GENRE
	Sports
	DEVELOPER
	EA Canada
	PUBLISHER
	Entertainment Arts
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-4
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	Yes
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

When Madden 06 launched alongside Wii last November, a lot of people were taken off-guard by the surprising amount of care and thought that went into the game, especially given how easy it might have been to simply cash in a quick and dirty port and call it a day. Hopes ran high that this would herald a long run of great sports conversions to Wii. While some other EA franchises have successfully adapted to Nintendo's console, this one has not. As a result, NBA Live 08 proves to be one of the worst big-name efforts to date.

visuals

In a word, forgettable. Character design is bland and jaggy, animations are stiff and unpolished, and the scenery looks atrocious. The overall design looks ripped directly off of PS2, with no visual sense at all that this is a Wii title. With games like Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy and even Transformers showing post-GameCube graphics, there’s no reason why the game should look like this. The gripes aren’t merely aesthetic, either, as the dull mass of players proves difficult to navigate among, especially in the lane.

audio

The music is generally well-done, depending on your tastes. As usual, EA trots out an eclectic mix of tunes, that run the gamut between pop, R&B, electronica and reggae. Of course, if none of that suits you, the tracks can be selectively disabled. Likewise, the commentary -- done by Marv Albert and Steve Kerr -- sounds solid. Of note, Kerr’s commentary can also be pretty brutal in its criticism, so if you’re doing Family Play with grandma, consider turning it off.

gameplay

NBA Live 08 has a decent number of game modes for both the hardcore and casual, although the Wii version comes up bafflingly short compared to other consoles. For the serious players, there are instant games, full seasons and online play, while casual gamers can indulge in a Party mode (featuring 3-point and slam dunk contests) and the Family Play option for both instant play and seasonal work. Unfortunately, EA chose to leave Dynasty mode out, which is unforgivable, because it can be found in almost every other home console version.

In practice, none of the gameplay modes work as well as they should. The on-the-court action of instant play and season mode is a mess, with players basically running around with no sense of purpose. The game offers pre-set playcalling, but every play just never seems to execute right; and most of the time, the player will find themselves taking either the three-pointer or just running it into the paint with the best player. Additionally, season play is little more than a bunch of instant play games; wheeling and dealing is a non-issue, for example.

As a sidenote, there is a Party mode available, but a party it is not. The load and transition times are intolerable; players will spend more time standing around waiting to dunk or shoot than actually doing the deed, which becomes boring after a while. Worse still, the controls can be so twitchy, especially with the slam dunk game, that it’s far too easy to fail. Thus, a player stands around for 20 seconds waiting for loading, fails the dunk, and then waits another 20 seconds before the next player gets to fail. Intolerable.

Party mode isn’t the only place where the controls prove shaky. The game takes some of your basic maneuvers -- shooting, dunking, stealing and blocking -- and maps them to horizontal swipes or vertical ones, but the implementation is pretty rough. Often the game mistakes one kind of swipe for another one, making it is just as easy to accidentally do a horizontal swipe for a Quixotic lay-up from the three-point line as it is go for the tray. This gets frustrating on both sides of the ball and makes a player wish they just had some buttons instead. It’s unfortunate, because motion could conceivably enhance the experience; but in this case, it actually takes away from it.

Live also offers a wrinkle on the control with Family Play, a mode the manual boasts even grandma can handle. With Family Play, the player simply uses the Wii Remote while the AI handles movement duties. When put to the test with a casual gamer, the controls were indeed relatively simple to pick up, but the limitations on control -- especially in lower difficulty modes -- may prove a frustration to the casual gamer, especially when the hardcore player is stealing and drawing fouls against an unsuspecting AI. Additionally, the aforementioned motion detection issues can easily frustrate and confuse a casual gamer, who may not entirely know what he or she is doing in the first place.

multiplayer

The game offers a staple of offline and online experiences. Offline, two or more players can take it to the floor in either the instant play or season play modes. The online game, meanwhile, is there, but it’s got its share of issues. For one thing, it’s pretty vanilla -- there are no tournaments and no special wrinkles, just your basic single game format. Perhaps that’s for the best, as things online look pretty dry. While EA’s infrastructure is solid enough, it’s hard to score an online match because, at the time of this review (just a few weeks after release), there are relatively few people actually playing online.

overall

NBA Live 08 is a disappointment in no small part because EA impressed early with the sports potential of Madden 07. It's not just that, though, as this game fails to stand up on its own merits and even chooses to needlessly sacrifice core gameplay components -- namely, a dynasty mode -- for some casual fare that is hit or miss. If Wii is your only system and you’re dying to have basketball, this may be your only choice. But if you’re really set on hoops and you’ve got a PS2, PS3 or 360, look there instead. One can only hope that some of these problems will right themselves next year.

5.0 /10