NBA Live 10 Demo Available, Post Impressions Here (360)

[deebo2246]

After playing the demo for a few hours I must say that EA is heading in the right direction with their basketball franchise.

+ I truly enjoyed the dynamic feel of the inputs when it came to dribbling the rock. Especially when I was able to chain moves together with precision.

+ The team interaction with each other is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a videogame. (When I played as the Magic and V.C. was taking care of business for me, it seemed as though Kobe got p.o. because V.C. was stilling his shine and Kobe began to force the action.)

+ The off-ball movement was very intuitive when I bumbled my play call precision. They moved to spaces to help me not blow the posession and get into correct spacing to make good shots.

+ DNA, DNA, DNA! By understanding the game of a player it truly helped me understand what I could do and what would get me burned. (Don't sleep on D. Fish by trying to stop Kobe or you will get punished from deep)

Now my Negatives:

- Rebounding and boxing out is a major flaw that I see in this game. There should be know reason that if I have position to grab the rebound that the ball should be hitting the floor and players just looking at the ball with no urgency to get it. I mean it is like the players are locked into position with no where to go and the PG comes from top of the key to get the ball

- It seems at times that players do not know where the ball is on Defense and do not turn properly to stop the player from going where he wants to go. I do not know if that is because it is a demo or a glitch that I may be getting. However it happens a little to frequent.

- I still see warp dunks happening all the time. It is though there is no way to stop the warp from the Superstars when they want to dunk on you. I can literally get D. Howard to dunk on every transition if I pass the ball to him on the elbow and hit turbo+shoot. It is unstoppable.

I am going to play some more and see how much more fun I can have, but I must admit even with the minor flaws this game is fun as H***! Give them one more season to work out the minor bugs and Basketball gaming will be the best sports genre in gaming. Kudos to Mike and Steph for bringing my nostalgia back since I first played Lakers v Celtics on a PC.

+

[iLLosophy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Beluba

that's not a direct pass icon, more of a help indicator. You still have to manually pass to the guy you want. I usually hit RB to get the guy in motion and then use direct passing to hit him or take control of him for a few steps before calling for the ball.

Cool thanks. You can understand how that's misleading though. Maybe just remove the letter and leave a blank circle above the player in a future version...

[JerseySuave4]

i'm back to 60-40 Live. Sounds like my concerns about defense are valed

[bizcanos]

No post up button? This is just horrible. Too many times Dwight should be posting and is not. I am not sure I could play w/out a post up button. I mean when Kobe post up for a fadeaway I can't control that?

Outside of that I love the controls in this game and the ability to control your shot. I have already pulled off some sick moves that actually felt like "man I did that not some cpu took over crap".

The player models...well I do not like the cartoony, shiny look but that's just me.

Some of the animations that lead into one another are not smooth and give herky,jerky feel to them.

Love the movement of the cpu players on your team. They set screens, get open..pretty nice.

The no post up button though, I reaaaallly don't like that.

[navyboy09]

Just got done playing about 20 games in a row switching off between the lakers and the magic every game and let me tell you that this game has soo much fludity to it that its unreal.

Right away i put it on allstar and lost the first game. Dwight did good for me though and i took advantage of gasol by pulling him out to the three with lewis and killed him everytime but vince JUST CANT play kobe.

The second game i had the lakers and i attacked vince right off the back w/kobe. It seemed like everything i did with kobe i found myself saying "damn that's what he would do in real life too".

This game is too real and i love how everybody actually feels like themselves.

Just got to let you guys know this...On superstar kobe is a MONSTER. no lying.

[navyboy09]

Quote: Originally Posted by deebo2246

After playing the demo for a few hours I must say that EA is heading in the right direction with their basketball franchise. + I truly enjoyed the dynamic feel of the inputs when it came to dribbling the rock. Especially when I was able to chain moves together with precision. + The team interaction with each other is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a videogame. (When I played as the Magic and V.C. was taking care of business for me, it seemed as though Kobe got p.o. because V.C. was stilling his shine and Kobe began to force the action.) + The off-ball movement was very intuitive when I bumbled my play call precision. They moved to spaces to help me not blow the posession and get into correct spacing to make good shots. + DNA, DNA, DNA! By understanding the game of a player it truly helped me understand what I could do and what would get me burned. (Don't sleep on D. Fish by trying to stop Kobe or you will get punished from deep) Now my Negatives: - Rebounding and boxing out is a major flaw that I see in this game. There should be know reason that if I have position to grab the rebound that the ball should be hitting the floor and players just looking at the ball with no urgency to get it. I mean it is like the players are locked into position with no where to go and the PG comes from top of the key to get the ball - It seems at times that players do not know where the ball is on Defense and do not turn properly to stop the player from going where he wants to go. I do not know if that is because it is a demo or a glitch that I may be getting. However it happens a little to frequent. - I still see warp dunks happening all the time. It is though there is no way to stop the warp from the Superstars when they want to dunk on you. I can literally get D. Howard to dunk on every transition if I pass the ball to him on the elbow and hit turbo+shoot. It is unstoppable. I am going to play some more and see how much more fun I can have, but I must admit even with the minor flaws this game is fun as H***! Give them one more season to work out the minor bugs and Basketball gaming will be the best sports genre in gaming. Kudos to Mike and Steph for bringing my nostalgia back since I first played Lakers v Celtics on a PC. +

you must have been playing on rookie or pro b/c i could never get into the lane and dunk everytime w/ dwight howard like you are saying. The laker d is very good on allstar and very solid on superstar. So i suggest you to bump the level up some.

[ZoneBlitz]

Another thing I like is that players seem so smart. I like the cuts to the basket. They actually seem like they're playing basketball. (What's funny is that I'm using what I've learned about basketball in the Draft Combine to help me in this game - LOL!!!)

I also like the fact that the computer makes mistakes and even falls for the occasional pump-fake.

Finally, I like the fact that they don't always try to feed it to the PG first.

Definitely an awesome upgrade. Really impressed with the job they have done on this game. Even though I like football more, I will be playing a basketball game much more this year. They just seem to bring more to the table. The question now is which game.

Great year for us as gamers!

[Stumbleweed]

Not over-the-moon with this, but Czar's thought that it wasn't as good as the final reassured me a bit.

Positives:

Love the movement, I feel in control of basic dribbling (the wide backwards turn when you jam LS the opposite direction and slightly back is a little wonky, but that's about it), the RS dribbles are responsive, and I love being able to explode out.

My favorite part so far is the collection of moving, stepback, and running jumpers -- using Kobe and nailing the stepback fade from the elbow is a thing of beauty. I didn't have any problems getting what I wanted, including a fading bank shot with VC that was really pretty.

The driving layup and dunk control will take a little getting used to, mainly because I'm not used to having the 2-step/Euro step options as well as having to focus so much attention on LS when shooting. I like all the options though and it felt good the few times I was able to Iso and drive into the paint then finish on the side I wanted to.

The overall look of the game is very nice. I think I'll probably adjust my TV settings a bit to tone the brightness down, but everything looks very crisp and I didn't have a problem with any of the player models. Kobe looks amazing IMO and the skin textures are FN-esque.

I actually didn't have too hard of a time playing defense on perimeter players. Like Czar said, if you use the angles and feather the LS instead of jamming it in different directions, don't reach, don't (for the love of god) use the RS "hands-up" pose, you can prevent penetration and force them into a tough shot. Sometimes it seems like you can't prevent them drawing a foul (don't contest or anything but they still get a shoulder into you and get the whistle), but I didn't feel the need for a defensive lock button or anything. Contesting felt good.

Off-ball control and passing is easy to use. I don't know what Ray is complaining about really, I was able to icon pass fine with LT -- just hit the button quickly and you can even continue holding LT and make multiple passes. I had to get used to LT being the button, but other than that, I didn't have much problem. Direct passing is still pretty crappy, but I don't think there will ever be a solution to that when you point the LS at 2 players.. inevitably it'll be the wrong one about half of the time. I love being able to quickly control an off-ball man and run him to his spot... had some really nice catch-and-shoots with Pietrus and Lewis just by using that quickly and rubbing the defender off of Dwight or someone.

Negatives:

Don't like that you can't really use LT passing when you're running a playset. Seemed like it would cancel the play most of the time when I'd icon pass to the correct man. Having to use normal passing for plays would be a bummer because it still kinda sucks... I think a good idea would be making it so if the left stick is neutral and you press 'A' when it's glowing above the designated man, it passes him the ball. That would eliminate the confusion the other poster mentioned as well.

Is there a "defensive switch" button? This was driving me crazy -- in fast break situations/pick and rolls when you get switched off, there was no way to reliably get back on your man. Even when I would get up close to my designated man (i.e. Kobe on Vince), the previous defender would often stay there. I was tapping LT and RB (thinking maybe defensive assist would take me to the right man) but no dice. This is a MUST for team play online and just in general IMO.. can't run a smart defense without the ability to call people off and get back to your original man. That's especially true since matchups are such a big part of this year's game.

I found it very hard to play defense when the offensive player was moving quickly. Granted, that may be realistic, but it seemed as if every time they had a running start in the fastbreak, they managed to weasel around me and score. Sometimes it was contested, but it just seemed like you can't move nearly fast enough backwards (even turning around to run properly) to stop the break. This is another one where it's probably me not being used to it, but it stood out to me as annoying.

Few too many offensive boards for my liking (the CPU). Again, might not understand the boxing out mechanic.. probably my fault.

Gotta get used to pick and roll control -- seemed like they rarely set the screen correctly and I had people like VC occasionally setting screens (which was probably my fault since you can choose) instead of bigs. Just a little confusing and didn't work as well as last year (which is probably a good thing I suppose, since it was a money play).

Animations are still not entirely natural-looking... warping on rebounds and blocks is the main issue, but also the post-play cuts and running back (as has been mentioned from the other videos) look a bit strange, like they fast-forward briefly. I didn't have too many head-scratchers in-game aside from a VC standing dunk under the rim, but in the hangar, there were definitely some weird dunk animations.

Loose balls and rebounding is not as tight as I'd hoped. There were several times when a ball would get deflected or stolen and my players would be in position but would just kinda stand there... I'd see some amazing-looking hustle sequences, but then randomly nobody would go get the ball after all that effort. I think I just don't completely understand how rebounding works -- I thought it was "Hold Y to box out, release to jump" and it seems like that sometimes.. but like on free throws as soon as you touch Y they jump for it. Devs, can you clarify the rebounding controls a bit for us?

Overall though I had a good time with it. I know I'll be playing the hell out of it in the next few weeks, so I think a lot of the issues were due to me not really knowing what I'm doing. Also, I recognize that it's a demo and not the ironed-out final... Czar's thoughts reinforce that, so I'm not worried that I won't be as happy with the game as I thought. Seems like a lot of the appeal is watching how the different players and teams react to matchups, etc. and we don't get much of that at all in an 8-minute game with the same 2 teams and few subs. The core mechanics seem very good and it definitely forces you to run an offense rather than just dribble your way to the rack. Gonna spend some more time with it this afternoon, but probably won't be able to capture and psot anything until very late tonight or tomorrow.