@villhaver said:

Unbelievably bad. Wow.

@hailinel said:

Jesus.

EDIT: The photo in question:

NBA LIVE 14' Lebron looks about right.

@chaser324 said:

Exactly. They should've bit the bullet last year or the year before and just released the game. Clearly the dev team somehow just really got into a funk or the series got handed off to someone new or something (I don't follow sports game development at all so no idea why this has been so troubled), but not shipping an NBA game 2 years in a row despite basically finishing one each year just seems like a senseless waste of time and money and people's talent. This game is obviously the underdog against NBA 2K and is going to sell worse and reviewers are going to say it is worse, so they might as well have gotten this out of the way 2 years ago instead of crippling employee morale after failing to ship over and over.

I guess I wouldn't put it past EA to just repackage and resell what is virtually the same game a year later... I have this theory that they've been doing it all along with their football games. DM me for details, I'll let all of you guys in on the details of this conspiracy.

Honestly, I've played every March Madness (or equivalent), Live and 2k game since the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation between jobs in a video game store and thanks to my hoodrat cousin who loves the 2k games, and I haven't enjoyed playing anything since NCAA March Madness 2003. And even that was only because the game played so well, the season and tournament modes were kinda crappy and the players were so generic that they should have just called all of the models Tall and Skinny, Tall and Bald, Tall and Bald and Fat, Regular Looking Black Guy, Black Guy With Afro, and Short White Guy.

Also, now that I think about it, the NBA Jam stuff was alright. Absolute crap as far as messing around with the rosters - which were out of date by the time I bought the game at launch, if I remember correctly the game released shortly after the Carmelo Anthony trade - but I bought that game to hear Tim Kitzrow yell, "Boom Shack a Lacka!" and that's what I got.

Down syndrome Lebron takes the ball. He'll take it down court. He's not moving, is he ok?

Madden was pretty good, FIFA has always been consistently great but the jump towards next-gen consoles was as expected and Live... well yeah...

Guess I'm picking up 2K14.

The old March Madness games were actually pretty great. Up until about 2004/2005. And Live was pretty okay up until around the same time. Just somewhere along the way they lost focus on the actual game play itself for other things. They do a great job with overall presentation. They just haven't done anything in regards to updating the actual game play since then. Every game has played the same. It all still feels like a floaty ps2 game.

I am a little shocked to hear that you didn't enjoy College Hoops 2k5 and 2k8 thought. Those games are by far the best college games since March Madness 2003. And the 2k NBA games are always pretty good. They have issues, yes. But the game play is enjoyable.

This thread just makes me miss NFL 2K. That whole exclusivity deal has to run out sooner or later, doesn't it?

that leaves UFC, hope that game is good

......And I used to like Live more than 2K.

Okay, so the game seems to have settled at about 40 on Metacritic. I expected this game to be bad, but not this bad.

I hoped that this game was gonna be good, even though the trailers didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Sports games need competition, EA has shown with the Madden series what happens when you have monopoly on a sports license. But 2K seem to be doing alright so far, so here's hoping. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last "realistic" basketball game EA ever makes.

I never played the 2k games past (quick Google search...) 2k5, which I liked, but eventually both 2k and EA basketball games had the same problem for me: I didn't feel like the controls of the game would allow me to dominate the post. The movement of the players got too linear, you go up the court and down the court and that's it; I always felt like the old games were a sandbox and you could move around the courts at will.

I should point out that I don't hate these games, they just don't make me feel comfortable playing them. Then again, EA and 2k can't appeal to me and abandon the thousands of other gamers who like the direction the games are going in (although at this point maybe it'd be worth it for EA to try... anything new, really), so I understand why the changes being made aren't the ones I'd prefer to see.

Man, this makes me want EA Sports BIG to come back. NBA Street was so awesome.

Also, does EA own the rights to NHL Hitz now since they have Blitz? Cause that needs to make a comeback for this new generation.

They really do just need to do NBA Street Vol 4. Lets pretend Homecourt didn't happen.

SCE needs to bring NBA The Inside. That was better competition to 2k than Live ever was.