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Is this The Life? NBA 08 for PS2 features The Life, Sony San Diego’s story-in-a-sports-game mode that works surprisingly well. While The Life is still entertaining, it doesn’t have the same pizzazz that it had for its debut or even last year. The result is that although NBA 08 is an okay basketball game, there are better alternatives available on the PS2.
NBA 08 is still fairly light on game modes. The game does include the expected exhibition and season modes, but lacks a franchise or dynasty mode. The franchise and dynasty modes are mainly responsible for the replay value in a lot of sports games so it hurts the game not to include one. However, as I mentioned above, you do get access to The Life. In The Life (Volume 3), you’ll once again play as a Big Deal point guard who has to make sure that the team gets back to the final. You see, the coach is about to retire after several championship seasons and wants to go out with a bang. The Life is still very dramatic and adds a great deal of story to the traditionally story-less sports games. There are also a number of challenges associated with the game, although they aren’t as involved or fun as the Replay mode in the PS3 version of the game.
The gameplay is solid. NBA 08 still includes the colored-rings shooting of Sony’s NBA games. Basically, when you want to shoot you’ll see either a red, yellow or green halo around the ball. If it’s yellow, you have a decent shot of making it and if it’s green you have a fairly good chance. You need to time your shot to let go when the ring is green. The game also has the option to eliminate this for a simpler, hold-and-shoot mechanism. The rest of the offensive is fairly solid, although it’s still fairly hard to drive in for lay-aways or dunks.
The game includes a simple online mode. You can play one-on-one multiplayer games online or with up to four players on the same PS2. Aside from one-on-one games, the online functionality also includes a leaderboard. Technically, the game performs well online with very little lag.
NBA 08’s graphics are pretty good on the PS2. The player models look pretty good on their own but don’t always resemble their onscreen counterparts. The animations are okay, too, but not amazing and sometimes rather stiff. The game’s courts and arenas are serviceable, but lack things like 3D crowds.
The game’s audio performs respectfully. The sounds of basketball are faithfully recreated in the game. The soundtrack is made up of the typical basketball mix of rock and rap, which sounds just fine. The commentary is fairly solid and accurate, although the banter isn’t great.
Sony’s NBA 08 is a solid basketball gamebut the actual gameplay isn’t as tight as its competitors. The lack of a franchise mode hurts the game and while The Life is still plenty of fun to play through, it may not be enough to pull the game up for most people. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Oct 3, 2007
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