Please cast your Vote above after reading the Review!!
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Bigant Studios have released the new Don Bradman Cricket 17 (DBC 17) on Xbox One and PS4 on December 15th. The game is also due to be released on PC before the end of January 2017.
This is the second iteration of the game and acts as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Don Bradman Cricket 14. This review is based upon playing the game on PS4 with the day one patch.
New Features
· Stadium and Logo Creation Tools
· Helicopter Shot – play the fancy looking lofted on drive that MS Dhoni plays.
· Women’s Cricket – you can play women’s cricket with well-designed women cricketers and teams.
· Gameplay Modifiers – provides a plethora of options to customize various options of the game such as Pace, Turn, Bounce, and Timing Windows among many others. This is a welcome addition and will contribute to the allure and longevity of the game, if the core gameplay issues are fixed.
Bowling
Bowling is a fresh breath of air in DBC 17 and is a significant improvement over DBC 14. It feels refined and polished….gone are the massive HUD elements that existed in DBC 14 to be replaced by streamlined and intuitive indicators and controls.
Spin bowling is now easier to understand and has been nicely implemented, and the addition of the delivery type to the minimally invasive HUD elements makes it more accessible for people who are new to the game.
Graphics
The graphics are similar to an early PS3 game and appears to run at an acceptable frame rate. It appears that there is a slight improvement in graphics (especially the grass) as opposed to DBC 14, but definitely not one would expect for a game released almost 3 years after its predecessor. Graphics in my opinion is definitely not a deal breaker and can be palated if core game play issues were to be fixed.
Cricket Academy
The much acclaimed Don Bradman Cricket Academy sees a remarkable improvement. Player creation tools have been enhanced, providing intricate options to create player likenesses. The new iteration of the game also sees the addition of a Stadium Editor and a Logo creator, allowing one to create custom stadiums and add logos, tattoos and kits for their created teams and players.
The academy completely overcomes the lack of official licenses as there are hundreds of community created teams, players and kits that can be downloaded seamlessly. This option worked at the click of a button in DBC 14 where a user could replace the on disc content with the community content, but is not working properly in DBC 17 at the time of writing this review (this is expected to be addressed swiftly and should not be any cause for concern).
Batting
Batting was one of the strong suits of the previous version of the game, and it was naturally expected that Bigant would build upon the solid foundation and make it more refined. However batting in DBC 17 is a huge let down and a massive retrograde step when compared to DBC 14. This core aspect of game play is severely messed up and one wonders how they managed to take something that was working decently in the previous version and destroy it completely.
I have highlighted some of the glaringly obvious game breakers and issues with batting below:
1. No Cover Drive - How could Bigant not notice that one cannot play a Cover Drive, one of the basic and most used shots in cricket? Attempting a cover drive triggers an animation where the batsman falls away to the leg side, exposes his stumps and attempts a nothing shot (getting bowled more often than not). This has meant that 40% of the offside field is inaccessible.
The cover drive was conspicuous by its absence within 10 minutes of playing the game and I wonder how this was missed not only by the developers but also by their QA team. This shot is as integral to cricket as a Forehand is in tennis (hope the tennis game currently in the works by Bigant has a forehand).
2. Leg Glance - The leg glance always ends up in front of square and rarely goes to backward square leg...let alone fine leg. There is no back foot leg glance animation either which is one of the bread and butter shots in cricket. Leg glance issues again render almost 50% of the onside inaccessible.
3. Backfoot Play – Driving off the back foot is a hallmark of good batsmen and leads to spectacular and elegant strokes. Backfoot drives are sadly almost non-existent in the game, as you can only connect with backfoot shots if the delivery is very short and presents an opportunity to cut or hook. It is perplexing as to why Bigant has neutered backfoot play in DBC 17, while it existed in DBC 14.
4. Animations – Batting animations are unrealistic and poor/absent for the square drive, cover drive, backfoot leg glance, cut and pull. The number of animations are very limited in general.
5. Stroke Variation – The cricket field like any circular body spans 360 degrees. The much proclaimed 360 degree analog batting controls should therefore be capable of ensuring placement for every 10 degrees at least.....which means that there should be 36 possible variants of ground stroke play depending on my analog stick position but astonishingly, the number of groundstrokes (areas that you can hit to) in the game are not more than 12.
DBC 14 was slightly better in this regard (although not completely analog as proclaimed) and offered close to 20 variants. A sequel should have seen improvement in this core aspect, let alone suffer as is evident now.
6. Cameras – The batting cameras are either the same or a slightly degraded version. The ‘Pro’ cam is shaky and unstable, while the standard ‘Batsman Far’ camera has something off about it (cannot put my finger on it) which makes playing spinners harder than usual.
The camera does not follow the ball after you play a shot and stays rooted to the pitch (acting as your running camera). This ruins the experience as you cannot see where exactly the ball ended up when you play it into the outfield, and more importantly from a satisfaction perspective as you cannot see a well hit shot careening across/over the ropes. Although there was no ‘Follow the Ball’ camera in DBC 14, it at least had an option to switch to a Fielding cam which gave a better perspective while running.
Running
This aspect of the game was not great in the previous version, and seems worse off in DBC 17.
Running between the wickets seems laidback and drowsy. Although the batsmen look like they are ambling from one end to the other, they can pretty much smash the ball straight to a fielder within the circle and get an easy single. Hitting a ball to the outfield means that you get an easy 2 or 3 runs every time, even if it is hit straight to a fielder (more on the fielding later).
To put it plainly, it appears as if the batsmen are slowly jogging 15 yards rather than 22 yards to complete a run and have the super human ability to jump almost 15 feet to gain their crease.
And here is a game breaker….more than half of the time the keeper/bowler receiving the throw will not position himself to collect the ball but will jump 10 to 15 feet at the last moment to catch the ball. At times, even when the throw is right on top of the bails the player will catch the ball and then dive 10 to 15 feet away from the stumps. This ‘Diving Mania’ coupled with the fact that players pause for a second or two before breaking the bails has rendered running between the wickets a complete joke.
There is again no excuse for a cricket game where one can easily maintain a run rate of 12 runs per over without hitting any boundaries.
Fielding
Fielding Performance - Fielders in DBC 14 were said to be blessed with super human capabilities (before that game was patched), while the opposite can be said about DBC 17. Fielders appear to be in a slumber and will happily let past balls which are more than 2 yards away. Sprinting behind the ball gives place to an easy jog and a leisurely pick up.
Throws back to the keeper/bowler tend to lack power and are at times intercepted by other fielders, to the detriment of the bowling team. These interceptors are also at times plagued by the diving mania, and the fact that fielders sometimes throw the ball backwards towards the boundary rather than the pitch (say mid-on to long on) makes you tear your hair in frustration.
Although I have not experienced this much, it has been reported by sections of the playing community that a lot of catches are being dropped by the AI…even at the highest difficulty levels.
Fielding Radar – There is no fielding radar in the game, although it has been one of the most requested features since DBC 14. The batsman has to pan the camera and look around to gauge the field placement. This does not give an accurate picture and again slows the game down considerably. Bigant have argued that it adds to the realism, but if your game can have aerial ball markers, throw meters, and bowling aids the size of Jupiter, there is no argument against a fielding radar (you can make it optional Bigant).
Setting Fields – Setting a field is a nightmare in DBC 17, not because the field editor is difficult but because of the number of clicks it takes to access a menu which allows you to set a field. There is no quick D-Pad access to field settings (existed in DBC 14). Field settings will have to be updated for each individual batsman against each individual bowler. There is again no option to set a field which applies to all batsmen and all bowlers which existed in DBC 14.
So, let us say that you decide to bowl with Brett Lee and you set a field for Tendulkar….then even if you want to have the same field for Sehwag at the other end, you need to set it again. That is not the end of the story….when Johnson starts the next over you have to repeat the same exercise for both Tendulkar and Sehwag. Imagine the amount of time and effort this takes when you need to keep changing fields frequently, and also to set fresh fields every time a wicket falls….does it all sound too complicated….oh yes it is!!!!
To add insult to injury, you are limited to 30 seconds on online games to change your fields (every over) and it takes more than 30 seconds to just set the field for a single batsman. It is ironic that Bigant is trying to hasten you while slowing the game to an unnecessary crawl due to their poor design choice.
Career Mode
The career mode in DBC is comprehensive (similar to DBC 14), and adds an extra layer where your career player needs to play for local teams before getting to play county cricket. There is however the surprising omission of Career Stats, which drains from the experience as one of the fundamental attractions of a cricket career is to enjoy and hopefully improve your statistics over a period of time.
User Interface
The user interface looks classy but the navigation is somewhat tedious and options are buried under a sea of menus. The UI could do with a bit of improvement to make it more intuitive, but there is nothing critical about this aspect of the game (after from field settings of course).
Stability
The game crashes often, perhaps at the rate of 3-4 times a day. This is expected to be fixed shortly but is in line with the overall broken experience.
Online and AI
There are no options to choose difficulty settings for online games, and the default difficulty seems to be very low….leading to unrealistic scores and thereby ruining the experience. I have not evaluated the AI performance as the fundamental gameplay issues have sparked no interest in such endeavour.
Conclusion
Bowling is a remarkable improvement while all other areas are significantly poorer than the previous edition of the game (which says something in itself). Batting, Fielding, Running and Cameras all have game breaking issues.
The game appears to be severely under-developed and curiously worse than its predecessor as several aspects of core gameplay which worked well in the previous edition are broken here. I am not sure what the Developers and the QA team at Bigant were thinking before releasing this game. All of these issues were apparent to me within 2-3 hours of playing the game and it is baffling as to how Bigant missed them (did they play the game even once before releasing it – pun intended).
Bigant did a wonderful job with DBC 14 where they built a ground breaking cricket game from scratch, but looking at the quality of DBC 17….I am forced to contemplate whether they really devoted any time, money or thought towards this title or if it was just a profit making exercise to ensure that they hit their margins across both iterations of the game.
Having Women Players, Helicopter shots, Dilscoops, Stadium Creators etc are just bells and whistles....and in my opinion irrelevant if you cannot get the simplest, fundamental aspects right, especially those that already existed in the previous version. I would be glad to be proven wrong and as yet hold belief that Bigant will release patches to fix most of these issues, but their lack of proper acknowledgement of these issues gives cause for concern.
As it stands if you have a copy of DBC 14 you should not buy DBC 17, and if you do not have a copy of DBC 14….you should buy DBC 14 !!!
Click on this link - blog
So what do you have against bells & whistles there so much fun..Please cast your Vote above after reading the Review!!
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Bigant Studios have released the new Don Bradman Cricket 17 (DBC 17) on Xbox One and PS4 on December 15th. The game is also due to be released on PC before the end of January 2017.
This is the second iteration of the game and acts as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Don Bradman Cricket 14. This review is based upon playing the game on PS4 with the day one patch.
New Features
· Stadium and Logo Creation Tools
· Helicopter Shot – play the fancy looking lofted on drive that MS Dhoni plays.
· Women’s Cricket – you can play women’s cricket with well-designed women cricketers and teams.
· Gameplay Modifiers – provides a plethora of options to customize various options of the game such as Pace, Turn, Bounce, and Timing Windows among many others. This is a welcome addition and will contribute to the allure and longevity of the game, if the core gameplay issues are fixed.
Bowling
Bowling is a fresh breath of air in DBC 17 and is a significant improvement over DBC 14. It feels refined and polished….gone are the massive HUD elements that existed in DBC 14 to be replaced by streamlined and intuitive indicators and controls.
Spin bowling is now easier to understand and has been nicely implemented, and the addition of the delivery type to the minimally invasive HUD elements makes it more accessible for people who are new to the game.
Graphics
The graphics are similar to an early PS3 game and appears to run at an acceptable frame rate. It appears that there is a slight improvement in graphics (especially the grass) as opposed to DBC 14, but definitely not one would expect for a game released almost 3 years after its predecessor. Graphics in my opinion is definitely not a deal breaker and can be palated if core game play issues were to be fixed.
Cricket Academy
The much acclaimed Don Bradman Cricket Academy sees a remarkable improvement. Player creation tools have been enhanced, providing intricate options to create player likenesses. The new iteration of the game also sees the addition of a Stadium Editor and a Logo creator, allowing one to create custom stadiums and add logos, tattoos and kits for their created teams and players.
The academy completely overcomes the lack of official licenses as there are hundreds of community created teams, players and kits that can be downloaded seamlessly. This option worked at the click of a button in DBC 14 where a user could replace the on disc content with the community content, but is not working properly in DBC 17 at the time of writing this review (this is expected to be addressed swiftly and should not be any cause for concern).
Batting
Batting was one of the strong suits of the previous version of the game, and it was naturally expected that Bigant would build upon the solid foundation and make it more refined. However batting in DBC 17 is a huge let down and a massive retrograde step when compared to DBC 14. This core aspect of game play is severely messed up and one wonders how they managed to take something that was working decently in the previous version and destroy it completely.
I have highlighted some of the glaringly obvious game breakers and issues with batting below:
1. No Cover Drive - How could Bigant not notice that one cannot play a Cover Drive, one of the basic and most used shots in cricket? Attempting a cover drive triggers an animation where the batsman falls away to the leg side, exposes his stumps and attempts a nothing shot (getting bowled more often than not). This has meant that 40% of the offside field is inaccessible.
The cover drive was conspicuous by its absence within 10 minutes of playing the game and I wonder how this was missed not only by the developers but also by their QA team. This shot is as integral to cricket as a Forehand is in tennis (hope the tennis game currently in the works by Bigant has a forehand).
2. Leg Glance - The leg glance always ends up in front of square and rarely goes to backward square leg...let alone fine leg. There is no back foot leg glance animation either which is one of the bread and butter shots in cricket. Leg glance issues again render almost 50% of the onside inaccessible.
3. Backfoot Play – Driving off the back foot is a hallmark of good batsmen and leads to spectacular and elegant strokes. Backfoot drives are sadly almost non-existent in the game, as you can only connect with backfoot shots if the delivery is very short and presents an opportunity to cut or hook. It is perplexing as to why Bigant has neutered backfoot play in DBC 17, while it existed in DBC 14.
4. Animations – Batting animations are unrealistic and poor/absent for the square drive, cover drive, backfoot leg glance, cut and pull. The number of animations are very limited in general.
5. Stroke Variation – The cricket field like any circular body spans 360 degrees. The much proclaimed 360 degree analog batting controls should therefore be capable of ensuring placement for every 10 degrees at least.....which means that there should be 36 possible variants of ground stroke play depending on my analog stick position but astonishingly, the number of groundstrokes (areas that you can hit to) in the game are not more than 12.
DBC 14 was slightly better in this regard (although not completely analog as proclaimed) and offered close to 20 variants. A sequel should have seen improvement in this core aspect, let alone suffer as is evident now.
6. Cameras – The batting cameras are either the same or a slightly degraded version. The ‘Pro’ cam is shaky and unstable, while the standard ‘Batsman Far’ camera has something off about it (cannot put my finger on it) which makes playing spinners harder than usual.
The camera does not follow the ball after you play a shot and stays rooted to the pitch (acting as your running camera). This ruins the experience as you cannot see where exactly the ball ended up when you play it into the outfield, and more importantly from a satisfaction perspective as you cannot see a well hit shot careening across/over the ropes. Although there was no ‘Follow the Ball’ camera in DBC 14, it at least had an option to switch to a Fielding cam which gave a better perspective while running.
Running
This aspect of the game was not great in the previous version, and seems worse off in DBC 17.
Running between the wickets seems laidback and drowsy. Although the batsmen look like they are ambling from one end to the other, they can pretty much smash the ball straight to a fielder within the circle and get an easy single. Hitting a ball to the outfield means that you get an easy 2 or 3 runs every time, even if it is hit straight to a fielder (more on the fielding later).
To put it plainly, it appears as if the batsmen are slowly jogging 15 yards rather than 22 yards to complete a run and have the super human ability to jump almost 15 feet to gain their crease.
And here is a game breaker….more than half of the time the keeper/bowler receiving the throw will not position himself to collect the ball but will jump 10 to 15 feet at the last moment to catch the ball. At times, even when the throw is right on top of the bails the player will catch the ball and then dive 10 to 15 feet away from the stumps. This ‘Diving Mania’ coupled with the fact that players pause for a second or two before breaking the bails has rendered running between the wickets a complete joke.
There is again no excuse for a cricket game where one can easily maintain a run rate of 12 runs per over without hitting any boundaries.
Fielding
Fielding Performance - Fielders in DBC 14 were said to be blessed with super human capabilities (before that game was patched), while the opposite can be said about DBC 17. Fielders appear to be in a slumber and will happily let past balls which are more than 2 yards away. Sprinting behind the ball gives place to an easy jog and a leisurely pick up.
Throws back to the keeper/bowler tend to lack power and are at times intercepted by other fielders, to the detriment of the bowling team. These interceptors are also at times plagued by the diving mania, and the fact that fielders sometimes throw the ball backwards towards the boundary rather than the pitch (say mid-on to long on) makes you tear your hair in frustration.
Although I have not experienced this much, it has been reported by sections of the playing community that a lot of catches are being dropped by the AI…even at the highest difficulty levels.
Fielding Radar – There is no fielding radar in the game, although it has been one of the most requested features since DBC 14. The batsman has to pan the camera and look around to gauge the field placement. This does not give an accurate picture and again slows the game down considerably. Bigant have argued that it adds to the realism, but if your game can have aerial ball markers, throw meters, and bowling aids the size of Jupiter, there is no argument against a fielding radar (you can make it optional Bigant).
Setting Fields – Setting a field is a nightmare in DBC 17, not because the field editor is difficult but because of the number of clicks it takes to access a menu which allows you to set a field. There is no quick D-Pad access to field settings (existed in DBC 14). Field settings will have to be updated for each individual batsman against each individual bowler. There is again no option to set a field which applies to all batsmen and all bowlers which existed in DBC 14.
So, let us say that you decide to bowl with Brett Lee and you set a field for Tendulkar….then even if you want to have the same field for Sehwag at the other end, you need to set it again. That is not the end of the story….when Johnson starts the next over you have to repeat the same exercise for both Tendulkar and Sehwag. Imagine the amount of time and effort this takes when you need to keep changing fields frequently, and also to set fresh fields every time a wicket falls….does it all sound too complicated….oh yes it is!!!!
To add insult to injury, you are limited to 30 seconds on online games to change your fields (every over) and it takes more than 30 seconds to just set the field for a single batsman. It is ironic that Bigant is trying to hasten you while slowing the game to an unnecessary crawl due to their poor design choice.
Career Mode
The career mode in DBC is comprehensive (similar to DBC 14), and adds an extra layer where your career player needs to play for local teams before getting to play county cricket. There is however the surprising omission of Career Stats, which drains from the experience as one of the fundamental attractions of a cricket career is to enjoy and hopefully improve your statistics over a period of time.
User Interface
The user interface looks classy but the navigation is somewhat tedious and options are buried under a sea of menus. The UI could do with a bit of improvement to make it more intuitive, but there is nothing critical about this aspect of the game (after from field settings of course).
Stability
The game crashes often, perhaps at the rate of 3-4 times a day. This is expected to be fixed shortly but is in line with the overall broken experience.
Online and AI
There are no options to choose difficulty settings for online games, and the default difficulty seems to be very low….leading to unrealistic scores and thereby ruining the experience. I have not evaluated the AI performance as the fundamental gameplay issues have sparked no interest in such endeavour.
Conclusion
Bowling is a remarkable improvement while all other areas are significantly poorer than the previous edition of the game (which says something in itself). Batting, Fielding, Running and Cameras all have game breaking issues.
The game appears to be severely under-developed and curiously worse than its predecessor as several aspects of core gameplay which worked well in the previous edition are broken here. I am not sure what the Developers and the QA team at Bigant were thinking before releasing this game. All of these issues were apparent to me within 2-3 hours of playing the game and it is baffling as to how Bigant missed them (did they play the game even once before releasing it – pun intended).
Bigant did a wonderful job with DBC 14 where they built a ground breaking cricket game from scratch, but looking at the quality of DBC 17….I am forced to contemplate whether they really devoted any time, money or thought towards this title or if it was just a profit making exercise to ensure that they hit their margins across both iterations of the game.
Having Women Players, Helicopter shots, Dilscoops, Stadium Creators etc are just bells and whistles....and in my opinion irrelevant if you cannot get the simplest, fundamental aspects right, especially those that already existed in the previous version. I would be glad to be proven wrong and as yet hold belief that Bigant will release patches to fix most of these issues, but their lack of proper acknowledgement of these issues gives cause for concern.
As it stands if you have a copy of DBC 14 you should not buy DBC 17, and if you do not have a copy of DBC 14….you should buy DBC 14 !!!
Click on this link - blog
