NBA Live 14‘s gameplay was incredibly stiff and awkward in motion. Shooting never felt natural, team AI was abysmal, and lay-ups and low-post moves all felt so canned and forced. It was like the players were action figures rather than professional athletes. Thankfully, EA Tiburon has been made more than well-aware of that fact that last year’s installment was atrocity-incarnate and seem to be hellbent on fixing whatever they can for NBA Live 15.
In fact, they’ve been so conscientious of all of last year’s issues that they even made this trailer in a “look how much last year’s installment sucked” format. What I mean by that is that the team literally calls out an issue from last year and describes how they have improved said aspect. I actually found myself being very appreciative of the fact they’re being honest with their past mistakes, and it’s hard not to want to believe in the team’s determination to truly make a good NBA Live game.
It seems that the guys at EA Tiburon have really focused on adding in a ton of animations, and have used it as a foundation to improve every other aspect of NBA Live 15‘s offense. A lot of the improvements come down to making player actions a lot more fluid. Passing and dribbling should be more intuitive, and the shooting has received a shot meter for feedback. That way you’re not missing shots without knowing if releases are too late or too early.
Hopefully, all this talk of improvements and nowhere-to-go-but-up attitude isn’t just talk. I sincerely want to see a legitimate challenger step into the NBA game arena and throw some punches with NBA 2K15. If NBA Live 15 doesn’t make a respectable bump in quality this year, it’d be really, really difficult to be generous to EA Tiburon or trust anything they say about NBA Live 16.
We’ll be able to see how these improvements have affected the overall experience when NBA Live 15 releases on October 28, for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
