Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by John DeGiorgio

NBA ’08 for the PSP could be the biggest outsider in the gaming industry. Widely held as the 3rd ranked basketball game on the second leading handheld could drive a franchise into therapy. In what turned out to be a few brilliant strokes of game design wrapped in a pretty average baskeball game got things off on the wrong foot last year. With no sizzle and hype there was nobody who noticed. If a game comes up with the most innovative aspect the genre has had in years, and nobody sees it, does it make an impact?

What’s a poor game to do? Come back next year and build on what you’ve done like any other game. This brings us to the second kick at the can for Sony’s own #8 playoff seed. Can the upstart compete with the elites in the league this year? Can they at least make it a series? Let’s throw the ball up and take a look.

I’ve got to hand it to Sony, they actually made the menus readable and easy enough to navigate through the seemingly endless gameplay options. What good is a game with endless options if you could never find them? Things could have gotten out of control right from the start, but thankfully they didn't.

Once you get into the arena, the Sony web site claims the game runs at 60fps on the PSP. That’s nice. All I know is that the graphics are pretty smooth and the players are modeled fairly well, if not a bit on the blocky side. I did notice that the animations were still a bit robotic, but less obtrusive than last year and didn’t lead to any gameplay complaints on the court. Stat overlays are actual freeze frames from game action as it's going on. When it works, it's cool to see the gameplay stopped with a players face surrounded by stats. When it doesn't, you get somebody's arm covering the face of the player who's stats you are seeing. Sony may have gotten a bit too cute here. All the mini-games were easy on the eyes as well. The one real down side is the crowds, who are just pixelated cutouts frozen in different positions. Funny to see some guy under the basket with his hands up in amazement, for the whole entire game. Other than that, across the board it’s all very serviceable.

The killer part of sports reviews for me is getting my two cents on about the game sounds. I’m actually going to cop out and steal from my review of last year’s game because I hear no difference in the sound this year either. There is hip-hop and there are squeaks bounces and whistles to go along with the commentary from Ian Eagle and Mark Jackson. I can't wait to find the the sports game that gives me a reason to rave about the sound and music. At some point, I’ll let you know if should buy a sports game for the sound and music. We aren't at that point here.

 

It’s all strictly by the book. There’s nothing innovative or missing once you hit the court for a simple game of 5-on-5 NBA basketball. Switching players, boxing out, and calling for picks they are all there for your use. Where the game gets more involved control wise is in the extras. With so many ‘gameplay’ options there are many different controls. They try to keep the essentials the same and things like pinball are what you would expect, but I would definitely recommend checking out the control settings for one of the many mini-games that make up the bulk of this title.

Vanilla is too spicy a term for the 5-on-5 aspect of this title. There is nothing that you will see in here that will draw you back because of it’s comparisons to the 2K series in terms of simulation. In an expected and welcomed move, the defense is held to a minimum and scoring is at all-star game levels. While it’s a little better than last year in terms of stupidity of defense but a few times my opponent was still boxing out one of my players who wasn’t there any more. There was also a few times when my guys were standing around a bit as well. None of that is good news but in a high scoring game like this, it hardly impacted the games. We aren’t looking at lock down defense here anyway.

Another feature that’s back is the ball halo (can I say ‘Halo’ in a Sony review?) that changes color as you shoot. I just can’t get a feel for it. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the game but I find myself paying attention to the color rather that focusing on the release point and I miss a lot more shots than I would or should have otherwise. It’s a bit disorienting for me but I’m sure I might be in the minority, but noticed it enough to warn you of it’s presence.

Measuring this game on it’s bland and high scoring NBA mode would be a mistake because it’s really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this title. The bulk of the benefits lie in the longevity and gameplay options that I’ll touch on in Value/Replay Value section.

This is where this game really shines. The sheer number of things that you can do, outside of a standard NBA game is astonishing. It seems that they crammed every game in the history of earth into this title. The return of games like Pop-A-Shot, pinball, dodge ball,  and skee-ball (to name a few) are all there, in addition to new Carnival Games and even a ‘Breakout” clone where the blocks represent team logos. I spent hours just doing that. This is the beauty of NBA 08. The “NBA” part of the game just scratches the service and these mini-games are perfectly suited for a portable and the pick-up-and-play attractiveness of the system. All this and I think the game just helped me break some sort of record for using hyphens in one paragraph!

But wait, there’s more! What I still say is the greatest addition to sports gaming is back for a second go around, and that’s the Conquest Mode. To refresh your memory, Conquest is a Risk-type game in which you use your chosen team, to take over the map of the US by beating geographically connected teams and taking their players as you march across the land. Win a challenge and you take a city and their team, lose your challenge and you lose a player. Lose a game when you’ve been challenged and you’ve lost the city and the team. The level of strategy that’s involved with this side game is astounding. Something that I pray every game picks up on after seeing it for two years now.

Maybe Sony should steal a little from EA and their slogan, but reverse it. It’s NOT in the game. What’s not in the standard NBA game for NBA ’08 on PSP is what makes I great. It’s to the point where you could love this game more if you aren’t really an NBA aficionado. The mini games are NBA and baskeball themed for the most part, but things like dodge-ball have no connection to the NBA at all and still provide a decent level of entertainment. Subsequently, you’re going to see a pretty good score for a baskeball game where the baskeball itself isn’t all that good. In the end, the game is fun to play, addictive and well suited for the console that it was made for.

Before the end of this review, I just want to take the time to request that everyone take notice of Conquest mode. It’s really a shot in the arm for sports games and should really be present in every other title in the genre. This game can’t be that obscure that nobody has noticed this brilliant gameplay option, can it?

Gaming Trend Score

77

1. Graphics: 70
2. Audio: 70
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 75
5. Value/Replay: 97
6. OVERALL:77