I picked it up a little while ago and have been able to try a few games (all with the Spurs vs Lakers/Pistons/Bulls, and one 2-2 street game). Very early bullet impressions:
Gameplay --
* No manual defense button. Players will D-up automatically. It works decently. There's a double team button and a charge button, but I haven't done much with either yet.
* Passing seems to be much more crisp this year. Overall it's very nice. My one complaint is that icon passing is messed up for inbounds. You can turn on the icons, then sellect the player you want to pass to, but then you need to press "A" again to pass it to them. Kind of screwy.
* The pro-hop move is indeed money against the CPU. Every time I've tried it good things have happened; only once has it not resulted in a score.
* Players seem to stick together. Because of this lighning quick players like Tony Parker have difficulty blowing past slower guards. I've tried many times in the games I've played to penetrate and even when TP gets by his man it's so awkward because he slows down when he does get by. The sticky players also makes using picks very difficult. This type of thing even happened in a 2-on-2 street game. Seeing a bunch of players all bundled up together is such a horrible sight in a basketball game (well when they're not going for the rebound anyway).
* Free throws are horrible. Even more annoying than last year becasue the little basketball icon is actually uglier. I understand that pre-2k4 free throws were money for all players but this is like the exact opposite. Find a middle ground, VC!
* If you didn't like Isomotion last year you won't like it this year. VC said they redid it from scratch but the end result is pretty similar to last year. Meh.
* Steals are too easy for either side. My first game I had 10 steals with TP alone. While the next two weren't that bad steals were still way too common on default sliders.
* Rebounding is done well in the game. A little icon appears on the floor showing where good position is going to be, and then you just have to get there and jump. It's nice.
* Offense is center stage so far. At default sliders shooting percentages are super high and I've seen some ridiculous 3s. In one game both Tim Duncan and Malik Rose made shots from beyond 3/4 of the court. Digital Bill Walton called them "the most horrible shots ever until they went in."
Options/Presentation --
* Supposedly you can change the speed of the game, but when I switched from slow to fast in the option menu I didn't notice any change during gameplay.
* Camera angles are back. It's like 2k3 in this area.
* It's a minor gripe, but the rosters for the all-90's squads are ridiculous. The all-90's West squad was missing David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon, and put Shaq in there instead! East 90's team didn't have Patrick Ewing, but had Mutombo and Shaq again! Wtf is Shaq doing on both the East and West 90's squads and where are 3 of the best centers ever?
* The commentary is much better this year. Walton >>>> Tolbert. He even made a little comment about Rick Barry after Brent hit a 3, which I thought was cool.
I'm not the world's biggest sports gamer, so take these impressions as more of a casual viewpoint. I'm going to give the game a few more tries later this evening, but barring a major relevation about the gameplay it's going back tomorrow.
