreeing not to discuss expansion of the demo on these forums?

I had a feeling that they would object to demo expanders and rightly so.
Can't wait for the demo !!

exprezzo added 1 Minutes and 44 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by lazy_chesnut

Asian faces are not going to be real life likenesses due to a lack of licensing. In 2007 I think they had the Champions Trophy licensed, so all the licensed faces were available somewhere in the files. Now, however, the only licensed faces and names are England and Australia.

you mean that the rest of the faces will be corrected by the great lazy_chesnut ?

thank you in advance

[Gilly Fan]

Originally Posted by lazy_chesnut

They said that there probably would be, but most likely not before release, especially for the console versions, as there are a whole lot more hoops through which to jump with Sony and MS.

The feeling I got from Jamie was that a PC demo is more likely to come out earlier. He did mention the potential problem of demo expanders and the like, so I wonder if we could help this by agreeing not to discuss expansion of the demo on these forums?

They could probably stop that by just allowing you to play a test match or something.

[graham]

Is there any one else who played the game in australia yesterday able to give some more reviews of what they saw and played :rolleyes:

[shravi]

Originally Posted by Gilly Fan

They could probably stop that by just allowing you to play a test match or something.

Lol... The point is to give you a teaser. A test match is most certainly not a teaser.

I had a quick question. Sorry if it's been answered before. Is the spin & drift still slightly exaggerated for bowlers like Murali?

[exprezzo]

Originally Posted by graham

Is there any one else who played the game in australia yesterday able to give some more reviews of what they saw and played :rolleyes:

yup...i wonder what the ozzies are up to ? come on guys ? post...

[aus5892]

Originally Posted by coolz_hari

Did anyone play with asian teams ?how do they look like? Will they have good faces & actions?

WHM and I tried out South Africa and New Zealand to see what the unlicensed teams are like. Basically their names are fake and the faces aren't much like the real ones. The only thing that is accurate is their abilities/ratings.

[nightprowler10]

To be expected, I suppose. As long as the names are editable easily on PS3 it shouldn't be a problem.

[stevo1]

Originally Posted by vishalsparadise

i've asked this question before but didn't get an answer.
both of u played for the same team.did both of you have to run individually or the batsman presses the run button and both took the run.how was it.individual running would have been a nice addition while playing for the same team.

please answer this question.

Yeah good question mate. Both of you have to run individually, which makes it fun and interesting, so like in real life you have to say "yes" "no" or waiting. It was also funny because me and angry both got run out because we didn't press the button,lol.

[Skater]

Interesting. So we could end up with 2 at one end! Do you know how many can play online? Is it 2v2?

And to the person who played the Wii version: have the graphics been 'cartooned' or are they similar to the consoles?

[aus5892]

Anyway here goes my indepth review/recollection:

Walking into Transmission Games was quite exciting. I'll admit, after their last few AFL games, I was very pessimistic about their ability to develop a good sports game, but as I soon found out, bigger budgets are helpful. Meeting a few guys from the forum was quite strange, especially WHM who is a lot less intimidating in real life than in red .

The four of us (myself, WHM, stevo and angryangy) started off in the same room listening to Heath and Rob speak about the game and show us around a little. I was the first to try it out, as Australia batting in the Ashes. We all started off on normal (there are three difficulties - easy, normal and hard), which Heath called the more balanced one. Hard is more of a simulation he said, and easy is just "pick up and slog". The batting controls were pretty much the same as the old ones, except for the manual foot selection (automatic, but you can go manual at any time and press both to advance down the wicket, but if you miss the ball remember to get back in your crease!). The good thing about controls for both batting and bowling is that they show up on the screen, with little graphics of what they each do as well as text.

The first thing I noticed was that even on normal, it's much harder than BLIC07 at its hardest. Timing is crucial, and what I thought was good timing ended up being much too slow. Reaction time, like real cricket, is very short, and that adds to the challenge. The better the ball is, the quicker your time to hit the ball is, and if it's a poor ball, you get more time to hit it sweetly. If you hit it too late or early, you get an edge, but these edges are more realistic - they don't all go straight to keeper or slips cordon, they are much thinner and usually go straight down, unless your timing is terrible. Unlike in previous games, terrible ones aren't the most difficult to play - you genuinely feel the difference. WHM even tried bowling Andrew Strauss to see if terrible medium pacers were still surprisingly good, and I smashed him to all corners, really feeling the difference.

We split up after a little bit to try out co-op. I played against WHM in a Twenty20 (Australia v England, fully licensed) and quickly learnt that he was pretty awful at it. I bowled first and dismissed him for about 39 (he blamed it on being England), which I chased down in about 5 or so overs. This gave me my first taste of bowling as well. Bowling is a major improvement in the game from BLIC07. No longer is it just send the ball down ball after ball and wait for a mistake to come. There are two parts to bowling a good delivery - the first is landing the ball on a colour co-ordinated area of the pitch that is considered good for the type of delivery, and then you had to also make sure the power meter was in the good zone. Too early, and the ball is poorly delivered, too late and it's a no ball. Certainly against Matt, the only thing I needed to do was aim for the stumps and watch him miss.

The other thing is the range of deliveries. Rather than choosing swing in mid-air, there are two "menus" of deliveries - swing, seam and reverse swing (which doesn't work until the ball is old enough). In each there is your standard delivery, your two movement balls and the slower ball. Unfortunately Australia's lack of spinners in the team meant I didn't get to explore much of the spinners - I only bowled one over of Michael Clarke and he wasn't too good obviously. Also, for each delivery you can see a quick summary of what it does, and how fast it can be for a particular bowler.

Bowler speeds are more realistic than previous games too, not necessarily in the realism from bowler to bowler, which is good but a little off sometimes, but there's less of the old BLIC 90km/h deliveries from a pace bowler if you press it too early. You'll get decent speeds for most normal balls, although the slower ball did seem too slow at one stage (Harmison gave me one at 105 km/h).

Running between the wickets now features sliding in and diving, and third umpire referrals are much more exciting. Action replays too are great, a good mix between slow motion when the ball comes off the bat and speeding up as it goes into the crowd.

The stadiums are also incredible. We played in Melbourne, which is incredibly authentic, and then we played in Karachi and really felt, saw and heard the difference. There is background music from the crowd, posters around the ground (hit it to me, Go Aussies etc) and the ground surfaces are fantastic - Karachi's was very worn, much less green than Melbourne's. Karachi also had these army guys standing on the boundary. The crowd is not perfect but better than most sports games too, so it looks good. The electronic scoreboards even work! The pitches were also quite good - Cardiff on day 3 showed a lot of cracks.

Ball and bat physics look a lot better than in the videos and screenshots, the ball comes off a lot more nicely. WHM said that when he last played it it was a lot like BLIC07 but now it's its own game for sure.

I'm sure I've missed plenty but I'll leave it there for now. Any questions or queries, happy to answer them. As I said before, I'm very optimistic about this game after playing it, and it will definitely be the best cricket game so far, by far.

[Hitterman]

I'm sure I've missed plenty but I'll leave it there for now. Any questions or queries, happy to answer them. As I said before, I'm very optimistic about this game after playing it, and it will definitely be the best cricket game so far, by far.

Thanks for the great review. Finally, people will stop criticizing this game .