Actually yesterday I got what I think was my first wicket with a bouncer. Which oddly came as a result of trying to overcome AI shortcomings... having bowled 5 dot balls I knew the AI would try and smash the 6th. I bowled a very short effort ball bouncer, the hook came, a top edge and caught on the run at fine leg: a brilliant, pure cricket dismissal and truly brilliant.
Yes the edges / bowleds / lbws off defensive prods are too rare, I'll agree. But there are some huge plusses and I think an ability to get a feeling of a bowling plan that you can't get in DBC14 and never had in any other game.
Some examples: one pitch where it wasn't swinging but cutters were moving a fair bit (and pitch variation is great in this game), I came around the wicket to a left arm tail ender to angle it in to him, bowled a leg cutter to move it back away and him bowled playing round it... out of my seat! On a hard pitch with the batsmen playing back foot I pushed up a fuller out swinger he had a drive and nicked it to 3rd slip... after several flighted balls from the spinner dished up an effort arm ball and slid it through the gate.
I called the game arcadey in my initial review and I was wrong. The presentation looks arcadey: the logo and the way it flashes across the screen, the default (no filter) is way too bright... but it is NOT arcadey. In an arcadey game it doesn't matter if it's a soft pitch and you forgot to move your keeper and slips up - here the edges don't carry. There is lots of depth like that in the game.
The AI could be improved significantly but they have already made some improvements to it, and I hope they still do. I don't think they added "bells and whistles" they clearly tried to find a solution to lack of licenses and console mods, and unfortunately the logo creator hasn't really worked: It's made the making of mods less accessible, the result is hit and miss on console and it appears to have caused a lot of crashes. But surely the ambition should be applauded.
The missing shots have been reintroduced. I think length control in bowling could be less pin point but otherwise I would say everything gameplay wise is a step up.
The AI should be where the focus is on any improvements, beyond actual crash/stability/bugs. The rest of the gameplay is ace.
. What have you done Big Ant? Totally a retrograde step in terms of game play, graphics etc. Now Big ant needs to release a mighty big patch to fix this mess. I doubt if patches can fix this now.
