EA Sports owns the greatest sports titles. Always has and always will...Madden being the king and MVP Baseball which I am sad to say no longer is being made due to politics would be a close second and Tiger Woods would now take over 2nd place leaving of course NBA Live to fall into third place. But that is for sports titles period and I may be a little partial due to the fact that I am a huge football and baseball fan and actual am not really into basketball....That may make this title even better then the rest....

Basketball titles have a lot more competition though. Noone can touch football or golf and noone ever made a great baseball game except for EA Sports with MVP Baseball, but basketball the line isn't so clear.

I loved all the old titles from NBA Jams to Streets, etc. but they got old quick...too quick. Some more realistic games are great too but EA Sports is untouchable in my mind.

I owned this game for xbox while overseas and played it alot. A solid fun game and with a lot of playability. The franchise allows you to play it for years...or until the next one comes out. That being said I bought xbox 360 the following year and subsequently NBA Live '06....I don't know if it was because they rushed it out for the new system or what, but the game play slowed down, the camera angles sucked and altogether it was just not nearly as fun to play. Sure the graphics were better, but gameplay is more important to me.

I since bought the '05 again this time for pc and it is just as great as the original xbox version and I love it. I play it all the time however I do play Madden and MVP Baseball a lot more....of course I will never stop playing MVP Baseball 2005 not unless they come out with a new one and stop all that 2K crap. I have been aboard with Madden since the days of Sega back in '93 I believe and MVP '04 and '05. Basketball games have always been fun but lose excitement quicker them most sports games for some reason but not this one......it is a typical EA Sports classic and until I'm convinced that '08 or something else is better all aorund I'm sticking with it.....besides its only $[...]...you can't beat it

As it is with any sports video game, you will find things you love about it and things you hate. Free throws aren't quite as easy as they were in 2004, but you will still make a vast majority of them. I really like the free throw strategy used in 2006 better than here. In 06, you use the right analog stick and move it backwards, then forwards, in rythmn to have accuracy and distance. 06 is much more life-like.

The special moves in 05, however, almost become worthless. If you try to do a crossover, spin move, or hop step, just expect to lose the ball. You have to be very careful when you use them.

The one thing that is ridiculous is how easy alley-oop passes are. It is easier to do an alley-opp than to get a good pass into the low post. Might as well run down the court and lob up an alley oop. Blocks are also way too easy. You shouldn't have games where the average amount of blocks per side is in the teens.

It's still fun. The AI is pretty good, the graphics are improved, and all in all, it's a decent improvement from 04.

Well, it is clear, this is the best basketball game I have ever owned. There are so many minigames like the slamdunk contest or the three point shoot out. I play this game for hours and hours at a time because it is so much fun. Nice job EA!

This was the best sports game ever when it was released. The dunks in this game are amazing. The dynasty mode is sensational. The freestyle innovations are great. The dribble styles are neat. The competion modes can vary as much as you want them to. This can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. You get to choose between five difficulties of playing. You can change the abilities of each player in around twenty areas. There are settings for you to change how hard or easy it is for you and the opponent, seperately, to shoot the ball as well as do just about everything else. You can customize current players or make your own made up player that is good or not so good. Created players can be anywhere from five foot tall and one hundred twenty pounds to seven foot six inches tall and three hundred fifty pounds. You can do almost anything involving NBA basketball in this game.

Sigh. EA Sports has done it again... created a basketball game that gets some things right but totally blows it on others. I guess I'll break this thing up into catagories...

GRAPHICS: Perfect example. Everything looks really good (even some 18 months later)... the players look like their real-life counterparts, the arenas look good and are faithful recreations... and then... the plastic wrap. A few other reviewers mentioned it. Basically it looks like the players were put in an oven with clear heat shrink. Like they are silver and someone just polished it. Despite this oddity (how does stuff like this make it to the final product? Because it's honestly the first thing you notice) I'd give graphics 9/10.

SOUND: It's fine. The commentary gets repetative, but that's to be expected. They can't have a random comment generator. Crowd is nice too, although EA still lacks the capacity in ANY of their games to make the crowd explode (when I hit a three to win it, I want the place to explode and the commentators to flip out).

GAMEPLAY: Again, they can't put it all together. Each version does something really well, others really badly. Then they try to fix it in the next version and just flip the faulty areas.

The difficulty can be set in 4 modes:

Rookie: You can beat the Pistons with the Bobcats your first time out. Just drive to the hoop and press "layup." Points.

Starter: Glorified rookie mode. Easy yet. Might give you a close game your first week or so. Once you learn to play the game, expect to easily double the other team's score.

All-Star: Suddenly the CPU can play defense. Really good defense. Like have a player fly from 10 feet away to block your open layup attempt. Have Shaq rocked from behind by Shawn Bradley. Meanwhile, your offense has run dry. Expect to shoot in the 30 percents a majority of the time. You will only make threes if you are wide open (even then Stovakavic will clank at least half). Meanwhile, for the CPU, players like Gary Payton will play like a 23 year old Reggie Miller. Nail threes in your face. Drive to the hoop, do a 360, and reverse the ball in. If you try to block their shot... foul. Yet they slap away similar shots with ease on the other end.

Anyways it just seems like the computer has to cheat to play decently. EA Sports just hasn't come up with a way to make the game challeneging AND fair. Tim Duncan running down Allen Iverson on the break is just not realistic.

I am still able to win on this mode like 60% of the time. Mostly with similar teams though. Don't even try playing the Raptors against Detriot or anything.

Super-Star: Basically like beating Bobby Fischer at chess while getting pelted with rubber bullets. Oh, and you're blind.

FEATURES: Awesome features. Dynasty mode... cool. Although you should be able to make the whole "salary cap" thing a little more lax. Gets pretty frustrating. All-Star weekend is cool as well. Although the Slam Dunk thing is basically worthless without a gamepad. Unless you have three hands, then you could maybe do all the moves. NBA Live 2005 is chucked full of features though, it's very cool. However, I think they should have dumped a few of them and concentrated more on the gameplay issue.

OVERALL: Again, NBA Live has lots of great features but just becomes frustrating. It's fun at first when you're terrible and the Starter level games are exciting. Once you get good though, it really becomes a frustrating experience. To the point where you don't even want to play. There needs to exsist a difficulty that's like "Starts and got robbed and probably should've been on the bench for the All-Star game." Then maybe it'd be fun. Again the CPU has to cheat to remain competive and that's just not fun.

However, all the other features are really fun and it's great to see if you can take a team like the Blazers to the championship (I simulate all the games and so far in year six they are almost here). Also, if you have someone to play against via gamepad or LAN it's also fun. A fast-breaking slamfest, yes, but at least you're playing it with your buddy.

Again, EA Sports gives us sniffs of glory but falls short of making a realistic basketball game. It may not be their fault... basketball is a complicated game and very hard to simulate. Instead of chucking a new version out every year, maybe take a year off and work extra hard on '08.