Every year Electronic Arts and EA
Sports delivers the best Football and Hockey games with the Madden NFL
and the NHL series’ respectfully. When NBA Live is released, it isn’t
always the gamers first choice in basketball games genre but every year
EA Sports does better and better on the hoops franchise. This year is no
different as NBA Live 16 is much better than NBA Live 15;
unfortunately, there is still much more room for improvement moving
forward.
Before even beginning NBA Live 16, I was intrigued and prompted
multiple times to download and use the NBA Live 16 Companion App to
create your pro player’s look and bio using the GameFaceHD technology.
After downloading the app and using it, it was an intense struggle.
First you have to find a perfect spot with lighting. Then you need to
ensure your face is in between the white half oval figure for the
initial photo of your pro player. This first step took over ten minutes
before finally moving on. You then need to move your neck left and right
as prompted to take the rest of the photo for your GameFaceHD pro
player. Once all of the photos were taken, there was about a five minute
load of the final product which didn’t look anything like me. I made
some final touches with editing the hair and facial hair and when it was
all said and done, the pro player didn’t look anything like me and more
importantly, NBA Live 16 didn’t receive my player.
I ended up creating a generic player on NBA Live 16, without the
companion app and finally after thirty five minutes of playing around
with the app and never seeing my player uploaded to the game I was very
disappointed but finally on the court with a match up. I first went to
the Be a Pro Mode and tried my luck with the newly created virtual me.
The controls are a bit difficult but you can get into it with some
practice and through time on the court. It’s the standard, [a] to pass
and [x] to shoot but holding shoot to the point of when you can get a
good shot off is key. The game also gives you hints if you release too
late or too early so you can work on your jump shot in later attempts.
NBA Live 16 suffers with lack of available modes to play. There isn’t
much improvement from last season’s game and the most frustrating point
is the grade system they use on players overall score, the tracking of
performance and scouting in season and off season. You are still not
able to sign a player mid-season even if they are a restricted player to
your team. They will become an unrestricted free agent before
re-joining your team in the off season.
EA Sports introduces two new modes in NBA Live 16 with Pro-Am and
Summer Circuit which are both online modes. During these modes you go to
play competitively with your created pro player. Pro-Am lets players
play is five on five pickup games and the servers work well with the
online mode but due to lack of users currently there isn’t much fun to
be had just yet with this mode. Summer Circuit is a challenge based mode
that puts you in a co-op team to face off against A.I. match ups that
get progressively harder as you progress. During this mode there are
unique player rewards at stake and I would say this was one of the modes
I ended up using quite often during my run.
NBA Live 16, does warrant a play through if you can get your hands on
a friends copy, a rental or demo before you make the purchase. While
playing this year’s EA Sports version of NBA all I could think was what
the competitors version is like. I tried to steer clear and have an open
mind and did enjoy NBA Live 16 at times but not for a long term play.
NBA Live 16 is available now on Xbox One as well as Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.
NBA Live 16 - 65% Story/Features --- 70% Visuals ------ 65% Sound--- 65% Achievement Variety --- 65% Playability --- Will it last on your play list for more than six months? No---65% DP Overall Rating
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