The online feature of Living Rosters is a good segway into discussing other NBA 2K9 features. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how well this feature works throughout the NBA season. Living Rosters is also integrated in such a way that it requires exceedingly little or no input from you it’s all handled in the background. And while it may not be updated quite as often as NBA Live’s service, you don’t have to pay any more for it – EA is charging an additional $20 for their similar service. These new animations allow for more snazzy looking plays, but unfortunately these unlocked animations are not available in online play because for online play, a common or equivalent roster must be used across each console. Depending on what happens in real life, the ratings, tendencies, and available animations will change in the game, cool stuff. He was great in college, so his player rating out of the box for 2K9 is pretty good – but as the real NBA season goes on, maybe he won’t be so good or maybe he’ll perform like another Lebron. Take a rookie who’s performance in college has built up a lot of hype about how good he might do in his rookie season in the NBA. Let me use an example as to how the player ratings feature of Living Rosters works. You also get to participate in user polls and read up on the latest news and 2K Insider’s blog posts – just check out the screenshots for more information.
With Living Rosters, you can allow your game to connect to 2K’s servers to retrieve weekly updates regarding player ratings, tendencies, rosters, and even unlock new animation packages depending on how players are performing in real life. So perhaps the biggest addition this year is an online feature known as Living Rosters. On the other hand, for 2K fans like me, it’s a noticeable step forward.
#Nba 2k9 roster updates series
Sure, many of these changes are fairly minor and if you haven’t been playing the series for a few years or aren’t a big NBA fan, you may not even notice or care about some them. When the guys at Visual Concepts described how so many changes and improvements were made and that they believe this year, for the first time, they’re offering the ‘total package,’ I took note. A couple of weeks ago, I ran a preview article on NBA 2K9 where after having a chance to talk with the developers in a conference call, I described many of the new features and changes found in this year’s version of NBA 2K.
Year to year, it’s up to the the developers to focus on making their next offering for a sports game more than just a roster update.