Best BBall Game ever made!!
Visuals: The visual presentation is the first thing that you are going to be amazed with. From the courts to the player models, everything looks and feels exacly as it should be. The courts are bursting with life, from the clearly animated crowd to the cheerleaders and maskots on the sidelines. The developing team has really made an effort to make you feel like you are actually watching a game on TV. If you let the the intermissions animation play during half time, you'll see cheerleaders coming on court to do their thing and you'll also be transported to a virtual studio were statistics with appers TV-style. The players move and shoot very much like their real life counterparts. Dribbling animation looks extremely fluid and realistic - if a move cant be done in real life, you wont see it in this game. Passing and dunks will make you go "wow" and if you are good enough to make it all work together, you'll get plenty of chances to make you jump off your seat before you realize you are the one actually doing it. You might get a few minor glithes in the animation, but they seldomly appear and wont really annoy you. A perfect 10 on visuals.
Audio: The track selection is pretty much the kind you would expect from a bball game, with plenty of rap tunes to keep you satisfied. In-game commentary adds to the overall experience, with the commentators getting excited about good plays and being critical when you are making a bad offence attempt. Moreover, they wont blather on and on, letting you concentrate on your game. The only smear in an otherwise excellent commentary is that certain comments seem to appear too often: Each time I'm playing with the Cavs, i get to hear the same line about LeBron being an amazing player that is an asset to the entire NBA (or something in those lines). It wont annoy you much, but it will sound awfully familiar after a while.
Game Modes: You will get todays standard modes to play with. You can set up a quick game, start a season or play in situation games, like the playoffs or games that you start off with specified score deficits and limited game time remaining. You can also get more into a specific team by going for the assosiation mode, which is essensially the Franchice mode on Live. I wont get much into those, since i havent really put any time in them. A nice addition is the The Blacktop Mode, which really is like an All-Star Weekend (dunks, three-point shootouts). This is the first time that the dunk contest is really exciting, cause if you get familiar with the controls, you can pull off some jaw-dropping monster dunks. You also get to set up some half court games, from 1 on 1 to 5 on 5. Its always nice to pick LeBron and see what happens on a 1-on-1 with Kobe. In this kind of games, the x button will allow you to pull off a variety of streetball moves, Hot-Sauce style. Simply awesome.
Difficulty: This is where lots of people will get frustrated with the game. This is a HARD and REALISTIC bball game. If you had no prior experience with the series like i did, you will lose 90% of your first 20 games against the CPU on the preset difficulty. Players like Lebron, Kobe or Wade will be able to take on an entire defence and make the basket, but not every time. Shots, lay-ups and passes will be missed if u keep forcing them. Instead, if you take a more realistic approach on your offence and defence, you will be awarded.
Dribbling, passing and dunking can look spectacular, but you will have to put a lot of effort on learning how to pull them off, since they wont be just triggeted with a push of a button.
To sum it up, people who are looking for an arcade-style run-and-gun type of game, will be disappointed and probably get frustraded after a while. But if you are a basketball enthusiast like myself that is prepared to put some efford in learning the secrets of this game, it will award you with possibly the best basketball simulation you have ever played.