GAME PLAY RULES
When appropriate, you have varying degrees of settings for things like whether to allow charging, flagrant fouls, out of bounds, shot clock, over and back, goal tending, traveling, and 3 second / 5 second / 8 second / 10 second violations. I played an entire season with these options turned off, just so I could get some skills.

COACHING
You can call time outs (20 second or full time outs). You can control varying degrees of your Offense, Defense, Match Ups, and your Playbook. If you don't want to think about it, your default Auto feature maintains all coaching for you, but as you get into the game this level of Coaching control is OUTSTANDING!

ANGLES
The ability to change camera angles in this game is simply incredible. Changing cameras can be so much different, that it is like having several games in one game. I played several hours in each camera mode, and my favorite is the Action angle that really puts you in the game and lets you see the whole floor - enabling you to spot the open guy down court for the slam or wide open 3 point try.

ROSTERS
You can determine who is a starter, and who is coming off the bench. If you want to change your roster, you can get people off the Free Agency list. You can offer to trade players on your team in an exchange for someone on another team (up to three players at a time), but don't try to get smart and trade your second string center to the Lakers for SHAQ - they aren't dealing!

CONTROLLERS
This game has broken out of the standard in all of the Xbox games I have tested so far. Normally you are offered a list of controller templates, and you select one of them, but not here. You can assign any of the commands to any of the options on your controller = TOTAL CONTROL!

In addition to the control options noted above, you can of course configure Video and Sounds in a variety of ways.

The arena floors and logos are great, but the thing that really makes your eyes water is when you see how good of a job these guys did on the reflection of each player as they move around on the floor. There is simply NO WAY to describe how good of job they did with this. In fact, it is this kind of attention to detail that really takes the game to a completely new level of basketball gaming experience.

Of course you hear all of the sneaker noises when the players are running around, but you can really hear the detail when you go into your sound options and turn some things down, and others up. This allows you to get a clue of the kind of detail the MS guys went to. With the chatter up, you get to her the players ripping on each other and making 'grunt' noises when they slam or hit the floor.

I have been privileged to go to two or three Blazers games, and the MS team did a great job capturing the sound excitement that you experience when you are at a real NBA game. Especially when the arena announcer is constantly making various announcements about arena rules, and special announcements - MAJOR KUDOS!

BEGINNER
I definitely recommend removing the rules and playing at least a few games without them. This will enable you to go flying all over the court, knocking people over, and getting away with a lot - but not everything. Your skills will advance, and you can gradually increase the rules.

The full season I played, I turned most of the rules off. I played as the Blazers and only lost one game (to the Nets in overtime). I played about three OT games in that season. One of the OT games was in the playoff's Conference championship against the Lakers. I could not stop SHAQ, but I was able to feed him with a steady diet of Rasheed Wallace and Dale Davis - and survived to the finals against the Sixers. Allen Iverson was good, but I had Damon feeding Scotty and Anderson and they killed the Sixers with three pointers.

ADVANCED
So with my confidence level up, I went straight to the Rules options and took them straight to the highest level. I asked for it, and I got it - tough competition. But my entire season on the low level setting relieved a lot of headaches, because I wasn't running out of bounds and I knew how to shoot and pass the ball. I am competitive, but am not likely to make it to the playoffs (let alone Finals) anytime soon on the advanced settings. The players are really good at 'juking' around you to get to the hole, and I still make little 'goobers' by throwing the ball out of bounds and not being able to get anybody over to it in time. Plus, if you are going to win - you have to play aggressive defense, which means you are going to wind up hacking people. Plan on sending a lot of guys on the other team to the line.

Make sure you leave the RUMBLE on when you play this game, because it will only really hit when a guys lands on his butt or does a MIGHTY slam. And when it does, you feel it. The bigger the fall or slam, the more RUMBLE you get. And the bigger the guy, the bigger the feedback. Who do you think gets the BIGGEST RUMBLE feedback award? Could his initials be S.O. ?

Whether you are on beginner, advanced, or somewhere in between - you are going to have to learn how to shoot free throws. I LOVE how you shoot free throws in this game (and all readers that have previous basketball gaming experiences know that there are a whole bunch of different approaches to how you do this). Microsoft nailed it. You get to see the attempts from various angles, but the gauge you are watching to shoot the free throws is always the same - so it doesn't matter what camera angle the TV guys show. This gives a real depth to the free throw process. I only wish they allowed you to go into a different area in the game to do nothing but practice free throws (even Links allows you to go to the driving range).