Granted, it’s not exactly the best simulation out there, but playing an insanely aggressive dunktastic game of basketball does bring back nostalgic memories of early-day NBA games on the SNES. In fact, NBA Live 14 does a lot better if you look at it as an arcade-style basketball game. The AI isn’t so great, but as a multiplayer game, you can squeeze a bit of enjoyment out of it.

The problem is justifying an NBA Live 14 purchase when NBA 2K14 is on store shelves. I had fun with NBA 2K14 , but I didn’t have nearly as much fun with NBA Live 14. I felt like it assumed I knew more about basketball and basketball video games than I actually did. It just dropped me into the deep end and asked me to figure it all out, and all I could really do was button mash and hope for the best. It’s a good foundation for a franchise that could prosper in the future–after all, I’ve been saying that sports games should use live updating stats via the internet for years now–but at this very moment, it just pales in comparison to its competition.