NBA 08
PlayStation 3
4 stars (out of 5)
One of my consistent gripes in the past few years has been the lack of progress in the development of accomplished basketball games.
It has never really made much sense. The two most popular and successful sports to be captured in gaming are football, with all its Fifa finery and Pro Evo panache, and American football, with the Madden series consistently offering quality gameplay and innovations.
Basketball has been the black sheep. I mean, the NBA Live series is still polished but has stagnated since about 2003, and NBA 2K-whatever has its strong points but is still quite frustrating to play. NBA Jam and NBA Street Homecourt are great fun but are pure over-the-top arcade titles.
Many believe basketball has overtaken football as the world's most popular sport - no, seriously - and that makes it all the more strange that the options to play it on a console are so limited.
Here's a new player on the market. The economically-titled NBA 08, exclusive to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2, aims to show that the style and accuracy of NBA Live 08 can be matched with some of the substance of NBA 2K8.
The first thing you notice, at least on the PS3 version I have thrashed in the last couple of weeks, is how glossy the game looks. A small consideration, you might argue, but there is something nice about loading up a new game that greets you with a pleasing - to the eye and ear - series of introduction screens and a title screen that is easy to navigate.
There are the usual options to play a one-off game, a whole NBA season or just the playoffs, augmented by the option to go online and find someone to play.
There is, sadly, no dunk contest option, though you can participate in the three-point shoot-out, a game called Own The Court that involves making shots from specific points around the floor, and the Skills Challenge, which is a part of All-Star Weekend and is a combination of running,
dribbling, passing and shooting that is surprisingly fun to play.
The real attractions of NBA 08 are a mode called Replay and a system that measures your progress in the game.
Replay first. Essentially, it's a chance to recreate real-life NBA situations, whether it be Dirk Nowitzki scoring five points in the last 2min of a game or LeBron James hitting a buzzer-beater.
There is a whole season's worth of challenges, which include two basic things to be achieved and a further three to get bonus points. A Game Of The Week option is included online that allows you to get new challenges from the current season.
Replay is a really nice way to pick up and play the game and the difficulty level is perfect. Not too hard, in other words.
There are alternate strips, new courts and gear to be unlocked, with credits earned by ticking off goals (hitting a buzzer-beater, getting a triple-double, beating specific teams and so on) and playing regular games.
The credits also allow you to create a player and slowly skill him up. It's fair to say I am thoroughly enjoying turning my player, Mark ``Sparky'' Dickel, into a god.
On the court, NBA 08 looks gorgeous and plays extremely smoothly. The button system borrows heavily from NBA Live and a clever new gauge makes it much easier to judge how much power to apply to your shot.
The ONE thing that prevents me giving the game a perfect score, and ranking it in my personal pantheon of great sporting games, is how obscenely difficult it is to judge rebounds.
If you control a player, it is nearly impossible to get up for a board, and the AI of your team-mates is brain-dead.
You regularly find the computer-controlled team soaring high to steal rebounds, and that gets seriously frustrating after a while.
Apart from that failing, NBA 08 is just a flat-out good game. Hoops heaven.
