NBA 08 Review
Everybody told me that Sony’s NBA series is not to be played and that I should not buy the game. Well, I like basketball games so I bought it and tried it. I must say that on the hole I was very unsatisfied with the game and I really wanted to try it and find good things about NBA 08. Not many are there to find! The only good part of the game was one game mode, The Life, which had a very good storyline and it is basically a franchise. It has now reached version 3 and it focuses on the entire team you choose, placing you directly in the shoes of some players. There are some cut scenes that prepare the actual gameplay moments and you basically go through a tutorial of low post drills, shooting and passing. This way you learn how to play the game and as time passes and you complete the drills you will go through scrimmages, preseason games and the actual season. Every scrimmage and game you play will be accompanied by some tasks and a limited amount of time to do them.
The problem with the Life is that it is filled with problems. You can not really determine which is the defender that needs to be covered and then you basically become frustrated with the fact that you do not know who you need to keep from scoring. Also, whatever you do is not enough. Even if you do a perfect scenario you will find the next cut scene showing the coach yelling at you and this seems to not be fair, especially if you did everything well. The Life is original and entertaining but you basically end up doing so many drills before even playing the game and the story is so hard keep you hooked in this case.
Talking strictly about gameplay we can say that the controls are easy to learn but the frame rate of the game is so bad that even the nice tricolored shot meter is hard to use. Passing is bad (unless using icon passing) and most long passes are intercepted or get out of bounds. At times the ball simply does not go where you want it to or it is too slow. Defense is lousy and the computer controlled team is not as it seems to be able to keep players still while you can not.
What more can I say? I will not have you waste your time on this review because NBA 08 is simply bad! The alternatives are a whole lot better and we recommend that you try them out instead of NBA 08.