Recently the NBA Live 10 demo was made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and I got a chance to get a hands-on look at the game. It starts in the NBA hangar, like Live 09, and in it are stars like Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard. For newcomers to the series, the hangar is simply an empty gym with four basketball courts on it and various star athletes shooting around on them. You can switch to any of them whenever you please, and it makes for a nice place to get used to the game’s controls if you already aren’t.

In this demo, like every other NBA Live demo before it, you’ll play the first half of a quick match-up between the two teams which played in the NBA Finals—this year being the Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers. The pre-game presentation has changed quite a bit. Rather than showing an overview of the stadium while the game analysts began their usual commentary, each team walked up to the screen with their star player holding the ball and making some sort of gesture.

At tip-off, fans of the series since it first appeared on the Xbox 360 will notice a distinct difference in the control layout. In the earlier iterations of the series to hit the 360, the Y button was generally known to either be a hop-step button or the button used to perform layups. Now alley-oops are performed with Y, and layups are only performed when dunks aren’t possible and the player is near the basket while pressing the X button to shoot.

Aside from the difference in control schemes, everything felt pretty smooth for a demo. Shots seemed less awkward than in Live 09, and player animations were less swift and hard to get a hold of. The graphics experienced an overhaul as well. Now the skin of the players have a brighter glow which, while defining their features a little more, makes them a little less identifiable at first glance from camera angles like Press Box and Broadcast.

So far the game seems to be well on its way to being a huge hit for both fans of the games and fans of the sport in general. With its release date quickly approaching, there isn’t much longer a wait for the full game to hit store shelves. Though the demo is very promising, we’ll reserve our judgment until NBA Live 10 gets in our hands October 6th.