How NBA Live 2009 Could Win Me Back

In the first part of my series, I documented how I fell out of love with the NBA Live series by the 2006 edition. For Part 2, I have to be fair. Unlike past Live editions, when their "new features" were about as useful as a 3-pointer at the buzzer when your team's down by four, 2009 actually seems very innovative. It's going to take a lot for Live to win me back, but so far, everything they've shown looks interesting. And really, we have to admit that this could be the next step in sports games. As much as Live's gameplay emulates a sport which is nothing like basketball, we have to give them due props for trying to move the sport forward. As soon as I typed that last sentence, I sneezed... Guess my body's still not used to giving EA Sports compliments. You can find the full list of features here, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Yeah, they're cool (or so it seems), but it's their jobs to make them sound cool. Only a fan knows which features are truly important, so let me enumerate the things NBA Live '09 has going for it. Dynamic DNA - "...which evaluates Player DNA that breaks down how a player scores, Team DNA that rates how the players on the floor play as a unit and Tendencies that refer to the percentage a player drives left, right or shoots from each spot on the floor." (read the rest on the site. Thanks!)