[Tha_Kid]

It's Live 14 at its heart. Graphics are really next gen now (Esp the detail with the arenas/shot clock and the player body types/tattoos/kicks) and the scanned faces and emotions are amazing. There are alot of new animations and when the ragdoll physics kick it almost gives the feeling of some emergent gameplay. But if you put time into Live 14 you'll see all of the legacy issues within 3 games.

The unstoppable PG drives to the basket complete with the shot clipping through defenders, still there. Once difficulty is bumped up to All Star contested shots inside go in at a high clip.

Suspect late game AI (Wizards v Suns, cpu Suns down 3 off the timeout they inbound to Plumlee behind the 3pt line who holds the ball for 8 seconds before throwing up a prayer 3, no dribble, no attempt to get the ball to dragic/thomas/green etc)

an overall sense of generic play. The preview game has Lebron and Durant and those teams are pretty well done but when you start getting into your team or Ult Team you see just isn't much differentiation outside of some dribble packages and sig shots. Many guys who had FT routines before (ie Paul Pierce) now have the same generic free throw. Teammate help AI is questionable often leaving shooters wide open behind the line even when you set your gameplan to pressure shooters, without the threat of dribble penetration and to top it off 3s go in at a pretty high rate from my 5 game sample size (playing on All Star AutoMotion on for H/A). The post game is essentially the same as what was in 14 and frustratingly there is no shot timing feedback for shots out of the post.

The player control and passing feels much better than 14 but there are still many cases of awkward sliding/carrying on the perimeter and in the paint that result in some ugly sequences. Fastbreaks work well as long as you pass the ball, but the game fails the John Wall test as defenders will run back and get ahead of Wall even when Wall started the break with a clear path. The ballhandler is just too slow and Wall even with one of the highest speed ratings can't outrun anyone when saddled with whatever penalty this game has applied to the ballhandler.

Autosubs still put in asinine combinations. Gortat played 0 minutes at PF for the Wizards but Live will still play him as a 4 next to Kevin Seraphin. Rating accuracy trails off once you get past the top 8 or so on a team and while synergy updates tendencies regularly, judging from Live 10/14, they are very slow to adjust actual player ratings. Last season it wasn't even until Feb or March that Ariza got a 3pt rating adjustment to reflect his career year.

In 14 there was a way to shoot floaters through a modifier, it's unclear if that is an option in 15.

I went from pleasantly surprised at the leap during the onboarding and Cavs/Thunder game to realizing I probably won't own a basketball game this year because I played Live 14, rough as it was, into the ground, and there is just not enough new at the core of this game to justify my $60. For the most part, the things this game does well it did well last year. The graphical fidelity, ragdoll physics on shot attempts and zippy passing are welcome additions, but basketball wise its just not all there. The "basketball" jump from 14 to 15 is frustratingly small compared to the graphical jump.