Not only did this tend to bring a more realistic variety to my bowler’s pitch map (at least once I had removed the training wheels of the onscreen bowling guide), but it also made it all the more rewarding on the occasions I was able to nail a perfectly pitched inswinger that swerved back to castle a batsman through the gate. With practice I could land the ball on a reasonably metronomic McGrath-like line and length, but if I messed up my timing or direction even slightly I was often punished as a result. During my first few overs with the game I was sending down enough garbage to make England’s Jade Dernbach seem like merely the second worst bowler on Earth, yet once I got to grips with it I found that there was a remarkable amount of nuance afforded by the system. The worse you time each flick of the thumbstick, the more prone you are to overstepping, losing some speed or spraying a wide either side of the batsman. Delivering the ball is an entirely analogue process you use the left thumbstick to alter the direction of the swing or seam whilst pulling back on the right thumbstick and pushing forward to release the ball in order to approximate the movements of the bowler as he hurtles through the crease.
Thankfully, DBC 14 throws most of that dated design document out of the window.įor starters, bowling is now both challenging and fun. Long term fans of the sport and its videogame incarnations will have grown accustomed to infrequent and uninspired iterations on a gameplay blueprint that was first drafted by Codemasters some 15 years ago for Shane Warne Cricket '99 (or Brian Lara Cricket '99 if you live outside of Australia and New Zealand). In short, it’s the Shane Watson of cricket games.Despite its overall inconsistency, Don Bradman Cricket 14 is certainly the most ambitious cricket game in recent memory. It’s extremely capable and occasionally brilliant, but with a tendency to undo all of its hard work with the odd baffling error in judgement or apparent technical fault. Don Bradman Cricket 14 may bear the name of the greatest batsman to ever play the game, but the finished product is designed to behave less like The Don and more like a certain modern day member of the Australian top order.
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