Game Modes

• In a stark contrast to NBA 2K6, NBA Live 06 has a pitiful offering of game modes that are reminiscent of those back in the old 8 bit days.
• Practice
• This isn’t a mode as much as it is just something to do while you wait for a game to load.
• After the game boots up, you are automatically in what looks like a virtual arena where you and friends can just shoot around and practice.
• Each player controls just one NBA star which you can choose.
• Once you’ve chosen the teams for a game you will get 30 seconds to a minute to practice here before the game loads.
• Play Now
• This is just a quick exhibition game that does not count in terms of a season.
• Season
• This is the main mode in the game. You get one 82 game season to play through.
• No draft, no off-season acquisitions, no career.
• You do get to choose the following options for your season.
• The team to control.
• Simulation injuries (on/off)
• Injury notify (on/off)
• Simulation Length
• Playoff series length (for entire playoffs)
• 1, 3, or 7 game series’ (no 5?)
• Modify CPU roster (on/off)
• Trade Restrictions (on/off)
• Trade Deadline (on/off)
• CPU Initiated Trades (on/off)
• If you modified the rosters before you started the season, then you have the option of using that roster or the default.
• Once you start the season, you have the option to play or simulate your game.
• Each game you play (whether it’s in season mode or not) gives you the following options to choose.
• The team to control.
• The jersey to wear.
• Your starting line up, though the interface is very poor.
• Choice of skill level
• Rookie
• Starter
• All-Star
• Superstar
• Quarter length (2-12 minutes)
• Camera Angle
• Broadcast
• Sideline
• Baseline
• Pressbox
• It is nice to be able to choose these options per game, so you can change the difficulty of your season as you go.
• Beyond that the game offers just a couple of generic features involving setting up the rosters.
• Create a Player
• This is a fairly generic character creation engine that concentrates mostly on designing your head/face.
• Team Management
• This option allows you to assign six plays for quick use in games.
• There is a pretty extensive playbook of plays to choose from.
• You can also manage your roster by making line up changes or trades.
• If this is done outside of a season, you can basically create any teams you want by extensive trading or releasing and signing.
• You can also review any stats of any of the players in the league.
• Settings
• Here you can change all kinds of typical things like sound, visuals and controls.
• But it also allows you to toggle on or off any of the rules you want like traveling, out of bounds, number of fouls, shot clock, 3 seconds and more.
• There is also a myriad of gameplay settings you can tweak if you find certain aspect of the gameplay to be too easy or hard.
• Game Speed
• Injury Frequency
• Fatigue Effect
• Foul Frequency
• A very detailed list of user and CPU settings for things such as long range shooting, foul shot ability, percentage of shots taken from different points and more.
• Overall the settings are very customizable and you should be able to find a good compromise for your personal playing style.
• Overall the amount of different game modes in the first offering from EA is just pathetic. 
• With no franchise, owner mode, ability to just play tournaments or anything new and inventive, all you get is a bare bones basketball experience and unfortunately even that isn’t very good.

Gameplay

• The gameplay in Live 06 sends some mixed messages.
• First it seems to try to take more of a strategic and simulation approach to the game.
• Using the right analog stick you can perform freestyle moves such as spins and crossovers.
• However, the cpu’s defense has been improved so these move rarely work and often times you’ll be denied passage to the basket.
• Also, anytime you try to take a shot with a defender nearby you are apt to get blocked or miss
• The key is definitely to run plays and find the open man.
• You are able to assign six offensive and defensive plays to the d-pad so you have a lot to quickly choose from.
• When you do get in close to the basket you have a couple different options.
• First, just like in NBA Live 05, there is a separate dunk button from the shooting button.
• Using this forces your player to take it aggressively to the whole.
• If he’s big enough and open enough he’ll perform some sort of dunk.
• Otherwise, he’ll pull off a fancy looking lay-up move.
• Just like with open shots though, if your player doesn’t have a clear path to the basket, he’s more apt to miss the dunk or lay-up over the defender.
• Your other option is to play the post game.
• The game does offer some nice controls for the post game allowing you to perform fadeaways, drop steps, and spin moves to score.
• While most of the cpu defensive AI seems beefed up to make it more of a simulation, one aspect seems a little to easy to pull off.
• Using the right shoulder button, your player will throw an alley-op to whoever is closest to the basket.
• When ever you are having trouble finding the open man, it’s often easier to watch for one of the post man to get free near the basket and simply through the alley-op pass.
• It doesn’t work every time but does seem to be a high percentage option that is easier to execute than any of your other scoring means.
• Defensively the game shows the same bit of simulation aspects.
• It’s important to keep your defender in-between the ball handler and the basket.
• Going for too many steals will give your opponent an easy opening and either a wide open shot, or as your team mates collapse to contain the cpu will take advantage of finding the open man.
• Depending on the difficulty level, a simple mistake like that can lead to an easy two points for your opponent.
• Up to this point the gameplay is pretty decent, but there are two aspects that destroy the potential.
• First foul shooting is a joke.
• A horrible mechanism of pulling the right stick back and then forward shoots the ball.
• Sometimes you’ll make it, sometimes you won’t, without really ever knowing why.
• It would have been more fun just to press a button once and let the free throw shooting stat determine if the shot was made.
• It almost feels like that anyway.
• If they are trying to mimic the NBA 2K6 mechanic then they are way off.
• Secondly the camera angles are all frustrating.
• None of them feel like they put you “in the action”.
• Even adjusting the zoom level doesn’t seem to help.
• Part of the problem is that the camera sometimes has a hard time catching up with the ball.
• If you make a long pass or a series of quick passes down court you’ll often find yourself waiting a second for the camera to catch up and get in a position to allow you to decide what to do next.
• In this time the ball could be stolen or you could walk out of bounds.
• Finally there is just a bit of choppiness in the gameplay.
• Another factor of the camera, after playing for a while you’ll notice slight slow downs and pauses to allow that camera to change directions or catch up to the play.