Brian Lara Cricket

"A must-buy for all fans of cricket"

The Shane Warne/Brian Lara series moves from the Genesis/Megadrive to the Sony Playstation. It was the best series of cricket games on the G/MD, well, it was the only series of cricket games on the G/MD, but they were good games. Codemasters took a more series view to the game of cricket, rather than Beam/Melbourne House’s View used in International Cricket (NES), Super International Cricket (SNES) and Cricket ’96-2000 (PC). This game takes a longer time to play than the aforementioned games. I guess that’s what makes it so accurate. Unlike the competing cricket series, this one features real players (I believe Cricket 97-2000 does too but I haven’t played 97 in such a long time I am unsure), although due to changes in the squads, these become out of date quite quickly. Unlike it’s G/MD brother, Shane Warne ’99 takes some of the arcade-like concepts seen in Melbourne House’s games, and throws them into the mix. Games now fall in between BLC/SWC and IC/SIC/C97-2000’s play time.

For those of you who don’t know/care what cricket is, it is a game played in England, and many of it’s former colonies. It is the game that baseball was derived from. On the field, there are 2 batsmen, 1 bowler, 9 fielders, a wicketkeeper and 2 umpires. In the modern game, there is also a 3rd umpire (referred to sometimes as the TV umpire) who is used in situations where the two on-field umpires can not reach an accurate and fair decision. There are 11 players in each team. The aim of the game is for the batting team to set a high total, while the bowling team tries to get them all out, by either knocking the stumps down, leg before wicket, caught or run out. Once the batting team declares, gets all out or runs out of overs (One dayer’s) the sides switch. The original bowling team goes into bat, and must reach (in one day or second innings of a test match) or exceed (in the first innings of a test match) to total set by the batting team. The current top team in the world is Australia (where I’m from).

Graphics: 7

I’m not one to like many Playstation games graphics at all. Most are buggy, rough, jagged and have an unfinished look to them. Shane Warne ’99 is no exception. Some textures (namely the crowd and backdrops) are plain horrendous. There are a lot of different grounds featured in this game, and they all tend to look crappy. The player models are okay, but some animations are just incorrect. The menus are well designed, making navigation a breeze.

Sound: 7

While there is no music to speak of, there’s commentary provided by Jonathan Agnew and Geoffrey Boycott, as well as the ambient sounds provided by the crowds. One good aspect of the crowd noise is that it changes depending on which ground you play on. For example, in Australia, the crowd is rather quiet and controlled, whereas in the West Indies and India, the crowd is wild, providing all sorts of drumming and cheering throughout the game. The commentary in the game is a nice feature (it was required to contest C97-2000, as it has ‘the Voice of Cricket’ Richie Benaud), but becomes really repetitive. Some lines are comedic, but in some circumstances the wrong line is used in the wrong place.

Gameplay: 8.5

By far the best aspect of the game. Unlike its competing series, SW99’s gameplay is far closer to the real game. If you prefer the arcade type of cricket sim, then I recommend you check you EA Sport’s Cricket 2000.

There are a lot of match types in this game. There is the stock standard friendly match, which allows you to fully customise the length of the game (days, overs) the venue, the type of pitch and the type of kits worn. Then there is the test series, in which you can compete in up to 6 tests against another team of your choice. There is the World Series mode. The World Series (now known as the Carlton series due to dropping of cigarette advertising, it was formally known as the Benson & Hedges World Series) is a One Day contest played every summer in Australia. Two teams from anywhere in the world, as well as Australia, play 4 games against each side, then the two best performing go onto the final series. In SW99, you can have up to 6 teams competing in the World Series. Next comes the World Cup, in which every team competes. They are split into two groups, and the top 4 in each group move on to the playoffs, and the winners are the World Champions. After the World Cup comes the test season. This is SW99’s equivalent of a season/franchise mode. You choose a team, and how many years you wish to play for, and then you set off playing every test series for that team for the time in which you allotted. This can take a considerable amount of time. There is also a knockout mode, which I have never actually played. Finally, there is the classic matches mode, where you are put in several classic situations, such as the 1960 tied test.

There is differences in this game between how the AI handles the One day and the Test matches. For one day matches, the fielding is generally really tight, and they try to hit over the top and score runs as fast as possible. In a test situation, the AI tends to take its time with batting, and is less strict on fielding. The only problem I have with this is that the AI becomes completely predictable, and if you are unfortunate enough to say, only own one controller, this game may get easy quite quickly.

Lastability: 7

Multiplayer is quite good, but eventually you will tire of it because it still takes a long time to play. On your own, the test season and classic challenges will keep you here for some time, and eventually you will grow tired of winning almost all the time, and trying to beat old records.

Pro’s
- Close to the real thing
- Pleasant graphics
- Commentary
- Ambient crowd, rather than a continual looping sounds
- Plenty of match types
- Complete stat and record tracking

Con’s

- Squads are out of date
- Commentary becomes repetitive
- Gets boring after a while
- Sometimes stat tracking has a tendency not to work
- A lot of noticeable bugs
- Predictable AI
- No sequel as of yet

Overall: 8

Where’s our sequel? A PS2 version of this game would be sweet. Overall, it was a fine effort by Codemasters to turn a good series into a better series when crossing machines, because from my experience, sometimes the other thing happens (can anyone say The Contra Adventure?). Definitely a buy, especially at its now budget price (I picked it up for $25 AU ($13.50 US).

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/01, Updated 02/25/01