Don Bradman Cricket
From: Tru Blu
For: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Four stars (out of five)
No mucking around today.
Whenever a new cricket game is released, that is LITERALLY the only question that really matters.
How does it stack up against the cricket console game by which all others are measured?
Here's the answer: this is the best effort at translating cricket to a video game, a notoriously tricky process, since the great Warne game came out in 1998.
Dang, that makes me feel old.
In the last 16 years, we have seen Electronic Arts try (and fail) to do to cricket what they have done to football and gridiron, and a couple of decent but sort of plastic-y efforts from Codemasters.
Last year, there was the disaster of Ashes 2013, which was hurriedly canned after some early glimpses showed it to be absolute tripe.
A tricky market, then, for Australian developer Big Ant Studios to have a crack at a cricket game, and one named after the greatest player of all, no less.
But sometimes boldness leads to great things.
''Great'' may be stretching it a bit but I am happy to say Don Bradman Cricket does a really good job at presenting the sport and all its idiosyncracies.
There is an immediate thrill upon loading the game up for the first time, when you are greeted with the smiling face of The Don (circa 1930). It then gives you the immediate option of downloading squads edited by other gamers - ideal, since most of the teams in the game are not licensed.
The menus are a little clunky but that is really not that important. You need to get straight into a game to see how the batting and the bowling work.
It is vastly different to the last few cricket games, most of which felt very linear.
In this game, you really have to think about what you are doing and persist when the going gets tough.
Oh, and it ain't easy.
The first few games are brutal as you get your head around batting, in particular.
There are multiple controls for the feet and the bat, and you genuinely need to try to play cricket shots.
At first, it felt a little like a lottery.
I would often find myself 19 for five, then have two large partnerships for no discernible reason.
But eventually you start to get the hang of it.
Bowling, equally, can seem all over the place - and the sheer range of controls makes it a little intimidating - but offers reward for patience.
It remains a shame, however, that no cricket game has yet discovered the key to making a fast bowler's delivery appear really fast.
The developers have gone all out to give you every possible mode.
Not just tests and one-dayers and T20 cricket, but T10 and T5 (yes!).
You can go into the nets, and go on tour, and play at various grounds, only two of which (the SCG and the Bradman Oval) are official.
Brilliantly, it also has a career mode - something which has been essential in other sports games forever, but has never been used in a cricket game before - where you start as as a 16-year-old colt and you progress through 20 seasons.
The commentary, well, it's a little weird.
Previous games have had the likes of Richie Benaud and Jonathan Agnew; this one has David Basheer (a football man) and Matthew Hill (never heard of him), and they don't add much, to be honest.
I remain intrigued by this game and intend to give it a lot more time.
But the early indication is that it does justice to the greatest name of all.
