Stellar! NBA Live 2001 sincerely impressed me in the graphical department. Player models and textures are outstanding, and give each player his own personality. Animations were motion-captured by NBA star Kevin Garnett, so you know you're in for a treat when dunking! The people at EA Sports have outdone themselves by not only making incredible players, but also by giving them the emotion that they so greatly deserve. See them argue calls or cheer their teammates on from the bench, as well as mumble words of joy, praise, and disgust.

The sound quality of Live 2001 is pretty sweet too, although the color commentary is a bit lacking. I felt as though things could have been jazzed up a little bit, and maybe the reaction time a bit faster. However, the sound effects and stadium announcer are perfect! There's just something about pre-game introductions that gets your team pumped up and ready for battle! Live brings out the true feeling of a television presentation.

NBA Live 2001 offers a ton of features and styles of gameplay. Live offers everything from Exhibition, Tournament, and Season modes to playing one-on-one with or against your favorite legendary players (like Jordan, Magic, Bird, Dr. J). Missing from the lineup is the much-needed Franchise mode similar to that in the Madden football series. This would have allowed users to play multiple seasons back to back. Nonetheless, also offered is a create-a-player (which is awesome!) and strategy options for precision control over your team. Not only do you have these extended options, but the basic gameplay lets you control just about anything you would ever want to.

The Live series has been jazzed up a bit not only graphically, but also in gameplay. The new addition of post moves adds a bit more depth to the game. Now you will be able to perform up and under and spin moves as well as hook shots and fade away jumpers. (And you thought it was impossible to stop Shaq before!) Loads of different gameplay options allow for exact customization of your game.

There are essentially two types of play: multiplayer and single player. The multiplayer aspect of NBA Live 2001 is incredibly fun and allows for some huge scoring. The single player mode may seem like your pulling teeth when trying to score at first, but once you learn the tricks of the trade, you will be more competitive against the computer. Either way, Live 2001 will have you playing for hours when you first pop it in and days after that!

NBA Live 2001 has four difficulty levels to choose from. I found that between the 2nd and 3rd levels, there was a huge difference in computer intelligence. Well, the fact is that the computer plays a much tougher defense the higher you put the difficulty, which makes it a lot harder to score. Still, you can customize to fit your own needs and Live will offer great replayability because of this.

NBA Live 2001's game controls are quite simple to use, but allow for vast in-game control thanks to Sony's new control pad. You see, while pressing each individual button will perform its own move, tapping most of the buttons will allow for another similar move. For example, holding down the R1 button is for turbo, but tapping R1 will actually make your player spin. Although not essential to winning, these secondary moves will give you a definite advantage.

One disappointment I had with the game was that the menu controls in the game were very confusing. In order to access all of the options, you must bring up a menu bar at the bottom of the screen, then take it down again for other options. Another thing I found frustrating is the saving/loading system used by Live. Unfortunately, every time you start the game, you will have to take time to load your user profiles, instead of having them autoload on startup. This would have been a lot less time consuming in the long run. However, even with these concerns, NBA Live 2001 for the PS2 is an incredible game and should be on the 'must buy' list for all basketball fans out there. EA Sports has done it again!