On the court, things are not as incredible. While the player models are a complete redesign, they lack the sharpness that NBA 2K6 brought with its players. In fact, Live 06 looks overdone and far too dark, with bulging muscles that would be out of place at a body building competition, and stadium owners that apparently forgot to turn on all the lights. Worse yet, the camera is awful, and out of the meager few selections, all the changing of the zoom and height in the world won't make this playable.
For whatever reason, the camera struggles to keep up. Making a deep pass down the floor will almost always result in the camera staying a few seconds behind. Your ball carrier is lost to a cameraman that would never see employment if this was real life. If they were trying to force players into pacing the game like real basketball, they failed.
There are also graphical glitches, like the on-court lighting going out of control during close ups. It's even more disappointing that you can't get your own look at the player models. All replays are inexcusably computer controlled after you press the L3 button post play. Worse yet, there's no replaying anything the AI has done. The option doesn't exist.
The changes to the Live series here are promising, and the potential for the next few years is here. NBA Live 06 however is unfinished, lacking, and unable to break away from the arcade fest it's always been. This never should have been released without basic features we began to expect from sports games 10+ years ago.
NBA Live 06 is a rated E (Everyone) by the ESRB. This game can also be found on: GameCube, PC, PS2, PSP, Xbox, and PSP.
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