NBA Elite 11 - What a difference a year makes - cwash020's Blog

cwash020's Blog

NBA Elite 11 - What a difference a year makes

Posted on September 21, 2010 at 03:57 PM.

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As someone who defended NBA Live 10 last year for making strides in the right direction last year and bringing something relatively fresh to the table to give NBA 2K some competition, I cannot believe how many steps backwards the series has taken with Elite 11. I played the demo once and already deleted it from my XBOX and took it out of my Gamefly queue. Where do I begin??

First the positives:

I think the control scheme is great and mostly responsive. My gripe with the 2K series has always been how akward it is to be given so many moves at your disposal only to have them mapped to the left stick. But I love using the shot stick mapped to the right analog. So I think the fact that Elite has managed to put the the dribble moves and shooting on the same stick is remarkable.
Kudos on giving us a tutorial and a more fleshed out demo than 2K.

On to the negatives:

Other than the animations, I dont see one thing graphically better than Live 10. In fact, the graphics might be worse. If anything the players appear more cartoony and the colors seem over saturated. The players still are not proportioned correctly, but this has always been an issue with EA's game.
Other than the improved control scheme, the game overall still has not improved on problems from the past. Still too easy to dunk on someone. No much differentiation from one player to the next. And the skill sets are pretty limited.
From the demo, I have not seen much use of the ESPN integration outside of the overlays. This could change in the full game, but with the track record of EA's ESPN integration the last few years, I will not hold my breath.

Overall, this is a piss poor effort from EA in my opinion. I feel bad for the developers/programmers cause I dont believe this is their fault necessarily. I think it's the toolset they have been given to work with. If someone asked you to build the Taj Mahal and all you had was a hammer and chisel, you would struggle too. If this is indeed a 3 year work in progress to implement this new system then do the consumers a favor: Wait three years to get it right before you release the game!

Comments

# 1 petersondagreat @ Sep 21

couldnt agree more

# 2 sammy g @ Sep 21

Coming from a long time Live player, I agree 100%. This is one of the most disappointing games I have played..

# 3 abjsuperstar @ Sep 21

yeah nba elite is not even close to 2k11,, 2k11 didnt need to make a demo cause people already know its a good game for the most part i actually think 2ks balance on the court was the biggest move you could make,, elite is a gimick in my opinion

# 4 cwash020 @ Sep 21

Yeah, I think NBA 2K11 could learn a thing or two from Live's controls. But outside of that, there is really no comparison. This is probably the first time I have seen a series to a complete reboot in the middle of a console's life cycle. I would accept this if it was the first attempt on the 360/PS3, but this is the 5th iteration...no excuses.