[Blzer]

I played the demo once. I was actually pretty satisfied at first through the tutorials and learning the controls; this is an area that has been lacking in NBA games I have played since hopping over to next-gen. I got a good idea of what you can do with/as an individual player on the court and how it would fare well against either a human or CPU opponent (would make for some good 2-on-2 streetball action as well, I suppose).

But when it translated over to the game, the control seems to have not been there anymore. The crossovers and spin moves that I learned were practically unavailable, and I'm not talking about trying to use Davis with them either. Even when they did work, the CPU just stuck onto me like a magnet, almost as if he predicted my move before I actually did it (maybe it's set like that in that they know what control I performed before the on-screen appearance, I'm unsure). It made the awesome dribble control all for naught. Regardless, I'm glad this demo didn't keep me on a broadcast camera so that I wouldn't disorient myself with the proper right-stick controls. I miss that way of playing sometimes.

Control seemed to pretty much be the only big thing to speak about when it came to the Elite demo, in my opinion. I'd like to think that it's not my TV, but the arena was overall pretty dark. I don't just mean it in a MSG kind of dark, but even the darker colored players nearly appeared like silhouettes on my TV. I know some EA games (maybe not the sports games though) have a gamma slider setting, so perhaps this is set in the final product of the game. But normal dribbling looked funky and rebounds were pretty quick in terms of coming up and down. The "auto strafe" just might benefit one control-wise, but the appearance of it makes it seem a bit too much like a video game. Obviously this is a video game, but a lot of sports games these days are really shaking up their games to get a big boost of authenticity, and Elite doesn't seem to support that notion. I didn't recall any signature jumpers, but I only played through the demo once. I also didn't get a taste of RTP yet, but I'm sure it's definitely in there for drives in the paint, something which I wasn't able to penetrate very easily.

The audio is what I think was the biggest gripe for me. I was so accustomed to witnessing a game that boasted some very real sounding presentation overall (believe it or not I am not referring to 2K11), and Elite falls very flat in comparison IMO. It was very difficult for me to get immersed in it. There's not much to say about this department though, I'm sure everyone can hear it in their demos and in the videos.

Overall I was actually very pleased for a change when I saw the tutorials boasting the complete user control, and I think that's a good basis for what should have been in basketball games for the past five years. But when we're already climaxing these consoles and they've just gotten to this step while pulling back on other aspects, I can't really do too much to defend EA in their position which they put themselves in. The demo will stay on my HDD and if I was more interested in basketball this year maybe I would even be inclined to give it a fair shake with a rental so I could tweak sliders and such, but it's still a long time coming for this renowned basketball game franchise IMO.