NBA Live 16
NBA Live 16
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Sports
Genre:
PEGI: E
Comments:
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.