Each time the end of a generation of consoles is reached, you can look to the sports franchises to see how all the new features over the years have stacked up and complemented one another. It's a lot like following a star NBA player over the course of his career and seeing all the new wrinkles and tricks he adds to his repertoire over time. With this generation of consoles reaching its twilight, we can see how NBA Live has evolved over the years in its latest iteration, NBA Live 06. Unfortunately, the Live series in its current state is more akin to an aged veteran who's hung on too long (for instance, Patrick Ewing with the Supersonics in 2000), as opposed to a longtime superstar who's at the height of his game. In other words, the series in its current incarnation is beginning to show its age.

Freestyle superstar abilities are the biggest new addition to the game.

The biggest new feature added to NBA Live 06 in this go-around is freestyle superstar control. In a nutshell, star players who have the requisite physical talent will be able to unleash a variety of supermoves on the court as a way to distinguish them from your average NBA player. So while your typical journeyman point guard won't have access to superstar passing abilities, you will be able to whip wraparound passes and fancy dishes with all-star point men like Jason Kidd or Steve Nash. There are six different types of superstars in all, including scorers, high flyers, playmakers, power players, sharpshooters, and stoppers. A single player can simultaneously be a stopper and one of the first five, but he or she can't be two different types of superstars at once. If your chosen star has the requisite ability, you can change his default superstar designation, though. So a player like Kobe can be switched from scorer to high flyer if you like.

The way these superstar moves are implemented in the game is by toggling the left trigger button. Once you have that held down, then tapping or holding one of the four face buttons on the controller will unleash a different superstar animation. So if you're a power player like Shaq, you have the ability to throw down NBA-Street-like tomahawk slams, two-handed power jams, or 180 spin dunks...even with a defender right on you. Playmakers like Nash will dish behind their heads, between their legs, and around their backs. Scorers like Allen Iverson can knife their ways into traffic with graceful ball fakes and up-and-under layups, teardrops, or double-clutch floaters. The special animations for all these moves are as fun to watch as they are to execute.

The problem (or benefit, depending on your perspective) is that these superstar moves give the game even more of an arcade feel than it already had, bringing it ever closer to a five-on-five version of NBA Street. At the lower difficulty settings, unleashing your power dunks, scorer moves, or high-flyer slams is like pressing an "I win!" button. You can own the computer all day long like opposing point guards abuse the Shaqless Lakers, thus making the game rather uninteresting at default difficulty. You'll need to be a little more judicious with your use of superstar moves at higher difficulty levels (trying to dunk over the top of double teams is often futile), but they're still somewhat overpowered in a lot of cases.

On defense, for example, you can take any stopper you have, aggressively double-team the post man when the ball goes down low, and come up with a steal disturbingly often. It's also pretty clear that some superstar classes are better than others. As you play the game, you'll find there's really not much advantage to the playmaker or shooter classes other than being able to see the cool animations from their moves. If you've got Kyle Korver open from the arc, for example, it seems just as quick and effective to have him take a regular jumper as it is to unleash a superstar rainbow or a set shot. Dishing a superstar pass in traffic seems just as likely to get picked off as a regular pass, so are you really getting anything out of it? In the end, the superstar controls are a lot like seeing Jason Williams in his youthful Sacramento Kings days: flashy and fun to watch but maybe not as substantive as you'd hope.

Not all superstar classes are created equal, as you'll probably prefer scorers and power players over other types.

Other than the superstar functionality, all the usual functionality remains in NBA Live's controls. You've got freestyle dribble moves mapped to the right analog stick, the separate dunk and shoot buttons, the pro hop, and the ability to control tip-ins or to tip dunks off of rebounds. All these features still give you great control over the action, just as they have over the years. Unfortunately, the graphics engine hasn't changed much either, aside from the additional superstar animations. Players still clip through one another often and skate over the floor, especially with turbo enabled, and there's little sense of momentum as you shift direction from side to side. Rebounded balls still get vacuumed to the hands of players, and players far underneath the basket will still shoot into the back of the glass for a turnover way too often. The Xbox offers the best visuals of the three by providing the most detail in character models. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 2 and GameCube lag behind noticeably in this regard. While still nice to look at most of the time, NBA Live's graphics engine is starting to show its age in this iteration.