Game Overview
First impressions are absolutely incredible with NBA Live 2006, never before have you seen such amazing and precise graphics, as the camera pans around the practise court and circle a player in the centre of the court whilst he flexes his biceps and checks his body out. The camera continues to orbit the player and gradually zoom in to reveal beads of sweat dripping down his face and the amazing shine to his eyes, simply beautiful! The graphics definitely don't let NBA Live 2006 down, if anything is going to make you want to go out and buy a new 42" HD TV then it's this game!

Unfortunately, that is where the praise stops rather abruptly, the rest of the game will have you completely bored stiff within an hour. The gameplay is dreadful, the player movement is sticky and slow and the general difficulty of the game leaves a lot to be desired. It's not that the game is hard as once you have possession of the ball its pretty simple to score however trying to gain possession from a player on the attack is almost impossible and this makes the game very repetitive, run, score, run back, defend, wait for opposition to score, take the ball, run and score again and the game continues like that! Not very exciting if you ask us!

If you are addicted to collecting Achievements on the 360 then borrow NBA from a mate or hire it for a couple of minutes and simulate a season, by the end of the season you will have unlocked all but 4/5 of the achievement which equates to approximately 1000 achievement points! Can't be bad for a couple minutes work! Good luck finding the season mode though if you are playing on a standard TV, the game appears to have been designed for huge HD TV's and the font on the menu is so small it is very hard to see and navigating through the menus causes more trouble than it's worth.

The only other good thing about this game is that you don't have to be good at computer games to be able to play it, a quick test with the missus will prove this theory to you, in some cases we were actually beaten by her! So if your fed up with the missus whining at you about playing to many games, stick a controller in front of her and tell her to try NBA Live 2006! Guaranteed she will get the hang of it and probably enjoy it! Shows just how much women know about computer games!!

Our Conclusions
The handling of players is rubbish, the gameplay is slow and the free throws are virtually impossible, if you want our honest opinion stay away from this one, there are plenty more sports sims on the 360 that are more enjoyable take Madden 2006 for example! Basketball fans may be used to this form of gameplay in which case they may like it but we doubt it! Hopefully EA will get it right next year!

Overall Score: 5/10

Thanks to EA for sending in NBA Live 2006