It's been a very long time since I've made a post (having been a reviewer in years gone by), but I thought I'd jump in here to give what I think is a sensible, reasoned perspective on this upcoming game.
Firstly, it's a demo. Keep in mind that the game is being released on a media - DVD - that has a massive amount of storage space on it, whereas the demos look to be around the 500MB size. That's peanuts compared to the fully expanded file size of games these days, so I would expect a significant amount of detail has been left out of the demo through sheer neccessity. No doubt there'd be plenty of whingers if the file size was getting up around the 1GB+ plus mark, so I look at it like getting to try a sample of a box of chocolates. They're not going to give you the Turkish Delight to try, just the plain dairy milk. If you like the taste, you'll buy a box. I'm only guessing, but I would suspect to get the file size down that the demo doesn't contain all the animations, effects and commentary - and the guys that have playtested the game seem to be of the opinion that the demo build is in fact an earlier version of the code than the playtest version.
Some of the comments here relating to animations and the like are overlooking, in my opinion, the one thing that cricket gamers want - a competitive GAME of cricket where every match is different. Frankly, I don't give a rats what the bowling action looks like. From what I've seen it looks pretty realistic generically. Besides, what are you focusing on when the bowler is running in? If I'm batting, I'm focusing on the ball and my placement and timing. If I'm bowling, I want the ball to pitch in a certain area and move a certain way, and I need to concentrate on getting as close to the sweet spot in the delivery bar as I can. Codies could have spent countless hours perfecting every player's bowling action but then totally stuffed the actual bowling aspect of the gameplay. I know which one I'd prefer to have in my game.
As for the batting, someone complained that their 'regular' strokes never make it all the way to the boundary. Well, duh. In my cricketing days - I umpire nowadays - I was an opening bat. My regular strokes were never full-blooded, just the nips, nudges and placement into gaps that gets you your ones and twos. You want a ball to go to the fence, you've got to give it a dash more often than not. From what I've seen, the option in AC09 to either nurdle the ball around for singles if you're trying to rebuild an innings or get yourself going - with the vastly reduced risk of getting an edge or lofting a shot, or throwing the kitchen sink at the ball with all the inherent risk and reward, is the right way to go. I think the options of a defensive, regular, attacking and lofted shot selection are excellent, and a real step forward.
I do agree that the little bugs about bails being knocked off and given not out, accurate bowling speeds and the like need to either be fixed in pre-release or a patch made available very, very soon after it hits the shelves. But anyone expecting absolute perfection in this game, or any game for that matter, will end up disappointed. As a PC user, I'm hoping for a game that is very much bug-free, firstly. The default settings will not be to everyone's liking, but if it provides an enjoyable, balanced contest, I have no doubt that the PC community will in the meantime endeavour to go under the hood to find the AI configs and the like, and facepacks, kits and so on won't be too far behind.
This game, from what I've read here, shows great promise. If it provides a solid foundation with the basic fundamentals of cricket in place and working correctly, I have no doubt the user community will be able to work some magic mods out, and can spend their time doing that rather than trying to fix the bugs that Codies should have found during what appears to be a rigourous testing process.
Thanks to you guys for your opinions and evaluations of the demo to date.
