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EA Sports’ basketball sim drops in at a slightly reduced price. You have to love capitalism. For years, yearly sports games have shipped at $50 and no one really questioned the practice. Until Sega and Take-Two decided to team up and release their “2K” line of sport games for a mere $20. EA Sports wasn’t ready to make that big of a drop but NBA Live 2005 is shipping at $40 this year. And no one is complaining since the game is still a superb and ever-flashy basketball title.
You’ll spend much of your time with NBA Live 2005 in the game’s Dynasty mode. Much like NHL 2005, you’ll be updated on events like roster changes and injuries to star players via the PDA, which will beep once it receives a new message and frequently receives new messages. As expected, the game allows you to simulate the games in the season but you can also step in if the game isn’t going how you wanted it to (since the game updates scores by the quarter). Additionally, scores of all games played in the previous day are giving to you.
A major part of the Dynasty mode is still managing new additions to your team. The game allows you to see rough attributes of the players and you can spend points to see more accurate representations of the players. Moreover, you can even invite players to your team for a work out and play as them to accurately gauge whether they will fit in.
The game also includes a new All-Star Weekend mode. Here, you’ll be able to partake in an all star game, three point shoot-out and the dunk competition. The three-point shoot-out is simply taking a player and trying to get as many three-point shots as possible in a minute and isn’t particularly exciting. The dunk competition is much more involved and you’ll be able to pull off possibly hundreds of dunks since you can change many things in them. You can spend countless hours pulling off some crazy, NBA Street-like dunks in the game and even more so perfecting them to get great ratings from the panel of judges.
The Gamecube version of the game does not include online support. However, offline multiplayer support is also included for up four players.
The game of basketball is accurately portrayed in NBA Live 2005. You’ll notice that the players don’t stand around in the game; they are pretty active and move about even when you aren’t controlling them. This adds to the game’s realism quite a bit and is a nice touch. Otherwise, it is reasonably easy to pass, shoot, dunk, and what not and the game gives you the option of manually picking a rebound, tip in or dunk in when you miss a shot. Dunking is quite in depth here and you’re able to change dunks in mid-air if you wish. The game is also quite flashy; particularly in the dribbling thanks to the freestyle dibbling and flashy moves with accompany it.
The game handles very well at all times, which is great considering the in-depth and rather complex moves you’ll be pulling off at times. The Gamecube controller is a bit awkward to use, partly because of the reduced amount of buttons which uses the Z button for both player switching and alley-oop passing.
The game’s visuals are pretty good. The character models are excellent in the dunk competition and the three-point shoot-out. Unfortunately, the Gamecube cannot keep all that visual flair going in a regular five on five game and there is a noticeable decrease in character detail.
The game’s audio component is excellent. The soundtrack is compromised of the usual EA Trax hip-hop flavored tracks, but includes tracks from G-Unit’s Lloyd Banks and newcomer to Eminem’s Shady Records, Stat Quo. The sound effects vividly bring the game to life, as you’ll hear everything from the ball dribbling to those expensive sneakers squeaking in the court. Lastly, the commentary is excellent. The regular commentary comes from Marv Albert and Mike Fratello who provide insightful comments, while Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith provide commentary for the game’s three-point and dun competitions. The Gamecube version offers technically-sound audio thanks to Dolby Pro Logic II support.
When it is all said and done, NBA Live 2005 is a great basketball game with excellent gameplay, and the addition of the all-star weekend is a nice treat. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 1, 2004
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