Ok, here's my problems with the new game (works on my office PC, not my home one)
- Still too many broken legs, Colly & Key both out.
- Filters very clumsy, and don't work all the time. Couldn't find Flintoff on a search for all rounders.
- Ashley Giles is not an all rounder
- From running like 100m sprinters to follow balls to the boundary, fielders don't move at all. Even if it looks like they could cut it off
- Cook got out for 51, but he's still at the crease, now on 62
- I got 694 runs in 2 days with all my batsmen set to max aggression. This does not happen
- The Sri Lankan final wicket came up as M Hoggard c Vaas b Jayawardene, which was the last wicket in my first innings
- You can't change the bowler for the first over of a new day in a test match, you have to bowl one over first
- The declare button is too easy to press when selecting a new batsmen - why would you want to? If you want to declare, you should have to look for the button
- Then in the next game, I put all my batsmen to lowest aggression, and I was all out for 100. Do you have this the wrong way round or something?
- There should be a lock aggression button for the bowlers
- Tea & Lunch give too much fitness back to the bowlers
- You only ever need 4 bowlers, as the fitness is good enough that after you have bowled your openers out, 2 more guys will get you to lunch, when you can then bring on your openers again. Repeat, Repeat
- Need to overhaul the interface, and make it so you can easily switch between ODI & Test squads, and even A teams & U19s
- Ed Smith gets selected to open the ODIs ahead of Tresco?
- It selected Ashley Giles as the WK in the ODIs
- On maximum aggression, and despite me being only 2 down with KP and Cook at the crease, I only went at a RR of just over 4. With KP only getting 7 4s and 1 6 in an innins of 102
- You can still select spinners to bowl leg spin or off spin. If only we could turn Gilo into a leg spinner with the touch of a button
- There was rain in an ODI and there was no duckworth/lewis or even RR, it just went on till after 9pm when it finished.
- Strike rate of attacking players (KP, Freddy, Blackwell) not high enough through the slog overs. Flintoff came in on 42 overs and hit 30 without getting a single boundary.
- It Crashed.
I think that's enough for now.
Overall, it seems like an above average shareware piece of software. Certainly you can't expect anyone to pay more than a fiver for it.
It doesn't seem like a game of cricket, you don't get immersed in it the same way you do in other good sports game, I just took off the highlights, and hammered the 'over' button until all my batsmen were out, and just kept doing that. I'd consider replacing the overhead view with written commentary like the earlier CM games - it would get people immersed more.
The interface really lets you down, it seems too big and colourful, and there are still issues with having to click on buttons more than once. Sports management games at their best look and feel like very slick databases until you get too the match screen. Oh, and there's no training or field settings, which have to be a must in future.
Keep at it though - it needs a lot more development, and a lot more testing, but if you try and sell this for more than a few quid, you'll never get people coming back for later incarnations - especially if full price reviews rip it to shreds.