I remember as a kid having a complete and utter disdain for basketball video games. "Why not just go outside and actually play?", I figured. "You're never going to be able to control a shot like you can outside so it's all just going to depend on the timing of when you hit and release the button." I proved this in an extreme sense during a ski trip playing NBA Live '96 when ski conditions weren't so good. I'd let my opponent choose any team, any team at all, and I'd always take the Atlanta Hawks (because my main man, Spud Webb was still on the team). The only catch was that I'd just pop in the Hawks 3rd string center, an unknown rookie by the name of Todd Mundt.
Now, Todd had a very brief NBA career, as you can see by his stats. His NBA Live '96 career was something totally different, in our circle, at least. Todd became the MVP of the league. I must have played 15-20 games and I won ALL of them, simply by taking Mundt out to the 3 point line and bombing 3s, which everyone laughed at. I soon got his pattern and his sweet spot down, however, and I started killing people. He'd catch fire (Live '96 had that feature) and then he'd just drain MORE 3s. Eventually they'd stop laughing and have to double team him (because you could pump fake the AI chumps for days), which would leave speedy Spud Webb free to tear by everyone and dunk on them. Game Over. Eventually, they banned me from using Todd Mundt. I explained to them that it didn't matter who I used. This was why basketball games weren't any good unless they were like NBA Jam. They were bound to suck because they weren't anywhere close to real, so you might as well just have them be arcade-style. At least that way you weren't expecting a simulation and ending up with a joke.
So, it's the year 2004 and here we are, 8 versions later. They gotta have this stuff down by now, right? Well, let me put it to you this way. I've played 12 games online. Shaq's hit a 3 in every one of them.
Gameplay
I'm just going to whiz through this stuff. Most of this is going to get ignored anyway, because the gripes section for NBA Live 2004 is going to be bigger than any I've written so far. In fact, I'd probably guess that this would be my longest review, period.
So, first off you've got your selection of Game Modes. You can play a game of 1 on 1, fire up a quick exhibition game, play a season, or play an enhanced season by going into Dynasty ModeTM. There's no "Franchise" or "GM" mode all by itself. The closest you'll get is Dynasty ModeTM. You don't have to actually play the games you can just simulate those and make the GM moves. I have to say, the novelty of cutting a player and watching him dejectedly walk out of the organization's office in street clothes is a great sight to see. Take THAT Horace Grant!
The basics of NBA Live 2004 go something like this: R1 to Turbo and L2 to Direct Pass (except when inbounding for some unknown reason) as well as Direct Switch on Defense. The D-Pad calls for basic plays. L1 will back down a defender, and X passes. Here's the nifty part: O shoots, and Square dunks. It's interesting with the separation of the two buttons because you aren't constantly cursing out your player for taking a lay-up when the dunk is easily available in a crucial moment.
The Right Analog stick puts you into Freestyle mode. Rock it from left to right, and your player wil execute a similar dribble. Quick motions from left to right will result in rapid crossover dribbles. Forward-Forward will jab step, and Back-Back will perfom a step back, good for those stormy nights where you need a little space to "Enjoy the Rain".
The Triangle button does a Jump Stop. The EA Sports team calls it a Pro Hop, but there's a problem with that. You see, a hop is illegal in basketball. A hop is jumping on one foot and landing on that same foot. The Jump Stop is when you are in a standard stride (running is merely a series of small jumps) and you simply bring the back foot forward while it's in the air (dragging it would be a travel), so that they both land at the same time. If you land on one foot (i.e. hop) it's traveling, and a turnover. Land with both, it's a Jump Stop, and it allows you to quickly and legally change direction. EA's confusion over these terms makes me question how much they actually play or follow basketball, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, folks.
As far as the gameplay in motion goes, most basketball games end up falling into 1 of 2 two categories:
1) Crossover & Dunk-Fest.
2) Block party.
NBA Live 2004 manages to be both of those at the same time, and yet not have a balance in gameplay. You can crossover and get to the hoop at will as soon as you get the hang of it, if you have a guard with decent ball-handling capability. Once you get the hang of blocking shots, you can block 20 in a game with 5 minute quarters, like I've done with Shaq (22 in a game against the 90's All-Stars at the highest difficulty setting).
Power offense versus power defense..who wins? The defense, of course (with a caveat). NBA Live 2004 has abysmal clipping. To offset that they incorporate bounding bubbles. You can set the size of these in the options. I figured, since they weren't doing their damn jobs ANYWAY (I was still clipping INTO people), why not just shut them off? If you leave them on, each player gets a force field around them, and you'll end up seeing freaky crap like Shaq curving in midair around Steve Nash to let him in for a lay-up. So turn that stupid setting down to 0 and save yourself a lot of agony. Anyway, when you do that, you swat people for days. If you're playing the computer, though, you can still drive right to the rack.
The death of the mid-range jumper is still in effect. Players who have built a career making medium range shots that are inside the 3 point line and yet not in the paint, will find that they are totally USELESS in this game. This holds true even if they are, oh, say, about to break the league's career scoring record. If it's not a 3 and it's not a layup or dunk, don't shoot it.
Anyone here ever play point guard in an organized league? What's the first rule the coach tries to drill into your head? "Never leave your feet to pass." Apparently, in the NBA, they're big boys and are totally able to handle that. Passing in NBA Live 2004 is the biggest joke of all. Every point guard will jump to make a standard entry pass. If you just hit X instead of using the Direct Pass, you are seriously asking to just throw the ball to the other team. I'm not even kidding. The only reason the Direct Pass makes it through is that you actually KNOW who you're passing the ball to, while the Standard pass will almost invariably give the ball to the opposing team.
Using the direct pass doesn't make a better pass, and nobody seems to be able to throw a simple, crisp pass. Instead of your point guard hitting your player in stride, they'll either arc the pass, making your player reach, or jump for it, kindly allowing the defense to swarm in on the ball. This is why your point guard will either end up crossing up his defender and scoring all your points or executing the 1-pass offense.
Graphics
There are some really nice touches in the game. I like the way every arena has been intricately modeled. I like the way you can select from any jersey your team's ever worn. I like the way you can customize your players and teams with your shoes of choice.
I don't like the fact that this has the worst intro of any EA Live game, completely eschewing any actual NBA footage in lieu of having players tell you that they're in the game, announcers tell you that they're in the game, groups of players introduce themselves as being in the game, and *1* gameplay intro, which is backed by Chingy's NBA Live 2004 Remix of his idiotic song "Right Thurr". Not the way to get me amped up about the game at all. Though, I have to say, Earl Boykins' intro clip is pretty funny.
The intros before the game are supposed to be like TV where they highlight a player and say he's going to be key for the game. Then they make up some highlight reels of that player's past success against the team he's playing tonight. Lakers first game of the season is against the Mavs. The spotlighted player? Karl Malone. So then they roll footage of Malone owning the Mavs in a Lakers jersey. Malone just signed with the Lakers this year. He should have been in a Jazz jersey, unless the Mavs volunteered to get dunked on for the "studio footage".
The players, as always, look like crap. Nobody does the eye thing right, and so the players all look like they just took their entire year's salary and spent it on one big drug binge right before the game. They're always just staring into space. Players still slap rim, and they have really nice rectangle hands. The clipping is either nonexistent or supported by bounding bubbles that don't always detect, either. These graphics aren't a mixed bag...they're bad.
Audio
The music is up and down...mostly down. There are a few tracks I like on the soundtrack to the game, but nearly all of them involve some really, really forced references to EA Sports or basketball. Examples:
Da Brat: "I play the center or the point guard." My ass you play center. You'd look like Jeff Van Gundy stuck to Alonzo Mourning's leg. Like you couldn't come up with, "I play the SHOOTING or the point guard." It's the same number of syllables, it doesn't wreck the meter, and you don't sound like a dumbass.
Black Eyed Peas: "Come up with dunks to make your head jerk. We making the whole court short circuit." The court's not electrified. What basketball have you been watching? That one scene from Escape from L.A.? By the way, if the best lyrics you can come up with involve you saying "Higgy-higgy-higgy-higgy-higgy-higgy-higgy-high" and then rhyming it with something equally nonsensical, pick your final paycheck up because you're fired. By the way, your watch is fast...your 15 minutes of fame was up an hour ago.
Other cuts by Red Cafe and Freeway are just so much crap that it's hard to pick out exactly where they went wrong because the entire song sucks.
The best tracks are "Ghetto Musick" by Outkast, which throws in its NBA Live 2004 reference into an inobtrusive part of the song, Mobb Deep's "Another Victory" is cool, and the Dilated Peoples song "Love and War" is really groovy until you get to a point in the chorus and hear someone overdub, "E-E-E-E-E-E-E-EA Sports" in the MOST inappropriate place possible, especially since the song has nothing to do with basketball.
Jermaine Dupri's track "Live Like Me" flows pretty good but it's hard to listen to some guy talking about how good he is at basketball when he got schooled by Lil' Bow Wow on MTV. Twista's track probably has the best hook on it, but the main chorus doesn't live up to the good start.
EA does manage to come through in one audio area, and that's the ambiance. If you're at home and Shaq is having a monster night, the crowd will start chanting, "Shaq! Shaq! Shaq!" However, if you pass it to Kobe, and he's having a big game, too, they won't chant his name until a change of posession or dead ball. The player's talk to each other, and this part of the game's sound more than makes up for the fact that you have to turn off everything else to fully enjoy it. It's too bad this is only 1/3 of the sound.
The announcers are a whole separate issue, addressed in the gripes section.
The Gripes Section
This is going to get long, so I'm going to break it up into sub-sections:
Announcing Gaffes
When playing Phoenix, a run & gun team, Marv and Mike kept talking about them playing a transition game, but that not really being their style. I thought this was odd until I scored on them again, and Marv told me that Detroit was just going to have to play better defense.
11 seconds into the 3rd quarter against Golden State, they hit a shot on their first posession, and the announcers commented on how disappointing on offense they'd been...this quarter. I've had Marv Albert yell out one of his trademark "serves up a FACIAL!" on a lay-up.
They're also remarkably vague at points during the game. Stuff like, "These two teams play different styles of basketball. One of them likes to run, while the other prefers a slower game", "The other team has to get back in transition", and "That's why they're down as many points as they are."
Other sites have noted that the announcers offer up very specific details but they offer the SAME specific details EVERY GAME. I mean, just execute a Freestyle move. Marv will comment on what a GORGEOUS move it was even if it made you dribble out of bounds. Play with the Lakers. Dunk with Kobe. By the third time you've dunked, I'm almost positive you'll hear a clip that starts with, "Marv, he's still as spectacular as when he won the dunk contest way back in '97. It's hard to believe he's a seasoned veteran at such an early age."
Now play as the Dallas Mavs. Dunk with Michael Finley. Marv Albert will ask The Czar if he's insinuating that Finley might have gotten some pointers from a certain other Michael when they played their now famous 1-on-1 game back in high school. This gets old amazingly quick.
You have to play every team in the league at least twice, and even with 5 minute quarters, Marv and Mike will exhaust all their little anecdotes within the span of a regulation game. This means you'll have to hear them ALL OVER AGAIN once you play the team once more. Not to mention the fact that you're going to have to hear this about YOUR selected team for 82 games of a season, plus the Playoffs if you get there.
You also get a bunch of useless garbage like, "Iverson's shooting 60% from the floor right now!" and it'll be the first quarter, and Iverson's 3 of 5. Nobody cares that the guy shooting 1 of 2 for the game is shooting 50% because that stat is irrelevant with that low a number of shots. Seriously, it's not that hard to filter this stuff out so it doesn't get this awkward.
We all know that announcers are way overrated, but I don't know why they feel the need to go out of their way to show us how easily replaceable they are. You could get a bunch of canned responses and play them instead of hiring broadcasters for the year. Just have them come in at the beginning of each year, and say the new player names. It'd be a hell of a money saving maneuver. Honestly, if this is the best EA can do with announcers, I expect that I'll just be turning them off year after year after year.
Online Play
Imagine a game where split-second timing determined EVERYTHING. Now imagine playing that game online with just the slightest bit of lag. Doesn't sound very fun, does it?
Well, get ready for NBA Live 2004 Online, baby!
First off, for the reasons I mention above, nearly nobody will want to play a game with you. You'll either find that their connection to you is lagged to hell, or they'll think the same about you. Out of 12 games, I've had maybe 4 where I'd say the lag was bearable. When the game's laggy, it affects EVERYTHING. You shoot a 3...oops, you let go of the button way too late...BRICK.
Free throw meter going back and forth...oh wait, you didn't really stop it in the box. CLANG!
Pass the ball inside...but wait, your man's already been doubled and trapped while the server tried to send the information back to you...turnover.
When the game's running smooth, it's pretty good fun. When it's lagged even a little, you're seriously considering putting a controller through the TV.
Here's a fun thing to note about player matching. EA's Live service doesn't tell you how many people are connected in the game. Meaning with a multitap, you could be walking into a game with 4 computer controlled players, and your opponent for the game will have 4 humans and 1 computer character. You don't know until you're actually playing the game. Complete and utter garbage right there. You can have your teammate break for the hoop and catch the alley-oop, or you can play the guards tight while he drifts back into the paint and gets ready to deny any shipments headed towards the hoop. The benefits to having more human players are endless even in just a 2-on-1 situation. It's almost unforgivable for EA to allow this big of a mismatch to occur in the game.
Rules? Who Needs Those?
Back in the 2001-2002 season the NBA instituted some rule changes. One of those being the removal of the traditional Illegal Defense rule, and the revision of it to include the Defensive 3 Seconds in the Paint rule.
There were a couple other changes, like changing the 10 second backcourt violation to 8, and another one, which the folks at EA Sports seemed to completely ignore:
From the NBA Rulebook:
"Section XVI-Five-Second Back-to-the-Basket Violation
An offensive player in his frontcourt below the free throw line extended shall not be permitted to dribble with his back or side to the basket for more than five seconds.
The count ends when (1) the player picks up the ball, (2) dribbles above the free throw line extended or (3) a defensive player deflects the ball away.
PENALTY: Loss of ball. The ball is awarded to the opposing team out-of-bounds on the nearest sideline at the free throw line extended."
The was dubbed the Charles Barkley Rule, or alternately the Mark Jackson Rule. They had the annoying habit of taking the ball at the 3-point line and backing their defender all the way into the paint before shooting. This made games they were involved in very, very boring to watch. EA must like it. Because this rule is not, say it with me now, "In the game".
Another rule they've omitted is this:
"Section II-Shooting of Free Throw
a. The free throw(s) awarded because of a personal foul shall be attempted by the offended player.
EXCEPTIONS:
(1) If the offended player is injured or is ejected from the game and cannot attempt the awarded free throw(s), the opposing coach shall select, from his opponent's bench, the player who will replace the injured player. That player will attempt the free throw(s) and the injured player will not be permitted to re-enter the game. The substitute must remain in the game until the next dead ball."
Very key. Let's just say for example, oh, Dirk Nowitzki drives the lane and gets a ticky-tack foul called on Karl Malone. Nowitzki severely tweaks an ankle. It's late in the game and Dallas is out of fouls and timeouts. He can't shoot the free throw. I, the opposing coach, now get to choose who they have to shoot the free throw with, and better yet, that player has to stay in the game.
So I can say, well, maybe Travis Best makes those free throws but I bet I get those back on the defensive end, when you have to put a guard on Malone. Even if you foul me, I still get the 2 points back. You're going to have to stop the ball somehow because you can't call a time out to take Best out of the game and put a real forward back in unless you have posession.
But not in Live 2004 you can't. It's not, "In the game."
This doesn't happen very often in the ACTUAL NBA, (you know, the league this game is supposedly based off of) but in NBA Live 2004, at the default level for injuries, the only time I've seen a player get injured is on a shooting foul. So, as you can imagine, nearly every time an injury occurs, this particular situation pops up as well.
However, the most heinous rule error I've seen in this game yet is the fact that blocked shots are not counted as missed field goals. Er?! Excuse me?! If you put up 8 shots and only one of them goes in because Yao swatted the rest into the seats, you missed 7 shots. You're not shooting 100%, you're shooting 12.5%. Shot attempts when a foul occurs are not counted, but blocks (even Goal Tending, which is counted as one shot attempted and made) ALWAYS count as a field goal attempt.
I didn't go looking for these errors, these are only the ones that jumped out and bit me. The blocked shots issue came up because NBA Live 2004 rewards you if you go a quarter or a full game without missing a shot. I was 8 for 8 up until the point Kobe got blocked by Eric Dampier. I got the rebound, dunked it, and the announcers (and the on-screen pop-up) told me I hadn't missed a shot. I was shocked. I paused and checked the stats. Sure enough, Dampier had a block recorded and Kobe had perfect field goal percentage.
EA, please learn how to make a basketball game that's actually based off of basketball next year. Buy an NBA rulebook and have the lead designer thoroughly study it, please.
Other Random Bad Crap
I looked on Gamerankings.com and I saw that nobody had given this game lower than an 8.0. 8?! What the hell were these other guys playing?! Did I miss something?
Clipping is an absolute mess and this RUINS the entire game. The whole point of playing a simulation-style basketball game is that it's supposed to be closer to real than, say, NBA Jam or NBA Street. So, when you're playing with your pal and following a dunk you get an EA Sports replay showing him dunking through the backboard or having your shot go through a player's elbow (It regsiters enough to make a sound in the replay, but doesn't change the shot's course at all) or zipping an outlet pass through Gary Payton's TORSO (I guess that's why he's "The Glove", and not "The Torso"), you start to lose respect for this game faster than you lost it for the girl you knew back in high school who now strips her way through college.
If a ball is knocked out of bounds and you have an AI controlled player near it, he'll run for it and catch it...out of bounds! Probably half of the turnovers that occur in the average game are due to this. Speaking of out of bounds, that's where you'll pick up another large chunk of turnovers. You have to hit X to inbound the ball. The computer, or other online player KNOWS where you're passing the ball so what will frequently happen is that you'll tap X to toss the ball in, he'll camp in front of the guy he knows you're passing to and just mash the steal button. The Direct Pass function DOES NOT WORK on the inbounds pass. WHY IS THIS?! It makes no sense! What it does do is switch the player you intend to pass the ball to, and you still have to hit X to pass it off!
This isn't usually our thing here at Netjak (because we don't have the resources...this is taken with my digital camera) but I felt I had to post this just so everyone will know I'm not just hallucinating this stuff. Check out this movie here. It starts with Payton leaping to throw an entry pass and what follows is straight out of the Twilight Zone. Watch Malone go up for the uncontested dunk, then change his mind and spin 180 degrees to face the OPPOSING BASKET and dunk INTO Lafrentz's hand. Un-freaking-believable. Even if I'm too far under the basket he should just lay that up on the other side, not face the other basket. This is partially caused by EA figuring out blocked shots in the wrong order.
You'll notice a lot of times that your player all of a sudden goes up a LOT higher than he normally does. This means you're getting rejected. It's like the game has some special "you're going to get swatted" animation that doesn't ever play for your player until you're about to get blocked.
Everyone else talks about this "10-man motion capture" that EA used to make it look like everyone else on the court was doing stuff. What they do most of the time is stand still and jostle or stand still and not jostle. My favorite parts are when you'll have a guy run out to the top to set a pick for you, and then RUN AWAY the instant you approach. What are you standing there for? You feel the need to pose like Jim Carrey in the Cable Guy? I think what EA did was motion capture all the plays on offense and defense, like a pick and roll, etc. But, since most passes get picked off because of the players leaping to pass, you're mainly going to break people down from the top of the key (you try and back someone down and all it takes is a double team to get you to lose the ball). When you're doing this, everyone stands around, violating another coach maxim, "MOVE WITHOUT THE BALL!" That one comes right after, "Follow your shot!" which NBA Live 2004 ignores as well.
Overall
The Online Mode adds a full point to this, because it's fun to play against people from all over when the lag isn't dominating, so if you don't have network capability, take that point back off and you'll have an idea of how little fun you're going to be having when you're playing this all by your lonesome. The game mechanics are whack, the game doesn't follow the rules of the sport, the clipping is horrid, and the graphics and music are weak. I've already broken down everything as best I can.
So, to wrap this up, how about another Chingy remix?
I hate the way you do that right thurr.
Come up with a game system that don't wuuurk. (Don't wuuurk!)
I hate the way you do that right thurr.
Just disgrace Magic and Larry Buurrd.
