I don't think it is, at least not in the UK. I'm hoping it will come out next week, along with FIFA 09. (PS3)
What makes it better? At this point games like Live and Madden need to be much better than the previous year for me to keep buying them. Updated rosters and new music aren't good enough reasons for me to shell out $50 each year.
This year I might actually switch back. Better gameplay and a new 'be a pro' mode might be enough since 2k hasn't really added much.
I'm torn on which one I want this year. Live sounds like it could finally be good again, something that hasn't happened since the last-gen version of 06. However, NBA 2K9 is going to be amazing, as it almost always is. The only issue is I'm not sure whether or not they're going to have changed enough to have me interested in buying it, cause I don't really want to play the same game I did last year, only with a different cover boy and minor tweaks.
Can someone post videos of each game? I'm too lazy to search for it. I just got my PS3 recently, so I'll definitely buy one of these games. Well, not if both suck.
I played it on the XBox and loved it. Like I said though, it's really unfortunate that every subsequent one after that has been horrific. Live 07 on the 360 is quite possibly the worst playing basketball game I've ever played, and maybe even one of the worst sport games I've ever played.
LIVE 08 is naff too, since you only control when the player shoots. When you release shoot has no bearing whatsoever on the shot and whether or not it goes in.
I tried the demo like a week ago.. and it looked better than live 08 but 2k still owns live. I would take nba 2k8 over live 09. The gameplay is not real at all IMHO.
To be honest, 2K8 was hardly realistic for me. I loved the game, but it was incredibly too unrealistic. I adjusted the computers sliders down below 50 for basically all the shooting categories, yet they'd still shoot close to 60% all game. The only way I could keep up was to pump my sliders up a little bit. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game, but it was really flawed. Scores were never realistic, and I was only playing 9min quarters. FG%'s were through the roof most games too. It was insane. I also rarely lost. Did I mention that the computer AI was cheap? It NEVER fouled unless you jacked the sliders up, and then you went to the line an asinine amount of times. It would also make every single contested jump shot. It was nuts. Though, I loved the game, there was a lot wrong with it, though not enough to turn me towards the flaming pile of garbage that was last years Live.
