Posted by We’ll freely admit that we haven’t actually played Don Bradman Cricket 17 yet, but our keen deduction skills have allowed us to reach the conclusion that is the best ever cricket action game anyway.
Our reasoning, in short: Don Bradman Cricket 14 was the best cricket action game at the time of its release, they’ve improved it a bit since then, and nothing else has come out in the meantime.
Sure, the developers could have utterly sabotaged what they already had, but that’s pretty unlikely. It’s just not how things work. Annual videogame updates generally mean ‘new database’ and ‘improved menus’. They’re not actually new versions in any conventional sense.
You can trust us on this. Once upon a time we used to review computer games as a sort-of-job. We are therefore an authority on this subject.
Career mode is still ‘the thing’
You create a player, you play the game only as that player and you (hopefully) rise to international cricket as you get better at everything.
This alone is enough to elevate Don Bradman Cricket above all of its zero rivals.
You may be aware that playing even one Test innings demands quite a lot of concentration. It is therefore utterly baffling that other simulations demand that you play as all eleven batsmen. Before this game came along, many a pad-mashing cricket innings was cut shot by a bit of ‘actually, I’m kind of sick of this now – let’s see if we can defend 120’ slogging.
The big career development for this 2017 instalment is that you can be a woman. And we don’t mean being a woman controlling an on-screen man. You can be a woman controlling an on-screen woman, or a man controlling an on-screen woman.
Tattoo mode!
You can also tattoo your player in this latest version.
We presume you can go for the classic modern ‘sleeve’. If so, remember kids – the tattoo denotes the ‘doing arm’.
More about Don Bradman Cricket
Here’s our full review of Don Bradman Cricket from back when it came out.
And here’s a link where you can buy it from Amazon. It’s available on PS4 and Xbox One and quite possibly on PC via Steam, although we could only find the demo when we looked earlier.
Who has time for this sort of thing anymore?
Haven’t we all got two young children and a mouldy house to attend to?
Not to mention the crippling existential anxiety. That takes up a fair amount of time.
This website’s Indian search traffic makes it clear that not only do people have time for this sort of thing, they have time for it despite an ongoing quest to discover some of the more important controls.
The second game I have purchased on the back of a royal recommendation – the success rate so far is 0% because I could never get Civ4 to work on Windows 7 (someone with an IT degree here – yes, shameful, but I have got my computer use largely under control these days). I might be tempted to try again tonight while I wait for the 2014 PC version of The Don to arrive…
The main quality we look for in a game is that it should take bloody ages.
I think the last electronic game I played was Firefox F7, a present for my 13th birthday. That was brill. Then the arcades of course, when the manufacturers thoughtfully clamped an ashtray to the side of the machine. I seem to remember another game involving worms loosing off rocket launchers. Perhaps I should get with the program but I won’t.
The Worms-based game you are thinking of is “Worms”.
Worms was excellent. It could also be made into a cricket game if you renamed all of your worms after Yorkshire cricketers and gave them the ‘Tykes’ palette of spoken titbits.
What’s that you say, Goughy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_jtNTLWA_Y
What really wound me up about DBC 14 was that the one-day chasing was programmed badly, so teams would treat it as red ball cricket. My team would be chasing 277 to win in a 50-over game and after 50 overs we would be 180/2. I played as a number 5 batsman so I usually wouldn’t bat in the short form or be faced with ‘150 to win off 12 balls’.
I was playing Test matches but it never changed its opinion of my T20 selection from ‘no chance’ the entire game.
The old Brian Lara games were no different. You’d be unhappy going at less than 25 an over, whereas the computer would calmly plod along at a rate even Sunil Gavaskar would have said as a bit slow.
Until you turned the difficulty up, when you’d end up flayed around the park like a spinner in a junior league match.
In this post-truth world of ours, I suppose I should simply accept statements such as (I paraphrase) “we haven’t actually played Don Bradman Cricket 17 yet, but it is the best ever”.
I certainly worry about this less than other post-truth stuff…the stuff that might send the UK and European economies into downward spiral chaos or the stuff that might inadvertently trigger world war three when all the various demagogues are trying to do is show off which of them has the biggest nads.
I did especially like the following argument: “we used to review computer games as a sort-of-job. We are therefore an authority on this subject.”
I know you don’t do requests, KC, but a bit more description of the “sort-of-job” might cheer the rest of us up in these uncertain times.
Reviewed games and they never really got round to paying us so we stopped doing it.
Ah yes, in this post-truth, post-employment, post-each party keeping their side of the bargain world of ours…
..thanks for sharing.
I hope “they” weren’t a supposedly reputable outfit that should know better,
Not especially.
Briefly, on another matter and for those of us who don’t have Sky etc, I’ve just been flicking through channels and stopped on BT Showcase which is showing Big Bash League. Not my bag, cadenza cricket, but just a thought if anyone is interested. Having said all that, I’m still watching . . .
I believe Channel 5 are also showing the Big Bash (live?) on Saturday mornings.
Can anyone explain how this:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jan/12/england-captain-alastair-cook-to-meet-andrew-strauss-on-friday-cricket?CMP=share_btn_tw
tallies with this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/01/09/england-captain-alastair-cook-prepares-stand-joe-root-ready/
Can’t help but think that it’s best to only report things that have happened, not things that are going to happen.
But…journalism!
Wait a second, Andrew Strauss is “Director of Cricket”? How does he direct cricket? Does this mean all the ground’s a stage and all cricketers merely players? They do seem to have their exits and entrances. How many parts does one man in his time play? Do they start off as Root, become Broad, morph into Rob Key, change over to Kohli, transform into Warne, slide into Boycott, and finally end up as Cook? Is this what Root is being prepared for? Jesus Christ.
I heard a brief snatch of a radio article yesterday about Donald something something something. I assume it was about this game. They seemed quite fixated on how when winning the toss it was “a clear advantage to put in”. And there seems to be a serendipitous Rain Stopped Play feature, or as they described it, golden showers. Still, good to see airtime given to these sorts of things.
On a more-related, less tangential note, does DBC 14 (or indeed, 17) have any weather interruptions? Sitting around in front of the PC waiting to be able to play virtual cricket again, perhaps being shown highlights of previous matches or the innings so far, now that would be amazing!
If you got big slabs of Gower ‘filling’ we’d be over the moon.
I refuse to believe this is better than Graham Gooch World Class Cricket.
So here’s the thing: to some extent, they kind of have ruined the whole thing. It fixes what was broken in DBC 14, but breaks everything that didn’t need fixing. For example, in DBC 14, the straight drive was broken, but you could make endless runs via the flick off the pads. Now, the straight drive works beautifully, but every other shot is impossible to play effectively.
Bowling is much better in the new game, it must be said.