I rather liked the demo, and I really liked the new stick-based controls...until it came time to actually shoot the ball. Because you have to worry about not only shooting the ball at the top of your arc but also keeping the shot centered, I found it nearly impossible to hit a jump shot with stick controls outside of the practice mode. Inside the practice mode, there's a set of meters so you can guide your shot, but strangely enough not in the main game from what I saw. And don't even try using stick controls with the camera in broadcast mode. The controls don't change to re-orient to the camera, so it's very confusing.

The visuals were...passable at best, though the audio work seemed nice. Could have done without the rap music, though. All in all, I enjoyed the demo, more than I did for 2K11 anyway.

well heres whats up, i like da ea sports games, i do. but da basketball series is something theyve never been able to get right. I know you may be able to have fun with it, but it still seems like arcade style play even though they have implemented a pretty good control scheme for the analog sticks. It works ok when you're actually playing against the cpu though. The animations are sorta sloppy, and you notice them alot more when you go from the training mode to the game mode. There are noticeable hiccups in da frame rates and at this stage of the current gen systems it should not be such of a noticeable issue in my opinion giving that they have had this franchise a long time. I feel they tried to do alot with the game but I dont think that it is going to be able to pull it off once the full version is played throughly. Audio is better than usual but still lacks the supreme luster. It also feels like they shipped out something that was not fully realized in the final product. The botttom line is that if you choose EA's franchise to be your nba game of 2011 you may be satisfied playing it and giving it your time. However, I did play 2k11's game and it does set the benchmark for a basketball games simulations. It has come around on almost every level including, animations, graphics, sound, and especially presentation and realism. Don't get me wrong, there is still a long way to go to get it even close to right. I think that 2k11 has come closest to making a closer to life basketball game even though it has its bugs, but I would certainly put all my money on 2k11 being da game to get this year when it comes to B-Ball