I honestly never thought NBA Live would be good again. There were years there where it disappeared completely as crippling bugs and generally sub-par gameplay finally took their toll on public opinion and sales. Even their rebranding to NBA Elite was a complete catastrophe, leading EA to re-embrace the "Live" moniker. This once-great series was in shambles for a decade, arguably longer. Despite not having a release last basketball season, the prior couple years have shown at least glimpses of promise. I'd never buy any of the recent releases, but I definitely looked at them and could see the devs probably knew what was wrong and they seemed to be at least attempting to course correct.
This year might be the first year since NBA Live 2005 where I played a Live game and actually wanted to continue playing. It's well-documented history at this point how NBA 2K5 and its terrifying cover of Ben Wallace released at $20 against Live's $50, and 2K being a better game, began its slow-yet-inevitable crushing of the NBA Live brand as anything anyone could possibly care about. But as previously mentioned, NBA Live 18 seems to be headed in a direction of being legitimately good, if the recently released demo is any indication. What's better is that they're offering to knock $20 off of their game for anyone who preorders--something that may be seen as a scummy preorder practice by some, yet I'd actually argue the demo is robust enough that people can know what they're getting, and that argument probably doesn't hold much water in this case. Anyway! Funny that Live is attempting take a page out of 2K's book there. But on to the game itself.
Let's be real clear up front: I'm not of the opinion that this game is some amazing work of digital basketball art. A lot of my opinion on this game also needs to be read knowing that the only basketball game I've been playing for any serious amount of time for the past 12 or so years has been NBA 2K, minus I guess some of the PSP Live games in like 07 which I played quite a bit of because the PSP was a sad console with sad basketball options. So a lot of my fondness for what I've seen in Live 18 so far could be because it's something different. That said I've dabbled in Live out of curiosity pretty much every year, and everything about 18 seems like a genuinely super surprising leap forward.
Animations are huge in basketball games. If the players aren't moving in a way we perceive as correct, it makes the whole game feel wonky. Shoes need to feel like they're gripping the court. Bounce passes need to feel like gravity is a thing that exists in the game. Rims need to have the right amount of bounce when a ball hits them. When a player goes up for a dunk, they can't look like they're floating by wires up to the rim. Crossovers need to carry weight and player momentum on cuts and spins needs to be spot on. These are all points of failure for Live in the past, and by contrast things that 2K have largely done pretty well. Playing Live 18, It's a little disheartening because you can still totally see what seem like remnants of NBA Live's past. Certain dunk animations still feel floaty or wrong, jumpshot animations seem a little off, ball physics aren't always on point. That said, all of this feels cleaned up to the point where it feels pretty good the majority of the time. The very first thing I noticed when I played the demo was how much player movement and the feel of the action has improved. It feels really good. I'm of the opinion that Live is at the point now where the game is fun to just play, and I can't even describe how huge that is. I legitimately thought Live would never get back to that point, but I'm happy that they have. That's probably the best thing I can say about this game.
Offensive and defensive feel have taken a massive step up. One of the better additions to the game is the way one-on-one defense works. When you lock on to a ball handler, it'll show you a little arrow indicating the general direction you want to go to cut off an offensive move. So if Kevin Durant is crossing over to his left and trying to drive to the hoop, you as LeBron James will see a subtle arrow at the feet of Durant indicating he's trying to drive left. If you react quickly enough you'll cut off his move and foil his attempt to put Tristan Thompson on a poster. This may seem a little arcadey, but in practice it actually feels and looks pretty natural. Crossovers, behind-the-backs, spin moves, in-and-outs, stepbacks, and eurosteps are all simple enough to pull off once you know how, which isn't a guarantee in any basketball game. I'm interested to play against a human as opposed to just the AI, because dribble moves feel good and effective, but then the lock-on defense also seems really effective, so I wonder how that balance ends up feeling.
The way things play aside, everything around that experience seems to be coming together pretty nicely, too. The main crux of the game is that you're creating a character and not only playing through a career in the NBA, but simultaneously kind of having this whole other street ball career. It has RPG elements of earning skill points and unlocking moves and raising skill points as well as unlocking gear. It's similar to what 2K has been doing, but at first glance it seems better. The street ball and the NBA play are more tightly integrated into a singular story and it just seems much more built out, but not in a way that makes it feel like NBA Street or anything too wild. We'll see how their storytelling holds up, but honestly you can't do much worse than the stories 2K has been stuffing into their career modes lately. Yikes. I love you 2K, but yikes.
Live also has the WNBA license this year, which is a neat addition. It's reminiscent of 07 or 08--whichever year Live was the first to bring European teams into NBA games. They're doing a good job to broaden their appeal to as many people as possible, and luckily for them they seem to have chosen a good year to have a wider audience of eyes on them. I just wonder if you can play NBA vs. WNBA matches. Or mix and match men and women onto one team and have them take on Spain's national team or something. Lots of stupid potential.
The worst part about NBA Live 18 is having to listen to Jeff Van Gundy call the action. Ugh. That said, he does represent a larger positive for the series--something that they've always had, really--and that's big-time connections. Live has had full ESPN branding and integration in their games for years and years. They're able to get people like Stephen A. Smith (hate that guy, but you know) to record video of himself in an ESPN studio talking about your created player to provide a cool and realistic type of story cutscene. EA has been partnering to bring cool stuff like this into Live for a long time, but this may be the first year since they'e started doing it where the game holds up its end of the bargain.
This is all very exciting. Again, there are still cracks and seams in Live 18 where past years are trying their best to claw through the polished up exterior, but the game already seems pretty dang good, and if they can keep up this kind of progress year after year, then 2K is going to be feeling the heat. And at $40 for a preorder, I'm actually thinking about giving Live first shot over 2K this year--I absolutely cannot stress enough just how much that fact blows my mind.
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