Game Overview
It's been a couple of years since we saw a Cricket title from Codemasters in Brian Lara 2005, but this time around its time for Next Gen Brian Lara!!

As we construct this review the ICC Cricket World Cup is taking place in the Caribbean, so we though it would be a good time to let you guys know all the ins and outs of this new title from Codemasters.

It's hard to know where to begin with Brian Lara 07, graphically it's nothing stunning, as it's such a slow paced game you obviously have more time to study the graphics and pick out all the bad things about them, we think realistically that the graphics could have and should have been a lot better than they are, especially on the players, although having said that the Stadiums do look quite good. One thing we have noticed in terms of the players looks is that every player seems to have gained about 3 stone, especially Mr Flintoff, im sure he won't be happy about looking a bit like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!

The commentary in game seems to be fairly good although on more than one occasion throughout the game you'll find a few niggling points about the sound i.e. David Gower will start talking about something just before the coin toss then the audio will stop mid word, the toss will take place and then the audio will kick back in again. It's little things like that that are a tad annoying about the sound in Brian Lara but all in all it's nothing major and doesn't really effect the overall look and sound of the game.

The game itself doesn't appear to be all that difficult; there are 4 level settings, Slog being the easiest, then Village, County and Test. After taking part in the tutorial and having a quick slogging match against Canada we tackled the ICC World Cup Final on County, and won! We played as Sri Lanka and played against South Africa; we won by 7 wickets and got South Africa all out for 96. Slog is just ridiculously easy!

Realistically this is a game, we think, aimed at the online multiplayer side of things, single player is quite simple to get the hang of and fairly easy to win. We'd recommend convincing your mates to get hold of a copy, boot it up and have a late night session playing on Xbox Live, a nice addition is that people can actually come in and watch the game as well so you can all have a bit of banter with each other whilst a couple of you are slogging balls all over the place. Would have been really good if multiple people could play at the same time, maybe next time!

Our Conclusions
The first appearance on the Xbox 360 is a good one for Brian Lara and Codemasters; it's not going to blow you away with amazing next gen graphics but its good solid fun and will definitely be a hit on Xbox Live!

Overall Score: 7/10

Thanks to Codemasters