It's Not In The Game: an NBA Live 07 rant

Taking a break, just finished some significant work. OT for the entire week, without basketball, how's that sound. I had to skip this week's schedule because of work :(

To add to that, the latest NBA Live 07 game really sucks, the controls are messed up, i'm having a hard time adjusting to it. EA sports added some neat new tricks, but sad to say, didn't polish it quite enough. The QA team will probably get fired, or maybe they wouldn't even care that the entire nba live community at www.nbaliveforums.com is ranting about their latest game and screaming for their money back.

To give a them a little credit, you now can switch Freestyle Superstar modes on the fly depending on the skills of your player. They've separated the dunk, layup, and shoot button. You can execute touch passes (one player passes the ball, the receiving player barely touches the ball and touch passes it again to a cutting or open teammate) but can get quite confusing as they randomly execute when you're in the game. They have a few signature jumpshots and a little more freethrow animations (including jason kidd's freethrow kiss, shaq's forehead wipe, hamilton's side dribbles, sorry no arenas around-the-waist gimmick).

Ok, too much plusses, now the negatives, what i really hate the most is that they've mislabeled the Direct Switch shortcuts on your Dunk and Layup players. Pressing either one passes to the other player. They've remapped the Pivot(last year) now Dunk button to the Center Position. The Last Man Back button doesn't work! And you can't switch players during inbound. Some more... I can't remember. Right now, I'm just trying to adjust, trying to be happy w/ the game. Hoping they release a patch for everybody's sake. Oh, do you know that because credible game review sources like gamespot giving them a 6.5 score and 1up giving them a 5.0, their stock prices dipped 3% (see article).


Back to work...