by Dee4Three on Sat Aug 12, 2017 1:07 pm
I just played for a couple hours, I'm going to list my pros and cons below. However, I want to start off by saying its certainly an improvement over Live 16.
Pros:
- Animations at the hoop are much improved. Some of the adjustments with contact look awesome and realistic. The ball also doesn't sail high in the air awkwardly when it shouldn't (well, a small bit of it still exists, but nothing compared to Live 16)
- Blocking animations are awesome (I trapped the ball on the glass with 2 hands with Draymond Green, and it looked and felt awesome). Blocks with authority also exist, and they feel powerful.
- The post has improved a bit, fadeaways out of the post feel a little better. Spinning into the lane from the post feels a bit better. There will be cons on this as well, see below.
- Defense: I'm impressed overall with the defense, the players seem aware of the surroundings on the floor. I like the physical nature of the game.
- Graphics and atmosphere: Yes, the faces are pretty off sometimes, but the court (with the reflections, lighting) looks awesome, the players look good out there as well. No complaints graphics wise from me.
Cons:
- Reactiveness: Just not on par with 2k, slight delay when I hit a button kills the feeling sometimes. It's not controller lag either, because I don't have it with 2k or Madden
- Passing: Similar to 2k, floaty passes happen a bit often, the ball moves really strange through the air sometimes. The players also do strange body contortions for passes when they don't need to, creating an uneccesary interuption in flow. Lobs are hit or miss, I could be on a 2 on 1 with one of my teammates running right next to me, and I would double tap Y, and my other teammate who was about 15ft further back coming in from the 3 point line would somehow be the recipiant, and the ball would just sail out of bounds or into nowhere land. Bounce passes are slower than they should be a lot of the time.
- Post game: While it has slight improvements, it's still common to see really strange high arcing flicks from the post, of robotic moves that hurt the realism of the game.
- Dribbling: One of my gripes with Live 16 was "small dribbles" or "small moves". This game suffers from the same issue. The stick is not as reactive as I would like for starters, but also... I'd like to feel my crossover with an elite dribbler, I'd like to feel a dribble spin move, a hesitation, a step back. I'd like to feel space being created. The dribbling misses the mark big time here, I feel like I'm doing small dribbles in order to just find slight room to get my defender on my side so he rides me to the hoop.
- Animations: Catch and shoots feel awkward and clunky a lot of the time, as the shooter will catch the ball and make a robotic move to get into his shooting animation. It makes catch and shoots a little cringe to watch and do, and impacts your flow when releasing your shot. Driving to the hoop has been much improved, but again... the flow is hurt by clunky/robotic switching between animations. Free throw animations sometimes resemble NBA in the zone 2, as they sometimes have two or three animations that lead to the release, once again leading to less flow and a more robotic release.
- Game Speed: Something is off, the ball traveling through the air looks odd sometimes, almost like a beach ball feel. The players animations sometimes look hurried, or sometimes methodical. Andrew mentioned this above, hopefully it's something fixed before release.
Overall, it's an improvement over 16. I hope they make tweaks to some of the things I mention above. Do you guys agree with this analysis overall?