More Live 09

Well, the Team Xbox Review is up so screw it.

I'm not diong a full review here but know this:

Live 09 is MUCH better than ANYTHING EA has done with a basketball game in years -- going back to the glory days of NBA Live 2000.

Dynamic DNA is a FANTASTIC idea. Just brilliant. My issue is that is doesn't do deep enough on defense. Yeah, so KG turns right 33% of the time off the high post -- but what about Boston's defense? How often do they double? I don't see that in here.

Still, great, great idea doing this DNA thing.

More quick hitters:

No more rebounds scooped up off the floor. Woo hoo!

The guy that previewed it for OS says that fouls are too infrequent and that foul shots are too easy. I disagree on both counts. Maybe I need more practice but Rondo at the line -- clank city. And I see plenty of fouls even out of the box. I had Perkins foul out this morning. A lot of loose ball fouls, too, which is GREAT -- and a rarity in basketball games.

I like the added turnovers -- teams throw the ball away more often now. Love that. A team might even hit double digit turnovers in a game. Imagine that.

The graphics, IMO, are very average. The animations -- not very good. NBA 2K8 looks better than Live '09 and it's not even close. The play by play does little for me either.

I'm having a lot of fun but my #1 concern is that the game fails the Garnett test. NBA 2K8 failed this test, too, mind you.

Even on Superstar level I can DOMINATE with KG in the post. Just destroy teams. And the problem is that the AI fails to front him -- it's WAY too easy to throw the ball on the block to your C/PF. And KG is so good that when it gets it low -- it's 100% money. Right now I have a game on SS lvl paused and it's the end of the 1st and KG has 19.

Can slicers fix this? We'll see.

So, after several games of testing it out Live '09 is clearly better than anything EA has done in a while, and the franchise is clearly on the right track in what it's trying to do. Better than NBA 2K? We'll see soon enough.