Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP

Genre: Sports

Number of Players: 1 - 2 (up to 8 with multitap)

Peripherals: Network Adaptor, EyeToy™ USB Camera, USB Headset

NBA O8 by Sony isn’t as packed with features as one might expect. You can play 1-2 players, or up to 8 with a multi-tap. With only 4 modes to choose from, the game gets old quickly. Single game, League, My Life, and Online play are all this game has to offer you.

In the final and third installment of My Life, NBA O8 focuses on Coach T.’s final season, the dynamic of team unity, and the journey to create a dynasty within the NBA. More than 60 different game scenarios are available in The Life, and players will have the opportunity to play each of the five starting positions. For a casual NBA sports game player such as myself, I find the career mode of this game boring and stagnant. The character creation really lacks with only a couple of hairstyles to choose from. And I do mean a COUPLE, not even enough to say a FEW. Besides choosing a couple of headbands to try to give your character some kind of personality, there isn’t much else to offer here. (And since when do people only come in two colors? Dark and Light?)

Of course, the third mode is season, which seems to have a few more options than anything else in this game. You can create a full season or just jump into the playoffs. When creating a season, you can choose to start with your default roster, a recently downloaded one, or customize your own roster. Set your season length to how many games you want to play, and also set the amount of games for your playoff series. Being able to turn the “trade deadline” on or off, or turn “restrict trades” on or off, and being able to turn off CPU trades, round off the last of the options for season mode.

And of course, last but not least, you have online mode. Unfortunately at the time of the review, there was no one on to try the actual online mode to check out lag during gameplay, and to see if you how and how well the chat capabilities of the online games were. But I was able to log on and check out the different options available. They seem to have put the most thought into this mode, but it’s still not enough to warrant spending your hard earned cash on it. You have a home page, a Game Room page where you can join others to play, a page to download the latest roster updates, a leaderboard for those who actually care, Message Box (but didn’t see an option for making a friends list), a polls and survey page, a page for editing your profile if you so wish, and, last but not least, a My Team page to look up stats for your online play. BUT, the one thing they didn’t include is an option at log in to save your username and password. So, every time you want to hope online to catch a few games, you have to type in your username and password using the controller.

Even though the controls of the game felt responsive, the motion of your character was not fluid at all. Such things as running down court, doing a juke move, and trying to shoot did not flow well together and did not feel natural. It felt like you did three full separate moves, instead of doing three separate moves as one seamless move.

The Power Boarding System did seem to work well. Based on shot trajectory and bounce off the rim, players can utilize this mechanic to realistically position themselves for shots off the rim or backboard. They also have returned the Smart Shot Indicator, which with this visual cue, you can determine shot probability based on defensive effort. Tighter defense will result in a low-level indicator while soft defense will encourage players to fire away.

Overall, I don’t think I could recommend this game to even hard core, die-hard NBA lovers, who are looking for something new during the off season.

-jason-