NBA Live 08 – PSP – Review

This is a big
year for NBA Live. In addition to being the third offering for Xbox 360, NBA
Live 08 will be the first major basketball series to land on Nintendo Wii.
That’s huge news for Nintendo fans, as the Wii is currently without a b-ball
champ.

Once again, PSP
owners will have a one-on-one duel for basketball supremacy. While the PS3 and
360 market is crowded, PSP has just one baller besides NBA Live – Sony’s NBA
series. The battle will be tough, with flashy box art sending gamers in one
direction and our past experience with both series sending us in another. For
many years, NBA Live was king. It hasn’t performed well on PSP, but EA has come
back to address many of the technical issues that have plagued the
much-anticipated handheld editions. Unfortunately, that’s about all that was
done before the game was cleared for manufacturing.

Seamlessness
– Sort Of

When fans cried
that NBA Live 07 was technically flawed, EA didn’t cover its ears. The studio
took notes, increased the frame rate, added a few more polygons, and formed a
game that feels much better.

In many ways
it’s superior to the PS2 version, which still doesn’t play right, especially
when compared to other EA-made sports games (such as NHL 08, whose controls are
quite good on PS2). If you don’t like NBA 08’s challenging shot indicator, try
NBA Live 08. Its shooting mechanics are impossible to fail. You may use the
wrong guy for the shot, or take a shot when you should have been running. But
the shooting itself is foolproof. Seriously, there is nothing to it – press the
circle button and watch the ball fly. Without a shot indicator requiring the
player to time his shots, you don’t need to spend much time thinking. This is a
game of taking action, nothing more.

Players will
quickly notice that the 08 update isn’t as sluggish as last year’s game. There
aren’t as many hiccups, nor do the players perform with as many awkward
movements. You’ll still spot the occasional lockup where a player stands off the
side and shakes lightly, indicating that the AI can’t determine where the player
is supposed to be headed. And the game still bores you with frequent logo
screens in between plays, where it pops up for two seconds in between plays.
This is used as a transition piece on the console versions. But here it doesn’t
feel like a transition piece – it’s annoying and kills the game’s consistency.

The Crown

The Crown is an extended way of tracking your success in each
game mode. It provides several statistical notes, such as point totals and
averages for the number of points scored, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks,
fouls, turnovers, field goal attempts, field goals made, three-point attempts,
three-points made, and so on. The number of games played, won, and lost are also
calculated.

The Crown takes
your achievements – performing well and whatnot – and tacks them onto a rank
meter. When the rank meter fills, you go up one rank. Achievements are
everywhere in the game. You can earn rank points by winning games, by scoring a
specific number of points, by winning challenges ("score 12 points with player X
in the fourth quarter" – the kind of thing Sony’s NBA series has been doing for
the past three years), etc.

Don’t be fooled: these screenshots are not from the PSP
edition –
they’re from the vastly superior next-gen versions.

NBA Live 08’s
ability to address the issues of last year’s game is respectable. The rest of
the content, however, is not. If you skipped Live 07, this might feel like a
solid, brand-new package. But if you’ve been with the series for a while, you
will probably be disappointed.

Review Scoring Details for NBA Live 08

Gameplay: 6.7
NBA Live 08 gets a
"B+" for polish, a "C-" for content, and a "D" for longevity. You could say that
this is the game we should have had with NBA Live 07 (back when some of the
content was fresh). But it’s what we received today, a year later, and without
any standout elements to make the fans go crazy.

Graphics:
7.8
At first glance, NBA
Live 08 looks great. The player models are excellent and the widescreen showcase
crams more onto the screen than most PSP sports offerings. Unfortunately, the
game falters with jarring side transitions and screen / player lockups. The slow
load times in between games and menus don’t help.

Sound: 6.8
The commentary is
decent but somewhat repetitive. You’ll hear the same lines too frequently, and
the licensed music is terribly unvaried and uninspired.

Difficulty: Easy
There isn’t a great
balance here. Opponents are either easy or cheap.

Concept: 6.9
NBA Live 08 removes
most of last year’s issues but fails to introduce any new or exciting gameplay
features. The Go To moves are only cool if you care about a player’s signature
style – if you just want great basketball gaming, you’re going to be
disappointed.

Multiplayer: 6.0
Same as last year’s
game, which was solid back then but doesn’t do much when thrown into NBA Live
08.

Overall: 6.8
More polished than
last year’s game, you’d think NBA Live 08 would be a winner. The programmers
deserve some credit for making what was once a console exclusive run smoothly on
a handheld system. However, it’s not that exciting of a game. Most of the modes
are old, and the mini-games fail to build enthusiasm. If you love EA’s style of
basketball and have yet to play the series on PSP, you’re better off now than
you would have been last year. But if you’re one of the many who played the
series in 06, you should probably wait till the next update before coming back
to Live.