NBA Live 14 Reviews
NBA Live 14 is the worst PlayStation 4 game currently on store shelves. This game deserved to be benched...again.
If you want a next-gen basketball game, buy NBA 2K14 instead.
NBA Live 14 isn't awful. Faint praise, to be sure, but with the way the internet has erupted the past few weeks, one would think that this is the Fighter Within of sports games.
If anything, NBA Live 14 helps prove that the NBA 2K series will be the reigning king of video game basketball simulations for years to come. Some decent game mechanics are ruined by very poor AI that has little to no idea of what to do most of the time. The audio is poorly put together, and the visuals are decent for the middle of the current generation, not at the beginning of a new one. The ESPN license feels largely wasted in the bare-bones presentation. A few modes are too tedious to be fun. There are some good ideas and modes here, but with so many issues plaguing it and few players online in the first few weeks, the whole effort seems pointless. With any luck, the plan for EA is to learn from this and deliver a worthy product next year. Unless you need every game on your chosen platform, just pick up NBA 2K14 for your hoops fix this year, and don't look back.
Based on user and critic reception so far, I highly doubt that we will see NBA Live return next year unless EA Tiburon is truly committed to merely compete with their rivals at 2K Sports. If they can't, I think it's more profitable for them to revive one of their more critically acclaimed franchises like NBA Street and NBA Ballers.
That's about all we've got, though. NBA Live is a colossal disappointment in more ways then one; the technical aspects are well below average, the physics and animations are some of the worst we've seen this year, the AI is mentally deficient, and worst of all, nothing about this feels real. There are a few positives to which to cling, if you're a die-hard basketball fanatic.