NBA Elite 11 Demo Available, Post Impressions Here (PS3, 360)

[Wilson24]

I'm an avid Live fan and enjoyed the demo. This is a solid first outing and the Elite series has loads of potential. However, it does need some polishing. My suggestions

-The 5v5 fludity, interaction and spacing is stale and needs some life. Compared to 10 it is very basic.
-Presentation wise the graphics are better but the lighting/shine on the players needs to be brighter.
-The player models especially on the bigger ones are a bit lanky and need bulk.
-The crossover move needs to be more effective and change the players direction better. The angle just isnt there, its directly left or right. Should get better spacing and ability to get the angle on defenders and attack the basket with guards and some forwards.
-The Hop step is great but in the lane it is not possible to do a fadaway or shoot easily after doing one. Only around 15ft can you perform these moves.
-Love the gather moves too and they seem to do a better job of making dunks more realistic in the lane and somewhat fix the super speed takeoffs.

[bigsmallwood]

PROS

After much practice, the controls are GREAT (see first con) BUT......
No Turbo is a plus to me
Crowd Noise/Commentary is ok
A nice beefy demo

CONS

The Animations negate the new controls....the animations are stale and weird at times....

No Sig animations?
So much wrong that has not been corrected after many years on next gen.

Graphics are laughable and really have no excuse for being this poor.


EA needs to get it together...they could have really had something special this year, and instead they have a thrown together product that is an embarrassment to the sport of basketball.

[fcabanski]

On the quote (below, with stepsix's response) either I wasn't clear or he missed my meaning. I think what I mentioned as far as sim is in the game. The shot trajectories are wrong, the teams don't play like the real life counterparts (i.e. not running plays accurate to the real life team), and guys aren't scoring in ways they score in real life. But the better players, like Kobe on the Lakers, are the ones taking the shots and scoring.

The Celtics do run through Garnett at times, and he's deadly in the places he should be deadly.

Kobe scores a lot on quick jumpers with men in his face, rather than by getting to the hoop or by getting open shots, but he scores. In the other game he gets to the hoop and gets open shots. In Elite 11 he scores in a different way that may not be accurate to the real life Kobe and the real life Lakers, but he's scoring.

That's a huge improvement over both games in 2010 in which the top players weren't often the guys scoring. In NBA Live 10 when I played the Cavs, or even ran it CPU vs CPU, Mo Williams was the top scorer every time. LeBron might score 10-15. An alien watching would think Mo was the top guy on the Cavs with LeBron only a role player.


QUOTE:


To me sim means more that players are somewhat realistic to their abilities (ratings.)

On the CPU side that means Kobe on the Laker would be their leading scorer, getting a lot of shots, sometimes going off (when I play against the Lakers) for a huge night unless I work very hard to stop him. In NBA Live '10, for example, Steve Fisher was more the CPU Lakers main man - he was the one who could go off for a lot of points.

On the CPU side that means teams have strong AI. Maybe they don't play exactly like their real life counterpart, but if a team has a strong inside threat then the offense runs through the post men.

On the player side if I have control of LeBron James then I expect to get to the rim, dunk, make nice passes, rebound. I don't expect, if controlling Bynum, that I can drive from the three point line for a dunk, make my own shots, or go coast to coast for a dunk.

Sure that's a sandbox because when a gamer is in control of a team, the gamer might pass to Kobe every time for every shot. But if the player locks onto a scrub center the experience shouldn't be (if sim) being able to dominate the game.


I respect what you're saying here - at the beginning of every possession the AI is looking at who to run the offense through based on synergy stats. If they get into trouble with the defense it can break down and there's definitely times where they'll dump it off to someone who shouldn't have the ball.

[bigsmallwood]

The controls are really GREAT once you get the hang of them and it helps make the gameplay shine.....(as much as humanly possible.....)

[brahmagoul]

The demo kind of feels like an early, new-generation title to me. There's some things I like, but it feels lacking in gameplay. One thing I expected to be able to do is have a defender raise his arms. Doesn't seem like you can do this. Everytime I push up on the analog, the defender jumps. That might be my biggest pet peeve.

[fcabanski]

It does seem a little too easy to score. I'm generally seeing scores around 75-80 for both teams. That's 20 or so points each in 5 minute quarters. That's a lot.

[Jano]

Hands up = Hold Left trigger + Up on R-Stick

[sportyguyfl31]

1st Demo Game + Impressions Commentary