NBA 08 is a decent basketball game that fails to bring to the table what serious sports gamers want: a franchise mode as well as competent GM play. In short, there’s no real reason to pick this game up over its competition: namely NBA 2K8.
The game offers a different control system than its genre cousins. Instead of shooting via the right analog stick you hold down the circle button and a multi-colored meter appears. You want to let go of the button in the green area to get a good shot off. Green shots can miss, which probably takes into effect the player's ability as a sharpshooter. It is a change of pace from the control aspect of other games to say the least.
Sony's big selling points on this game are the full 1080p 60fps graphics and the NBA Replay option. The graphics are really sharp. The only minus is that there is a lot of clipping and the animation transitions are rigid. You will find your player's bodies going through opponent’s bodies as they go down the court. The defender will stop an opposing player, but you will see an offensive player's head and arms go through the defender's body. The animation transition problem is inherent in almost all sports games, but this game is well behind the times in this aspect and the problems are even more pronounced at the level it is rendered in.
The second selling point is the NBA Replay sub-game. This is really where this game shines and should continue to shine through the NBA regular season. NBA Replay has 68 situations right out of the box from real games of the 07 NBA season and playoffs. The unfortunate part is you are not able to choose any situation you want, you have to go through each week successively. Each week has two different situations with a number of objectives to reach. You can simply pass the section by doing the bare minimum, but you can score more points by completing the tougher objectives. The cool thing about NBA Replay is that you often have to hit shots from exactly where the NBA superstar actually took the shot. A little NBA logo will appear where the player needs to take the shot to count toward an objective. The toughest part is where you have to keep an opponent from hitting a milestone. It makes you have to play some defense in order to reach the objective.
Along with the 68 situations, you will be able to download current situations as well, called Games of the Week. The game promises five situations every week once the NBA season begins. It will be interesting to see if this works well and how big the files are. They are also promising to include this all the way through the playoffs next year. This sounds really cool, but you have to wonder if Sony is maybe overspending on a game that not many people are likely to pick up. Going online showed that not a lot of people are playing this game. The one online game that was played was filled with lag and was almost unplayable. No idea if this is related to the netcode in the game, connection between the reviewer and the other player or something else.
Although NBA Replay is cool, there are plenty of major missteps with this game. Having no franchise or competent GM option should throw NBA 08 right out the door for any serious sports gamer that likes to run simulations and play with trades. The CPU does not block any trades, so you can trade your low rent player for a superstar on another team and not even worry about the salary cap. The only gameplay choices are a Season mode and Playoff mode along with forgettable mini-games. Outside of speed on the shot meter, there is not much noticeable difference between the difficulty levels, which is a bit unnerving.
In the end, NBA 08 is a game that plays well but has left a lot of key gameplay options behind. Even with NBA Replay, this game is just not worth $60 to pick up, but it may be worth a weekend rental.
