Next-Gen Letdown
As for everything else, I'd say one of the most entertaining aspects of the game is the create-a-player option (which is pretty customizable) and the start up menu where you can play around with up to 4 different hoops players before actually selecting a game type. When you do pick your teams and start the game up - instead of going to a dull loading screen, you are allowed to keep shooting around with your hoops player until the game pans into the arena when it is finished loading. It's a very unique and definitely an impressive feature of the game. Sadly, that is where most of the fun ends.
The gameplay of NBA Live '06 is rather unimpressive. You can basically score at will with a star player by driving to the basket (maybe throw in a hop step) and slamming it home. Fouls are pretty frequent and the blocks are few and far between. The animations tend to hover in between very sleek and impressive to choppy and outdated. The camera view is another problem that I have with the game. I was never able to find a suitable view no matter how much I tweaked it. It always seemed to find a way to make things difficult. Perhaps one of the more perplexing aspects of the game is the free-throw shooting. Basically, this is left up to you to figure out. Yeah, I'm sure some of you have figured it out - BUT, it should not be left up to us to figure out. A brand new free throw system should come with instructions! The best thing I could come up with is to make the most as fluid as possible with no hiccups in it. I seemed to make about 50% (maybe a little less) when I did that; however, for the most part every player posted Shaq-like free throw %'s and worse. Free throw shooting is a big part of basketball and it's completely unacceptable to have an ineffecient system.
Probably my last complaint on this game would have to be the missing Dynasty mode. I can't understand why there is no franchise mode. How can you not include it?! It really blows my mind how something as important as that can just be left out. Not really much else to say about that. If you want a good basketball game, go for NBA 2K6. The game not only has superb graphics, but championship gameplay to along with it. EA definitely needs to kick it into high gear for next season's release if it wants to keep up with the competition.