There are also some odd kinks in the gameplay itself. It feels in some ways like we got NBA Live 2005+1 while they spent most of their time working on on the Xbox 360 version, which looks awesome. Um, EA? My create-a-player didn’t want to look like he’s fresh out of a street fight, he only wanted to play basketball. Some of the head/cheek types put what look to all the world like giant scars and cuts on the player’s head. The graphical weirdness also finds it’s way into the create-a-player mode. In the top pic on this page you can see that players stare at the ceiling to block shots right in front of them.
Players faces also don’t track plays well. Also, the player’s hands seem very inert players hang from the rim with open hands and make odd gestures after big plays that can be hard to understand. I’m also sad that they’ve never brought back the 3D portraits. They have no expression or emotion, whatever the situation.
NBA Live 98 introduced facial expressions to the series and NBA Live 2000 perfected them, but it seems that ever since then EA has left us with these shells instead. The game has good overall graphics, but I’m disappointed with the emotionless faces. Also, the Highflier and Power superstars can often lead to cheap points in the hands of a competent player since you can just enter the commands some distance from the basket and watch the points roll in, regardless of whether you have an open path to the rim or not. Some of the choices, however, as to who is what kind of superstar are a little odd, though.
I won’t say that these features make you feel a great change when controlling or playing against a superstar, but they can be used to make a small difference.
Being able to do an up-and-under layup or a quick-trigger three on command gives you more of a feeling of being in command of the game. It’s a good feeling to have moves at your control that you know are there when you need them. It’s not perfect, but it’s a definate keeper. The graphics are better, the game forces you to play smart more often, the controls are more solid (provided you use a controller rather then the keyboard), and the superstar mode actually works. This year I went out and picked up my yearly copy of NBA Live for the PC, and am happy to say that this is a huge improvement over the past couple of years. Some users have reported this method has worked for them.The last few years I’ve preferred Take Two’s NBA 2K series over EA’s NBA Live, mostly due to a more accurate simulation of the game. It’s rare, but it could happen that they try to get you to alley oop. You, on the other hand, must be making moves towards the net. They need to have the ball and be facing you, at an appropriate distance. If you want to perform the alley oop, your NPC teammate needs to be in the same position you were in, in the last example. If it works, though rare, it will start the alley oop and you will need to slide to the shoot button. Once you see them running through that, you have a chance to initiate the alley oop by holding down the pass button in their direction. If you want to initiate it, what you need to do is wait until there is an NPC teammate that is going in to the appropriate dunking zone.
Something that isn’t really explained by the game in the tutorial or help menu, though, is how to alley oop. You’ll take control of players on the court, forge a lineup, and play through entire seasons with your team of choice. NBA Live Mobile is mobile gaming’s latest answer to a basketball simulator.