There’s no sports game franchise more maligned by the sports gaming community than EA’s NBA Live. After leaving the scene in 2010 and taking four years off, the series unceremoniously made its return at the beginning of this console generation with a pair of lackluster releases before once again going on hiatus.
Now, one year since their last entry, EA Tiburon are back again with their basketball sim and our initial impressions are a bit of a mixed bag. While it’s nice to see competition in a genre that’s increasingly becoming more monopolized, NBA Live is far from a genre defining experience it so desperately needs to be to steal the thunder from its competition.
We had the chance to go hands-on with NBA Live 18 at a recent EA preview event, and we walked away with a number of thoughts about the developer’s comeback to the court. Out of everything we saw and experienced, though, here’s what stood out the most.
