Customer Reviews

NBA Live 2004

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ea sports has done it again. they've produced another overhyped, overrated, and overbought game. not that i'm an easports hater....i buy this game every year; and am more disspointed every year. easports introduces some spectacular new features each year, while taking away several that it had last year or the year before. the end resut it another mediocre game.

on the good side, this year is probably the best nba live i have ever seen. the freestyle is much improved, for once, the players actually shoot halfway realalistic percentages, and the 10 man thingy is incredible. there are struggles for loose balls, incredible graphics and a much improved franchise mode.

but the franchise mode...as good as it is, that's where the flaws start. the computer led teams never have the money to resign thier superstar players. this means that tim duncan and every other good free agent will, after a year or two, will not be resigned by thier team, or signed by any other team, and will spend the rest of thier career as a free agent. do you want a franchise where all the good players never get on a team (unless you sign them, making your team an incredible powerhouse every year...which you CAN do). you'd think easports would make a franchise mode where the GOOD players get on the teams.

also, the computer pretty much lets you destroy it for the first 3 quarters, only to put together an amazing comeback victory (or near victory) in the fourth...EVERY time. seriously. i'm talking 20 point leads gone (frequently). this happens EVERY time...and not just to me.

here are the other flaws: it is nearly impossible to go up for a shot and then change to a pass, it sometimes forgets to sub the guys you told it to, people "wrestle" for the ball WAY too often, the game has a little place to see how much your players improved in trining camp, and it is ALWAYS "0", crossovers don't get you to change direction, and are generally a bad idea to do, trading players is very akward (it's hard to see how good the other player is, how much he's improving, how much time is left on his contract, etc.).

the good: they are actually (kind of) trying this year. having two shoot buttons is awsome. trading draft picks is great, gameplay is great for the mostpart, almost everything is adjustible (gamespeed, fatigue effect, ect.)

in the end, this game comes close to being REALLY good...and with a few minutes of extra work, they could have done it. but that's the amazing thing...now that the end is clearly in sight, now that they are actually trying to be good, they stop just short of it. and nothing other than some sort of secret pledge to mediocrity could have kept them from doing so.

Hey everybody... ok virus review man has NO idea what the heck he's talking about. This game is great.. perfectly smooth gameplay great commentary and sound.. only bad thing is the freestyle control that doesn't control very well at all! dribbling you can do a few moves, I'm going to try the tutorials but so far I haven't figured this thing out!!! It really is an awesome game though DEFINETLY worth buying!!!

Can't play it without the game pad, so I could't play it yet.

There are some ups and some downs of nba live of 2004. First of all, when you take the ball upcourt, you are sometimes met by a player and you can not get around them. You always have to pass it to another player. Second of all, you can never pick it off when the other team passes it in. You can be standing right in front of the player the ball is going to and you can press and press the steal button to no effect. The upside to the game is the awesome dunking. I'm glad to see that someone at EA Sports knows what it takes to make people buy their products. One last thing: One thing that pisses me off is that when you throw an alley-oop pass, when the player that is supposed to be dunking it is guarded, he always misses the dunk. I have to yell out loud when that happens. Overall, it's a pretty good game.

OK,a previous reviewer said that this game is "terrible", do not buy it, smash the CD into pieces etc. Well, he was right.

I own NBA Live 2003 too. That one was terrible too. Did I think that 2004 would be an improvement? No. It was clear ever since that the people who develop this are no real basketball fans. So some things in the game would change, but no overall improvement would be made. I knew it. I was right.

Let me give you an example. Have you ever gone to a concert of a favorite band and see many people who only know a couple of songs, and that's all they expect to listen to? Well, this is similar. These guys do not really know basketball. I doubt they 've ever played it, even as amateurs. They have only watched it on TV. No, not whole games. Just the highlights.
So if ALL you like of basketball is the fastbreaks and blocking dunks, then this game is for you. Otherwise, stay away.

Sure, some things have changed since Live 2003. Defense is slightly better. The freestyle system is worse. Player motion is worse. The Dynasty Mode is even worse and more arcadish than Live 2003's Franchise Mode. There are huge bugs in it too, and no patch for them yet.

Anyway, a good inclusion was the brand new "slider system", where you can actually adjust things like fouling frequency, block frequency, double team frequency etc. This is good, but even tampering with everything is not enough to create a simulation out of this parody-of-a-game. It is just not a simulation.

The new "10 player awarness" thingy has actually done things worse. Players usually choose to move in completely counter-intuitive manners. And of course, they refuse to mark their man and stop the fastbreaks. I mean, it's really ridiculous.

A last comment. Have the developers done all these "mistakes" on purpose?
Yes, most of them. I cannot believe that they can't program the damn thing not to go on fastbreaks all the time. I refuse to believe that they couldn't make a game where scores would be realistic in the "Simulation Mode" (scores are too high). They are just unable to appreciate real basketball (or don't care enough to).
But there are also mistakes that show programming incompetence. The "10 player awareness thingy" (or whatever they call it) is just poorly programmed.

So...why did I buy this game again? Oh, yes, there is no competitor for PC, and wanted a basketball game to play. Too bad for me, I guess.
In conclusion, if you hated Live 2003, you are going to hate this one too. If you have never played Live 2003, you are a lucky man, do not play this one either.

NBA Live 2004 is the newest randition of EA Sports's dynasty of basketball game titles. This one is even better than last year's exceedingly wonderful title, NBA Live 2003. I feature the patented freestyle controls and allows you to use them on players that aren't touching the ball. EA calls this their 10-man freestyle control system. It works wonderfully. They've revamped the franchise mode and renamed it the dynasty mode. You can now trade draft picks, amoung other grand improvements. As always, it feature the NBA greats and have updated the rosters. This is just a tiny bit of why I think NBA Live 2004 is truly the King of Hoops.

Actually, I had bought this game in 2003. This is the second
time I bougt it. Why? Because it's just so much fun, and the
old one was worn out because I played it too much.
Recommend it to anyone. Eventhough it's an old game.

Hey, wus up ya'll. I wanted to write to easports on this one, but I guess this will have to do. I was wondering if you could send it to them for me. Anyway I love this game, but there's only one flaw. I'm a basketball player, and when I played madden I noticed that you can create a team, design jersy's, colors, stadiums and everything. I would like to do this on a b-ball game more than I would on a football game. I wanted to ask EAsports to put a create a team option on nba live 2005 for a brotha. With color options for the uni's & all that stuff. Oh yeah, what ever happened to the three point contest? I miss that stuff man. Don't even get me started on a Dunk contest baby. I'm a guy with some new ideas for this game, I mean, I like what ya'll are doin' with the 100+ shoe selection and the 40 differen't headbands and all that stuff, but this is another idea.
Could ya please just think about? Aight I'm out.

One of your #1 fans West Alston.

So many people say that NBA Live 2004 is a bad game. This is not true. Yes, it's true, there are some flaws to the game, but overall, the game is extremely well put together. However, here are some things that the people at EA Sports need to work on.

1. Players need to be able to get back on fast breaks better. When I say this, I mean your players, not the computer's players. It seems that the computer can always get back on fast breaks much quicker than you or your team mates can.

2. The people at Ea Sports shouldn't do stupid things, like making your player miss a WIDE OPEN DUNK, and the computer hitting a completely contested shot. This does happen when you go up by 10 or more points, so just remember this.

3. The people at EA sports need to understand that when a man gets beat, another man can't come out of no where to block a dunk. Yes, it can happen sometimes, but with this game, it happens frequently.

4. EA Sports needs to create a downloadable patch to this game so that people can update their rosters and make the season exactly how it is now.
5. EA Sports developers need to find a way to get the crowd sound more realistic. They need to make them sound like they are actually at a basketball game. This needs to be done, especially when the team that you are controling makes it to the playoffs. If your team does bad, the developers should make it sound and look like there are less people at the game. This , and all of the other things that I have mentioned so far would make the game much more fun to play.

Everything else about this game was done extremely well. The commentary was good, and the graphics are also very good. The only other thing that the people at EA Sports need to work on is finding a way to do the starting line ups in every game and make the anouncers shine the spotlight on which ever player they want after the starting line up is finished. They also should try including pre-season games in dinesty mode. And when you substitute a player, you should be able to see him coming off the bench. It would make it look more realistic.

I loved this game just like the 2003 and 2001 versions, I would hate to add up the hours spent on it. This year there is one flaw (that occured int he past two versions as well)

When the game is on the line and Im down by 2, i WANT TO FOUL! But I cant. The computer does this all the time, but users cant. It is very annoying. I feel that this is the only flaw and hope that it can be fixed for 2005