I'd say 7, some very good ideas but also some sloppiness.
I'm going to write a half-arsed review actually.
the game deserves a decent score purely for the idea of career mode, there's so much that works about it as a way of playing cricket games. It solves the problem of test matches taking hours and hours to play, you can simply fast forward to your contribution and go from there. it creates more investment in what you do, making you want to actually block out overs and hang on even in the face of certain defeat, you care more about your wicket and getting a 100 means something . similarly with bowling you want to hold your line and length and get maidens, but it also lets you sit out portions of the match where batsmen are well set and dominating, periods of play which were boring but necessary when you were playing every bowler on an old game. it's great, which is evident by how many of the youtube videos and posts here are about career mode. not really sure why you have to play it in pro or higher though, that now seems like a mistake as for me it's core of the game and as such shouldn't exclude less serious players or people that aren't that good, if someone wants to play in rookie mode just let them.
quite like the bowling controls, the spinning stick is particularly good, and it does make it harder to land it on that good line and length which is cool. probably a bit too easy, especially compared to batting. I let my girlfriend create a player and she made a batting all-rounder, she predictably got 2 ducks but managed to take 4-13 even though I barely explained the controls and she's never watched a cricket match in her life. the lack of edges as a form of dismissal is a problem (I get the batsman to play and miss probably around 40 or 50 times for every edge I actually take, and yes, I am appealling just in case he's caught a fine one, only for the commentators to suggest I'm an idiot) as getting a batsman to edge holds the tactics of cricket together, it makes you sacrifice run saving fielders for slips. as it is there's really not much point in doing anything except putting a ring round the batsman and a few deep sweepers which is throwing the realism of the approach to the game off a bit.
minor points would be the fatigue, which is a bit annoying, I'd like to see a bit for pace variation too as landing the timer anywhere in the green area results in a ball exactly 91.9mph for my career player. probably in the future I'd like to see pace as an attribute that got better too as while it's nice bowling at 92mph, you really feel that could be saved until I become a strapping 21 year old. (though who knows maybe I'll be up at 95mph by then)
Fielding is ok, to be honest I've not done much of it and certainly haven't bothered with the manual fielding. I don't really have much of a problem with the fielders being too good, yeah, they probably shouldn't throw down the bails every time and I'd say the sprinting does get a little crazy fast at times. the problem with the fielding for me is linked with the terrible fielding pre-sets, you can tell this has been mucked up because loads of legspin fields are in the "fast" category. tbh, I'd probably rather there just wasn't the option of choosing spin fields for fast bowling and vice versa, make them disappear from the options like the defensive ones do from the powerplay overs. Also, a nice touch would have been a brief explanation of how to bowl to each field, this is a bit late to mention I guess but people that enjoy cricket without knowing the tactics are going to want to play this game. if you set a field that has gaps behind the bowler and 4 slips and a gully say "bowl full to encourage the batsman to drive and try and take an edge with swing/seam." or a field with a short square leg that points out you're trying to psyche out the batsman by hinting at bouncers to come.
batting isn't technically bad, the RS as a shot director is a great idea, allowing power and direction to be subtely altered. the problem from batting comes from that it's just too hard. in bowling you have to exercise some control over timing, in batting you have to do this and involve several split second decisions. I like the camera being behind the batsman, but it does make length harder to judge, i like being able to place my feet and modify the aggression of my shots with analogue triggers, but it's simply too punishing to mistakes. the field placing problems I mention earlier do make this even worse, as often playing any shot will invole taking on a fielder due to lack of slips (often because the fast bowler is using a legspin field with to close in catchers for bat pads) this means for all the decision making I have to make I can get ruthlessly punished by either being bowled, LBW, caught behind by the wicket keeper or caught chipping. the running isn't awful, but those lack of bat slides frustrate because the game is so merciless in other areas that getting run out because your player has taken a year to turn for a second or lazily strolled over the crease is infuriating if it's one of the few times you've managed to make 20.
it seems a no brainer that you should be allowed to play in the nets with your career player, and perhaps should be allowed to gain a limited amount of stats there, as I don't really see how being don bradman in the nets is helping by awful, awful career player performance improve.
graphics are fine, the animations can look particularly good actually and the game does lend itself to wanting to watch replays of shots and wickets, there aren't too many wickets that look weird or buggy, the replay system is a bit rubbish, give us some broadcast angles to appreciate the shot since we're watching, a slow motion too and since it's there why not just let us turn hotspot on? the academy is great (the choice of hair is a bit meh mind, two hundred short back and sides and a few weird long ones), the amount of control over setting a match up is great, career mode is so good that the only drawback it has is that should EA or codemasters decide on a new game they will inevitably steal this idea. A few frustrating elements of gameplay, namely the balance between bat and ball and a bit of sloppiness with things like field placements and the running between wickets kind round it off to a 7.
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damn, I forgot to include the joke that it should be called Sidney Barnes Cricket 14 because it was such a bowlers game rather than a batsman's.
oh well, it was guff anyway.
