With the release of another Codemasters cricket video game announced for 2010, Lol-land decides to explore ways to make this game special.
Every cricket video game is fun. After all, who wouldn't like to make their favorite fantasy team beat their least favorite fantasy team hollow, either fairly or with the use of a few well chosen codes? But there's always been something missing in all of them, and that is innovation. Cricket itself has evolved over the years but the only thing that’s changed in cricket video games is now we can see every hair of Brian Lara's stubble as opposed to the 3 pixels for the face we saw 15 years ago. Hitting a ball with a bat is only so exciting. So here are a few suggestions that can revolutionize both the world of cricket and the world of video games.
1. Sledging: How can you have an India-Pakistan-Australia tri-series and not talk about mothers and monkeys? You just cannot. Cricket 2010 will be so much more amazing if your wicketkeeper was so grotesquely abusive so as to make the batsman cringe with psychological trauma just before he could play the shot. And as they say, if you can’t get him out, you just have to appeal harder. So bring out your headphones and mic and cuss the umpire into submission.
2. Get banned: In the current generation of open world games like GTA, you cannot restrict the player to the stadium any more. Now if you could go around sightseeing in the host country that would be cool. True to this genre, one can steal cars and kill pedestrians without any repercussions. But hardcore gamers could really push the envelope with genocide or teammate slapping or match fixing and get themselves banned for a year by the PCB (which seems to be the greatest punishment possible: they don't have longer bans or any criminal charges). The longer your ban the hotter your wife will be, it's true, ask Azhar or Shoaib Malik.
3. Sim Cricket: If they can make Football Manager games, Cricket Manager should not be far behind. In this part of the game, you use the latest language teaching software to teach a simulated version of Kris Srikkanth perfect, unaccented Hindi. This will be the final and toughest challenge, unlocked after you have won the world cup and created a player with test average 100, and will make it the first cricket video game with a boss.
If you cross even this hurdle, you can try the alternate ending, where you use the same software to try to teach Rameez Raja to speak sense.
3. Commentary Hero: Given only 30 words, you have to use them as many times as you want in a boring sing song voice, in any order to generate Hindi commentary for a full test match. Follow the lights on the screen and say the right words at the right time and you could be as cool as Maninder and Surinder.
4. Age of the Willows: This is the strategy expansion of the game, a la Age of Empires. However, in Age of the Willow, you have to spread the religion of cricket to every country in the world by either conversion or conquest. Using wood, iron, stone and all the money that BCCI can give you if you can make 97 countries rustle up an international cricket team instead of 16, or convince US to field a team, you have won*.
*because more countries have international carrom teams than international cricket teams.
5. Eye of the Gayle: Here, you use a special MS Paint based platform to create your own player. Afro hairdo, tattoos face paint, Chris Gayle sunglasses, use it all and make the coolest cricketer ever. You lose if you cannot fit more than 10,000 colors in the frames. You also lose if any of them is not bright.
6. IPL Wars: This is just like the popular facebook game Mafia Wars, only the final enemy is Lalit Modi. Much like Mafia Wars, IPL Wars does not have an ending. As everyone knows, you cannot defeat Lalit Modi, even if you are an MP with 999 connections in your family.
7. Crowd control: If your team wins you get the cup, but what if it loses? The show must go on. In our version, if you lose the cup the crowd will throw bottles, pick fights and light the stadium on fire. You better win the next game or they will deface your homes and send you hate-tweets…
8. Cheerleader play: In this segment, you look through our extensive gallery of possible cheerleaders, and pick a team of cheerleaders for your favourite IPL team. No skill is required, and it promises more enjoyment than any other game has ever given you.
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