NBA Live 16 is on the court and looking typically spectacular

Always impressive looking, the annual installment of EA’s NBA series is once available for consoles.

If you’ve been waiting to jam, your time has come, as NBA Live 16 has arrived. The game offers a bunch of new features and improvements over last year’s version, including the Live Pro-am, online team-play mode, and Live Motion and Gameplay.

Live Pro-Am allows up to ten players to game together online, competing on “iconic courts like Rucker Park, Venice Beach, Terminal 23 and more” in games for 21 points. Then there’s also the Summer Circuit, where you can traverse the continental US, challenging other all-star teams to become the king of the hardcourt.

You’ll also find things shaking and baking better than ever out there, through the use of the Live Motion system. Live Motion allows players to “move with purpose and react intelligently to try and get open with cuts and off-ball screens”, and also adds in new mechanics like touch-passes and dribbling hand-offs. All of the above should help to make the game more realistic than it’s ever been and hopefully provide a better play experience for hardcore fans of the sport.

Speaking of which, you’ll find it all that much easier to add yourself into the game this time too, thanks to hundreds of new additions to the clothing stable that’s available to deck your created players out in, as well as the return of GameFace. Usable via the companion app for Live 16, GameFace allows you to scan in your own mug and plaster it on a platter in the game, so you don’t have to fiddle with settings to get your features just right.

You can then take that created player and use him in the Rising Star mode, which retains progression across all game modes. There’s also Ultimate Team, the ability to go back and play big moments from the past with Live Rewind and Big Moments, and a host of gameplay improvements that I haven’t even mentioned here.

NBA Live 16 is looking like a big bump up for the series, and is available now for the PS4 and Xbox One from EA Tiburon.