NBA Live 2005

For those of you who are fans of the NBA Live series of basketball games, don't buy the latest one. NBA Live 2005 is the worst version of the game I have ever seen, since 1995. Ironic that it took ten years to make something that bad. 2004 was great, it made good progress on the gameplay. I had a few complaints most importantly that the AI didn't run very good offenses even on the higest levels of difficulty and that the Franchise mode didn't include any real franchise management other than playing the game and managing the roster. Madden 2004 included all those fancy features like having the ability to change prices on everything and getting a new stadium. I expected with Madden 2005 having the player morale and media feature where you can hear about how your team is doing NBA Live 2005 would have the same features. Apparently Madden and Live don't share code, which is sad. NBA Live 2005 lacks these features.

The graphics are another big problem I have with the game. The players all seem to have a white glow around them. The camera is also zoomed much further out, even on the closest setting. This results in the players looking very small, while you are forced to watch the whole crowd, every play. Not only do you see the first deck of animated fans, but you see the second deck, which is not animated.

It makes me mad that they didn't include any of the Madden features and then that they made the game worst than years past. No NBA Live 2005 for me.

UPDATE: They do seem to have some kind of player management feature where all your information comes to you through the PDA. Unfortunately like all EA Sports PC games the game has no keyboard support in the menus, making the interfence very cumbersome.