Ok after playing 8 hours, practing and more and I have to say the game isn't what its cracked up to be. I am a huge fan of the Live series and the 2k series and I thought Live 2003 was horrible but so was 2k3.
On the postive side, the defense is killer. 10 Man Motion is also very cool as you can see players setting picks and looking for players, but there is a lot of negative because of these new animations. One of those being the choppyness when running down the court. Also because of the motion capture, its hard to set picks up and actually play with real stats. Onto stats being another bugger. A lot of the players have way below average rankings to the point where you suffer because every player is based on their rankings. For example Mike Bibby is a 64 rating. He is a lot better player then that and he deserves somewhere in the 80's. Chris Webber has an 84 which is fair for him but he should get a few points higher around 87-88.
As for shooting its tough because the players stick to each other. Lets say your on defense and your covering Shaq. If your realtivly close to him your going to stick to him and you won't be able to move so you could stop someone driving through the lane. To me thats a huge problem because I can't stop players because I am stuck to a player. Its the same on offense because they stick to you like glue and because of this its harder to shoot and most of the time your shots will get blocked. IGN mentioned that it was hard to shoot the ball from the Mid Range which I find easy to shoot from Mid and Long Range yet I can't buy a bucket up close no matter if its a hook shot wide open or a lay-up.
Onto defense as I mentioned above its tough but it should not be this tough. Where is the button to post down with your hands to your side (L trigger in 2K3 and Live 2003). Its gone so pretty much you don't do it. Stealing the ball is really easy no matter how the sliders are set because if you double team anybody there is a incredible high chance that you will steal it from them.
Ok so after you steal the ball you want to run the fast break correct? Well thats hard because of the sticky player interface and if you are running down the court with turbo being used for some reason the center on the other team is fast as hell and can easily block your shots.
As for bugs there way too many to me that make this game unplayable. For one speed. You can't run the fast break at all in Live 2004 and your slower then everybody else. Freestyle serves no point what so ever. You can't fake out anybody on All Star difficulty, neither can you head fake them out. The choppyness is annoying but it doesn't ruin the game all the time. It depends on the arena and it depends on the camera. Players have incredible low rankings. Some great players have low rankings. Now its nice that you can edit there stats but what if you don't want to spend time editing every single player on your team or in the league. As many of you have heard about the Free Agency bug that IGN mentioned. Well its true and it sucks because no matter what team it is and no matter what contract length it is they will get released at the end of the year even if there contract says they to play for eight more years.
Overall NBA Live 2004 could of been a lot better of a game. It has a lot of bugs and because of that it makes it unplayable to me and personally I feel that I should not of wasted this much cash on this game. Like I said it could of been better like IGN and other sources showed in the videos but for some reason the BETA version of NBA Live 2004 was a lot better then the actual release.
Rating : 5/10
On the postive side, the defense is killer. 10 Man Motion is also very cool as you can see players setting picks and looking for players, but there is a lot of negative because of these new animations. One of those being the choppyness when running down the court. Also because of the motion capture, its hard to set picks up and actually play with real stats. Onto stats being another bugger. A lot of the players have way below average rankings to the point where you suffer because every player is based on their rankings. For example Mike Bibby is a 64 rating. He is a lot better player then that and he deserves somewhere in the 80's. Chris Webber has an 84 which is fair for him but he should get a few points higher around 87-88.
As for shooting its tough because the players stick to each other. Lets say your on defense and your covering Shaq. If your realtivly close to him your going to stick to him and you won't be able to move so you could stop someone driving through the lane. To me thats a huge problem because I can't stop players because I am stuck to a player. Its the same on offense because they stick to you like glue and because of this its harder to shoot and most of the time your shots will get blocked. IGN mentioned that it was hard to shoot the ball from the Mid Range which I find easy to shoot from Mid and Long Range yet I can't buy a bucket up close no matter if its a hook shot wide open or a lay-up.
Onto defense as I mentioned above its tough but it should not be this tough. Where is the button to post down with your hands to your side (L trigger in 2K3 and Live 2003). Its gone so pretty much you don't do it. Stealing the ball is really easy no matter how the sliders are set because if you double team anybody there is a incredible high chance that you will steal it from them.
Ok so after you steal the ball you want to run the fast break correct? Well thats hard because of the sticky player interface and if you are running down the court with turbo being used for some reason the center on the other team is fast as hell and can easily block your shots.
As for bugs there way too many to me that make this game unplayable. For one speed. You can't run the fast break at all in Live 2004 and your slower then everybody else. Freestyle serves no point what so ever. You can't fake out anybody on All Star difficulty, neither can you head fake them out. The choppyness is annoying but it doesn't ruin the game all the time. It depends on the arena and it depends on the camera. Players have incredible low rankings. Some great players have low rankings. Now its nice that you can edit there stats but what if you don't want to spend time editing every single player on your team or in the league. As many of you have heard about the Free Agency bug that IGN mentioned. Well its true and it sucks because no matter what team it is and no matter what contract length it is they will get released at the end of the year even if there contract says they to play for eight more years.
Overall NBA Live 2004 could of been a lot better of a game. It has a lot of bugs and because of that it makes it unplayable to me and personally I feel that I should not of wasted this much cash on this game. Like I said it could of been better like IGN and other sources showed in the videos but for some reason the BETA version of NBA Live 2004 was a lot better then the actual release.
Rating : 5/10
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