NBA Live 06 (2005)

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 68 was NBA Live 2006. This was the first basketball game for the XBOX 360 from the famous NBA Live series. You play as the real NBA players of the time with the opportunity for quick play and season simulation mode.

Why does NBA Live 2006 have a similar amount of content to Super Nintendo games? There are only two play modes: quick play and season. There are none of the fun additional features that I thought defined this series. Where are Dynasty Mode, All-Star Weekend, or the 1-1s? I literally couldn’t even find a tutorial! Sports games need some sort of special sauce to give me a reason to get excited and there is zero sauce here.

While there is nothing interesting about the game modes; the graphics look great. The characters are all rendered very well and the menus look nice. I was a fan of the virtual aesthetic outside of games. Additionally, the announcers were voiced well and felt pretty dynamic. Their commentary was always appropriate and entertaining. While I can’t say I recognized any of the music in the soundtrack, it was generally welcome and enjoyable. The presentation here was great!

While game modes and presentation are cool, the real bread and butter of any basketball game is the gameplay. So is the gameplay good here? Honestly, no. I was very frustrated with the controls and the AI throughout my time here. The AI could not stop causing defensive fouls! I had players being ejected because of how often they were fouling and I wasn’t even controlling the players at the time! Passing also feels very floaty, with the ball occasionally teleporting into your teammates hands. Shooting was difficult, but I also think I may just be bad at the game. I can probably give that a pass.

My issue here is that the gameplay doesn’t hit home perfectly. I could not see myself losing hours in NBA Live 2006. It has multiple layers of jank and no tutorials or lessons for me to get better at it. The lack of game modes is frankly insulting. I don’t understand how this game got released with this amount of content. EA spent all their time coding the D Wade loading screens (which are pretty cool) and didn’t focus on the aspects that keep people coming back. I was very disappointed in this game and don’t feel like anyone should go back to it. The gameplay and presentation are not good enough to justify the lack of content. I am also updating my review for NBA 2k6 to a 4/10 after playing this. (2/10)

I spent 2 hours and 11 seconds playing NBA Live 2006.

I have spent a total of 843 hours and 51 minutes on the Road To 360 challenge so far.

Next Game: Sonic Unleashed