Digital Sportspage Blog

I’ve spent a little time with the two new PSP hoops titles and while there is some fun to be had, I have to say that I’m not all that impressed with either of them. I have never tried Live on the PSP so Live 08 is my first venture but I have tried every previous Sony NBA title on the PSP.

NBA 08 - This title has some nice presentation and it is easily the best of the series so far. NBA 07 was pure crap in my opinion but 08 appears to be playable and can offer some on-the-go basketball fun. The game seems unbalanced though. For example, on offense the typical basketball game invisible shield is in full effect meaning it is harder to penetrate the AI defense than it is on a first date with a bible-toting woman. There’s just no room to get by and the crossover moves at your disposal do little, if anything at all, to create any open space.

Unfortunately if the AI defense is like a first date with a bible-toting woman your teams defense is like the town whore. At times is seems virtually impossible to stop the CPU offense from getting in the paint or driving the hole. Every game seems like you’re playing catch-up because of this. Every run you go on is short-lived because it’s only a matter of time before your defense completely breaks down. Part of this can be user error but I’ve tried many different techniques and nothing seems to clog the middle and force a perimeter shot. It almost seems as if the cpu offense knows going into each possession if they’re going to take a perimeter shot or go inside and just executes it rather than looking, and more importantly earning, their shots.

There are a lot of little mini-games to round out the package and the Conquest mode is supposed to offer a ton of depth and strategy. I haven’t had a chance to check out Conquest mode yet so I can’t comment on that but some of the mini-games are decent. Horse can be fun as a quick diversion but I can’t see it getting too much of your attention and Fast Break is interesting as it lets you play 3-on-2 while on offense for a set amount of time before switching you to 2-on-3 while playing defense for the same amount of time.

So while there is a lot of quick-fix basketball action to be had I can’t fully recommend a title that doesn’t offer a solid basketball experience in the full game.

NBA Live 08 - This being the first Live title I’ve ever played on the PSP I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I know it took EA several iterations before finally nailing some of their other sports on the PSP so I had some high hopes for this one since it is the third Live to be released on the PSP.

Well, graphically it is definitely on par with Sony’s release but rebounding seems awfully tough and there are times where you don’t feel in control of you player at all. In an effort to make the player interactions look real there are times where your player will get locked into a contact animation with another player and you feel as if you have no control over your player at times. The contact is never initiated by you and seems as if it is automatically activated whenever you get within a certain distance from a defender. It just doesn’t seem right to me and left me feeling like I was influencing the play rather than participating in it.

Rebounding is no easy task either. There were plenty of times where the CPU offense would get repeated second or even third chances due to my inability to score some rebounds. Even my AI-controlled teammates in the area did nothing to box guys out or get in position for a rebound. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if the cpu offensive AI wasn’t much better than the AI your team is given. There are sliders in the game but I haven’t touched them yet. This might be a moot point if any of the sliders actually address this.

Another thing that I didn’t particularly care for is the fact that I like to pass the ball around using the button icons and in this game you have to press the L-button twice quickly to bring up the passing icons. This makes it an exercise in frustration when trying to move the ball around quickly looking for an open shot.

I can’t compare this to past versions of Live on the PSP so I’ll just say that I was actually more impressed with the improvements Sony seemed to make with their game and was underwhelmed by what EA had to offer.