Detailed players and authentic animations make high definition basketball pretty to play, but NBA Live 09 is attempting to take the next step in sports simulations. Going well beyond a graphical update, EA Sports has refreshed the series in such a way that it promises to be at the very least the most innovative yet. Impressive online updates and gameplay options for up to 10 players, new offensive play-calling and controls, as well as the promise of aggressive new defensive play could lay NBA Live 09 up as the year's definitive ball game. But the big feature is Dynamic DNA.

Dynamic DNA marks the biggest and unquestionably most innovative addition to the game. It fulfills a long-standing desire to bring real player stats and tendencies into the game; it allows the game to update players and teams daily. EA Sports has partnered with a prominent statistical tracking company to leverage actual NBA game data. As each game goes down, every vital moment is broken down into numbers that can then be fed into NBA Live 09. Shot percentages from each section of the court, blocking tendencies, drive tendencies, and other information is tallied by hand and then relayed to the game for up-to-date, constantly fluctuating play. DNA is also tied into the Rewind feature where you can literally replay games of the NBA season. If you watch the Cavs beat Washington on a Thursday night you'll be able to replay that game (with the real stats and tendencies) the following day. It's an incredibly novel idea.

The game is striving to be an authentic basketball simulation; however, the advent of new in-game features make it easier to play and a more rounded experience. New signature play-calling certainly lends a helping hand on the court by letting you know contextually a player's hot spots. While possessing the ball, for instance, arrows at your player's feet point toward the best move. Run closer to the area signified by the arrow and it shrinks, whereas it grows larger when you move farther away from the hot spot. Additionally, you can toggle hot zones on the court that outlines where the best areas for a shot using your current player.

You don't even need to be familiar with specific players in order to effectively control them thanks to this new system. Each player's strengths and weaknesses are contextually relayed, so you're able to jump right into a game and adjust without much difficulty. It's part of a surprising push toward accessibility that NBA Live 09 seems to be successful in capturing. In five minutes of sitting with the game, we were able to go from fumbling around with the control to effortlessly leveraging players to score against the evenly-matched AI. Amazingly enough, EA Sports is doing this without losing depth; in fact, there's more depth in this latest installment than in previous years.

Much of that depth comes from Dynamic DNA, but it also is derived from a score of new gameplay mechanics that bulk up on defensive play and expand offensive options. Blocking has been tweaked for a more aggressive style, which essentially means that you're able to more aggressively go after the ball. These new lock down controls translate to tighter presses. We didn't get a good grasp on them unfortunately, which leads us to skepticism over whether they are able to beef up the defensive side of the game as much as EA is proclaiming. And, finally, players will jump up and snatch rebounds out of the air rather than watch them hit the floor – a major thorn in the game’s side over the past few years.