Counterpoint: Don Bradman Cricket 14

Pete’s digging the trailer for a new cricket game coming in 2014, but my initial reaction to the trailer was the opposite. To me, the game looks disappointingly last-gen. The graphics don’t impress and the player animations look very hurky-jerky and puppet-like. Consider the difference: this is Bradman Cricket 2014…

…and this is the last big cricket title, International Cricket 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PrcFNwjdKo

Is that 4 years of evolution? To me, those two don’t look (or feel) markedly different. Of course, gameplay is a completely different beast which we can’t judge by a mere trailer, but I’m just not particularly excited by what I saw.

Now here’s another (somewhat unfair) comparison—this is MLB 2k13, a game that came out in March of this year:

MLB’s graphics are gorgeous. The player animations are smooth, lifelike & varied. The players aren’t just visually recognisable, they have personality. There’s little touches of excellence everywhere. Now, I completely understand that a video game with a huge potential US audience—like the NFL, MLB, or NBA—can have way more money spent on their development. It totally makes sense to me that a sport geared to a smaller audience won’t be on the cutting edge.

But… wouldn’t you kill for a cricket game that looks like that?