Alright, so I was torn between the two NBA offerings this year. 2K offering the greatest moments from the career of the greatest player of all time and Elite offering an all new control scheme was almost too much to process. I'm not going to speak on 2K '11′s demo here (comparison threads never end well) so let's try to leave that out of the picture.

Now that that's out of the way…wow. I expected the new control scheme to be a bit dodgy to be honest and I've never been so happy to be wrong. If you've played Live 10 then you know the frustration that is the outside shot. It's a crap shoot. Every time. Derek Fisher was almost useless from outside. Kobe Bryant? No outside shot. In Elite 11, though, the game of variables and probabilities tied to situation-based statistics is thrown out of the window, and all for the better. There seems to be a slight lag on the dribbling but once you get used to that offense becomes much more intuitive.

- You can actually steal now. -

Defense is also greatly improved. It feels more…involved. I can't remember how many times in Live '10 that I was absolutely sure I'd timed the intercept/steal button only to have the ball clip through my player because it wasn't perfectly timed. Gone too are these flaws. And for the better. It's so much more satisfying to play defense as a result. Every block, every steal feels like an accomplishment.

It's not without it's drawbacks, of course. The framerate on the PS3 is a bit unstable. Graphically it doesn't look much better than last year's offering. That can be forgiven, though when you consider how much has been done on a gameplay level.

The other drawback comes from another area: the people playing Live the old way. If you aren't any good at games like Skate you're probably not going to like the changes to the control scheme. This really shouldn't bother you though, as the old control scheme has been preserved so you really have nothing to complain about.

- Improved shot control. -

All things considered, Elite really is shaping up to be a great offering this year. It'll probably be the first NBA game I purchase since…well since the late 90s.

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