The game feels more like how one would expect basketball players to move, rather than the round blocky objects of past editions. The 3d players no longer get in the way of the game with unweildly mobility, but rather felt quick and agile. In your face The graphics are, in a word, stunning. The characters are all motion-capture and they move extremely fluidly, such that you can see the players brace themselves before jumping, slowing down and kneeling to pickup a loose ball, and posting up for the fade away jumper a la Michael Jordan. The game truly has the look and feel of a real NBA game.
Players slap hands after making shots, and are introduced with light spectacles.
They do warm-up motions before shooting their free throws, and even the announcers sound less like the canned versions seen in other sports games. The decade teams aren't just generic characters with different names as we've seen in other games, but are actually the same shape and look of the real players. My only complaint about this game is that it does not run on Windows 2000. I scoured their websites looking for patches but none were to be found. Why Electronic Arts choose to release a game that is not compatibile with Win2k is beyond me, especially since all of their other new games don't seem to have this problem.