by:	October 24, 2008

NBA LIVE 09 is back with plenty of modes, from Dynasty Mode, a mode that allows you to practice and get better with a team, to a more expanded online mode, however this really isn’t enough to save the game from mediocrity. I hope I am not the only one that believes that EA Sports needs to hold off for just one year, and go back to the drawing board so they can truly make a leap with the game and impress gamers once again.

Suffice to say, the team on NBA Live, much like the team on NBA 2K9 seems to be suffering from “writers’ block”. Both titles’ biggest feature is the ability to constantly update the attributes of players based on how they are playing in the real-life NBA series. NBA LIVE takes this a bit further however with their new feature called “Dynamic DNA” and NBA LIVE 365. With Dynamic DNA, depending on the player’s real life counterpart, the game automatically adjust what they tend to do, and where they are most actively doing certain things on the court. So for example, if Kobe Bryant was doing a lot of shots from the side, then that would be reflected on the game as well. It is interesting to see the AI try to mimic the way players are in real life. It has its downfalls, like if you have players that are already good in the first place, or you like your team the way they are, if say, Miami Heat starts sucking in real life, and then a team that has been doing slightly better lately like Atlanta is up next, the game my try to overcompensate and make sure you know that they are downloading all this data to the game, and you could lose horribly. But if you don’t have access to Xbox Live COMPLETELY forget about this option because it means absolutely nothing to you.

Another interesting thing about the Dynamic DNA and LIVE 365 is that the game lets you play out real games based on how each player acted, so that it can try to faithfully recreate what happens. There are of course things such as if someone were to switch teams or be out for the season, they could be out in the game also. This all works well in theory, but I have only been able to get LIVE 365 to successfully download new data a few times, and gamers I have played online with claim to be having similar problems.

The AI in the game is very problematic, as your team almost never will do anything on their own in nearly all modes other than “Be a Pro” mode. Your own teams AI is to stupid to actually defend from the ball, even in deep, so you will have to use a lot of play calling to make sure the defense and offense is done well. This is accomplished simply by pressing down the left trigger, and selecting a player with a press of a button, and it works very well, considering much of NBA LIVE feels broken. The AI problems are especially apparent when you are actually doing pretty decent. Why is it that LeBron James couldn’t make a 3-point shot straight on half way through the game, but when I was up by ten points later on, he was scoring them like a bandit by the end of the game? The problems with the AI, besides your teams A.I. is bad in nearly every mode, is that the computer opponent rubber-bands back to being more difficult.

Another opportunity that feels lost is the “Be a Pro” mode and if it was more expanded upon, it could have made this a much better game. The mode is nothing more than freeplay, with you controlling one main player, instead of you taking a vested interest in the player and using him throughout a career. The AI gets a little better in this mode, but it still requires a lot of play calling to get them working right, otherwise you will end up doing much of the work. You can do a mode similar when you play online, with the online portion of the game really being the only thing that seems to save NBA LIVE at all, especially since in terms of features it still is above the curve against 2K Sports. Other added features like taking pictures and video and uploading them to EA’s servers, add a little more to the game as well so that you can brag all you’d like.

The controls in the game, and just the way the game reacts to button presses and how you would like it to work is ridiculous, and poorly animated players on the court don’t help this either. Moving around means an awkward dance of moving widely, trying to defend the ball is harder than trying to make “nothin’ but net” from an acre away in real life. To the credit of the game though, it is easier to get a handle on things than it is in NBA 2K9, so instead of pressing three buttons to do one simple thing, you press one button, and typically you can do one incredible thing, such as dunk, and dunk a lot. Dunking in this game is ridiculous, and at times is unrealistic but I have to admit, it kept me coming back for a bit more. The animations of players however, are incredibly awkward, as they will appear to be sliding, or just chop out for a second, and typically this means the AI or other player got the ball from you thanks to the animation being shoddy. Visually, the rest of the game catches the spectacle and intensity of basketball pretty well, if not as eerily realistic as 2K9 does. It’s always cool to practice a little while the game is loading in, and when beginning a game, the intro from entering the stage makes you feel like you are there. The players mostly all look pretty decent, all the way to their faces, jerseys and how they react to what is going on. The courts themselves don’t look bad, but they just haven’t really evolved much over the years, with much of the audience still looking to unrealistic, and the camera can sometime pull to far away when playing making it a little confusing.

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The controls are simple enough for newcomers, and vet players will enjoy the few new options in the game. It has a glitzy presentation, filled with many of the advanced technologies and partnerships EA has obtained over the years, but none of it seems to help out the broken feel you get from the games controls and A.I.

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