NBA Live 18 is the first basketball simulator to include a full WNBA roster. Taking cues from NBA 2K, a companion app for NBA Live 18 is available to scan your face into the game. At first glance, the NBA Live Companion app seems like a carbon copy of its competitor, but surprisingly the face scan technology is quite decent.
Has been a nonentity for the better part of a decade. But seems to be a stable, enjoyable and accessible basketball game that represents progress for EA Sports’ basketball simulation, and takes meaningful steps away from a beleaguered reputation.That does not mean NBA 2K18 is facing a head-on challenge yet. NBA Live 18 has some big flaws, especially in the franchise mode, where it shows that the development team placed its highest priority on “The One,” the single-player career supported by a modest story layer as the created player breaks into the league.But that mode makes some shrewd choices that highlight some differences between NBA 2K’s behemoth MyCareer suite that hoops fans should appreciate. EA Tiburon/Electronic ArtsThe dirty secret about the NBA 2K franchise is it’s a hard game if you’re not constantly refreshing your memory with it. That RAM fills up fast from a dizzying list of discrete ballhandling commands. The first templar system requirements. This is where NBA Live 18 does the most to help itself as an alternative, with a simpler set of ball-handling controls that make it easier to create space, go to the basket and finish. While basketball lifers may not get what the fuss is, lapsed or less dedicated players easily lost in complicated control systems should have an easier time getting into NBA Live 18, if they can forgive the occasional jerky animation.The controls also make a sensible use of a shot meter, something NBA Live had trouble with when it returned to the and in 2013.
That now feels like it has turned a corner, too. The goal is still to release the ball at the top of one’s motion, but I found that to be more deterministic than it was in NBA Live 16. It also feels faster, which feeds back into a faster-paced offense that let me strike the instant I got free, rather than having my defender frequently catch up to me in the act of shooting. Fast-paced offense and a new defensive scheme support solid-overall gameplay.The meter is color coded and that gives the user a clearer idea of the difficulty of a shot (and also how well they are defended). Hitting the top of the meter in the green usually guarantees a made shot.
Not always, especially for longer range shots (and if the player is not a good three point shooter), I had more understanding of why shooting works and, therefore, had more fun in pulling up and hoisting one as much as slamming and jamming.There is also a new on-the-ball defensive mechanism that borrows a rock-paper-scissors concept from fighting games and gives the user a means of playing active defense without spamming the leap or steal buttons. However, this system had me staring too much at the other player’s feet, looking for the arrow indicating where he would go, because raw speed is a lot more effective at getting around a player now. Countering a move will bump the ballhandling player and even open a window were a steal is possible, if the counter is timed perfectly.
There’s plenty of forgiveness to let the user make the steal though (at standard modes of difficulty), and it looked a little weird the first couple of times, as if the player I had countered was waiting for me to press the steal button. EA Tiburon/Electronic ArtsThe controls are understandable and fun and well suited for The One, which is where the game wanted me to spend most of my time as a shooting guard. Once I had confidence in myself it was kind of surprising to see how much the game opened up to me, particularly with dunking, something I’ve accomplished mainly by accident in the past. I did feel like I was spending a lot of time waiting for AI teammates in The One to get free, and they’re not the most diligent of offensive rebounders, either. But The One includes cooperative play with other humans, in the Live Run mode making that less of a worry.EA Sports also made a good choice in making the skills tree in The One microtransaction-free. The crate system, with a currency specific to it, is where cosmetic items are found, meaning players can build up a player with experience points earned during play and not have to worry about wearing the same generic getup in the street ball games.
The One gives a lot of attention to summer leagues at some of amateur basketball’s iconic locations, like Seattle Pacific University, or Los Angeles’ Drew League. With these leagues taking on more intrigue in the offseason, this was another smart decision to give some depth to the pro-am story. It’s where NBA Live 18 stands out the most.NBA 2K has had a streetball layer to its MyCareer suite but its large playgrounds are fictitious. By integrating The Streets with The League, the user has more to do with their created player to round out an emergent personality for him.
I didn’t do so hot in my draft order in the preamble leading into The One. After getting taken in the low teens, I put in time in these pro-am games to make my player more useful in the League, instead of riding the bench and getting fewer minutes than I wanted. EA Tiburon/Electronic ArtsUnfortunately, it appears as though The One got all of the love, leaving new inclusions like the WNBA with not much more than the bare minimum of treatments. Commentary for the WNBA games does not even use the team names (or if it does, I never heard it) much less the players’, making that seem like more of a last-minute inclusion than a video gaming milestone. Like women’s teams in its FIFA cousin, the 12 WNBA teams are limited to a play-now mode.A staple mode like Franchise is also given short shrift. Managing players isn’t all that interesting unfortunately, as it just doesn’t feel like I was part of a living breathing league when I didn’t see any CPU-controlled teams making a trade in a quick simulation to test that out. Injuries also seem to occur only during simulated games rather than live play.
Some basketball fans will find it particularly unacceptable that there is no way to edit players in Franchise. There is an Ultimate Team mode but it is also a rather stock affair, head-to-head multiplayer and single-player games against a CPU and no specialty mode, like the quick draft games seen in Madden and FIFA. NBA Live 18 does some things well, but still needs to do more.NBA Live 18 is best for a very personal brand of basketball, focusing on a created superstar and the moves that make him stand out in a game that skews more toward individual play than teamwork.But the spare treatment given to the rest of the big modes of play make this a pick-up-and-play basketball game that walks the line of being arcadey in some spots. Those who enjoy player management and building out teams will not find much to love in NBA Live 18, but at least the gameplay is solid throughout, and fans can actually talk about what this game can expand on next year without wondering if there will be a next year.
I didn’t expect to like NBA Live 19 as much as I did. It’s not without its flaws, that’s for sure, but the actual basketball that takes place on its court feels and looks great. It even has some inventive modes, such as a surprisingly entertaining tower-defense style court battle, alongside the money-hungry Ultimate Team mode that’s become a staple of every EA Sports game.
But while it feels like a fluid and realistic game of hoops, it also comes up short in the personality department, which allows a lot of potential excitement to slip through its fingers.Player models look the part of their real-life counterparts, to the point where they’re instantly recognizable — there’s no mistaking Aron Baynes and his manbun for another player. Live 19 also brings back the WNBA players that were introduced in last year’s game and adds the inclusive ability to create a female basketball avatar just like you can with the men. They’re even better in motion.
Animations are powered by the same system used in Madden NFL 19 and FIFA 19, and I have to say they look better than those in NBA 2K18. Players jockey for position, bump into each other and weave through defenders realistically. It gives them real weight and fluidity of movement. Everything involving close contact in NBA Live 19 works well, and specific player animations, like LeBron James’ aggressive lane-driving dribbles, are spot-on.
Control the CourtOn the court, Live’s control scheme instantly makes sense. The path that appears between your player and the one you’re aiming at makes passing hard to mess up, which leads to fewer frustrating moments like accidentally throwing to a heavily-defended player, leading to a turnover. There aren’t any surprises.
Agents Of Mayhem - Carnage A Trois Trailer. Watch Braddock, Yeti and Daisy take the joy of LEGION's pain to extreme levels in this trailer for Agents Of Mayhem. Jul 31, 2017 6:54pm. Agents of mayhem sequel. Agents of MAYHEM is the latest open-world, third-person action game from the creators of the Saints Row franchise! In Agents of MAYHEM. Agents of Mayhem is an upcoming open world action-adventure video game set in the Saints Row universe, developed by Volition, published by Deep Silver and distributed by Square Enix in North America. The game is set for an August 2017 release date for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows.
Shooting, too, is simple and intuitive; pulling off a dunk instead of a layup is as easy as holding down the trigger while shooting near the basket. I definitely felt like I knew what I was doing right away. As simple as the controls are, NBA Live 19 has more in-depth moves available to take your game to the next level once you’ve internalized the fundamentals. An excellent training mode teaches basic and advanced moves, almost like a fighting game. I felt like a complete boss when I successfully dribbled behind the back of a defender in training, then I went back and replayed it again to master it. Fancy handles aren’t required, but I love being able to visit the training mode to work on improving my game at any time. But NBA basketball is as much about culture as it is about the game, and that’s probably Live 19’s weakest showing.
The whole presentation feels like a collection of pieces that all fit together but never quite gel into a whole. Music, shoes, street hoops, and even Stephen A. Smith’s shouting are all part of NBA Live 19, but overall it feels sterile.
Much of that sterility comes from the sound design. Court battles have a single looping song – closer to a raw beat than a fully realized track – and aside from a few shouts for picks and other player noises it’s underwhelming in how subdued a typical game feels. That isn’t helped at all by the fact that Franchise mode, where games look as much like television broadcasts as possible, has extremely limited commentary.
Canned snippets repeat during individual games, and the large percentage of them are enormously broad generalizations that sometimes only match the action in the most basic way. When a defender intentionally fouls to stop the clock in the last minute or so of the fourth quarter and the commentary treats it like any other intentional foul without acknowledging the strategy behind it, it’s an unignorable reminder that the lights may be on but there’s nobody home. “It’s too bad NBA Live 19 shoots wide on b-ball culture because there are some really fun alternate modes here.
I especially liked the Court Battle mode, which creatively introduces tower defense elements to a basketball game. You create your own custom court, a process I enjoyed immensely thanks to generous and sometimes ridiculous floor decor options. My personal court looks straight out of a 1990’s Nickelodeon game show, and I love it.
From there, there’s an alluring process of setting your home team and customizing the court rule set before going to work with your away team. Each time I started up, I’d get points for my team successfully defending my court, and taking over other players’ courts unlocks more players, uniforms, court customization options, and more. The weird rule sets, like making dunks worth 5 points, changes up the strategy with every battle.
It’s far and away my favorite mode in NBA Live 19. EA’s Ultimate Team mode returns to NBA Live 19. I understand companies need to make money, but Live Ultimate Team isn’t going to be the way I spend my cash. The rewards for playing are way too small and the cost for NBA Points to buy new packs is designed in an infuriating way. Packs are in multiples of 100 but points can only be bought in multiples of 150, so unless you spend twice what you might want to spend, you end up with 50 left-over points.
Mercifully, microtransactions play a diminished role in the rest of Live’s many modes, so if you aren’t into building a dream team through LUT, you can skip them entirely. VerdictI was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked playing NBA Live 19. The core basketball game and its various modes offer plenty of chances to have a fun basketball experience. The new animation system makes action on the court look and act more realistic than ever, and a robust training mode gives plenty of opportunity to improve.
Unfortunately, lifeless, canned commentary and little in the way of capturing the feel of basketball culture holds NBA Live 19 back. In the world of basketball games, it’s the Eastern Conference to 2K’s Western Conference – good, but at the end of the season, the odds are heavily in the opponent’s favor.