No Hate

[Lefein]

Just a friendly reminder that whenever someone does something that goes against the grain there will be some who get it and some who don't. In fact, some peoples sensibilities will be so offended that they will feel compelled to express their displeasure. It's okay, much like compromise, innovation has always been met through the ages with skepticism and people who didnt necessarily get what they wanted exactly.

It's okay if you dislike something because it doesn't suit your needs. However, personal taste is never a basis for an objective argument (argument in the philosophical sense as opposed to any sense of debate). It is usually pretty difficult for people to be indifferent to change. After all, if it existed within the realm of your imagination that something should be one way, then perhaps it is up to someone such as yourself to make that change spin into motion. Innovators must take the risk of actually setting their ideas into goals.

Nintendo wanted to change things. The very fact that people are displeased shows that they did something outside the norm. If everyone accepted it, then it would have been something already done. There's no reason to diss on or berate those who are not compatible with the Revolution. That being said, you may find yourself trying to defend something you are passionate about. As someone who embraces the concept of a three dimensional control mechanism, it is hard to see people lambast such a great thing to me. However, for each person who absolutely cannot stand the "new thing" there will be one who takes it to heart or at least gets a smile out of it. So, I ask everyone, no matter which way they go with the Revolution.. There is no reason to hate.

[The Chocobo Kid]

I have read your post and it's petter good. You give alot of good reason why we should support nintendo and there Idea for change. I will be looking forward to games as the need. if the controller works great with the games made for it then I'm going to give it a try. It's all up to nintendo to make this whole idea work.

[coltde420]

Ill be the first say when I first saw the controller i was like what is that. Then when I watched the video and read about I think it will be good. I want to see it in action with games first, then I would think about picking up a nintendo.

[DJ AG aka Djag]

Ill be the first say when I first saw the controller i was like what is that. Then when I watched the video and read about I think it will be good. I want to see it in action with games first, then I would think about picking up a nintendo.

Yup so lets just pray Nintendo lets out some juicy info while TGS is still here and alive and kickin! =+)


Just a friendly reminder that whenever someone does something that goes against the grain there will be some who get it and some who don't. In fact, some peoples sensibilities will be so offended that they will feel compelled to express their displeasure. It's okay, much like compromise, innovation has always been met through the ages with skepticism and people who didnt necessarily get what they wanted exactly.

It's okay if you dislike something because it doesn't suit your needs. However, personal taste is never a basis for an objective argument (argument in the philosophical sense as opposed to any sense of debate). It is usually pretty difficult for people to be indifferent to change. After all, if it existed within the realm of your imagination that something should be one way, then perhaps it is up to someone such as yourself to make that change spin into motion. Innovators must take the risk of actually setting their ideas into goals.

Nintendo wanted to change things. The very fact that people are displeased shows that they did something outside the norm. If everyone accepted it, then it would have been something already done. There's no reason to diss on or berate those who are not compatible with the Revolution. That being said, you may find yourself trying to defend something you are passionate about. As someone who embraces the concept of a three dimensional control mechanism, it is hard to see people lambast such a great thing to me. However, for each person who absolutely cannot stand the "new thing" there will be one who takes it to heart or at least gets a smile out of it. So, I ask everyone, no matter which way they go with the Revolution.. There is no reason to hate.

Aye to that! =+)

[The Chocobo Kid]

That good and all, same with Sega, If they say they are coming back to making a console then I going to need to know alot about it.

EA's John Madden Football franchise is the leader in sports videogames. The leader in the Basketball genre is another story. EA has its hands full competing with 2K Sports' NBA 2K8 and Sony's NBA '08. There's as much competition between basketball games this year as there is competition. Luckily, it’s the best looking entry from EA by far, though not as perfect as the competition.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/220/478357481_fbfd31525d.jpg

First off, this is a really good-looking game. From the reflections on the polished hardwood court to the smoothly animated players, NBA Live 08 is a pleasure. One thing that was amazing was the excellently modeled polygonal spectators. Finally, it seems like sports titles are coming close to forming crowds that aren't a complete embarrassment to the rest of the game's visual fidelity. The player faces are generally really good as well.

The PlayStation 3 version of the game doesn't look quite as good as the Xbox 360 version, with some jaggy lines around the court and a loss of overall quality compared to the Xbox 360 version. Some of that is due to the Xbox 360 version upscaling the resolution to 1080p on our high-definition set. Despite that, frame rate hitches are still more than apparent.

The game play is far less annoying as previous iterations brought back arcade style, but still doesn't qualify as a proper imitation. It's still very easy to drive to the hoop, although some game mechanics have been added to encourage players to take it in down low. You can back down defenders and then pull off ball fakes, spins, hooks, and all other sorts of moves. The AI would often double team us down low, making the big guy on our team dribble like crazy to send the ball to someone; otherwise it’d be an easy steal. The only situations in which we found it wiser to dish it to our center instead of driving to the hoop was when we wanted to draw a foul from the defender matched up on him. It’s really amazing knowing you can easily juke the opponent.

On the defensive side of the ball, Live attempts to address the difficulty players have with sticking to their assignment by taking the challenge entirely out of the equation. By pressing a shoulder button, your selected player will stick to his offensive counterpart. This puts the control of your player's movement into the hands of the AI, allowing you to focus on blocking shots or stealing the ball. So while using this defensive assist feature you can still press the steal button to try and swat away the ball, block shots, and use the right analog stick to assume a wider defensive stance, or to raise your arms to contest a shot. It's a great system, the only difficulty with it coming into play when the computer automatically shifts your control from the closest player to the ball handler, which becomes confusing. You can choose to lock your control to a single player, which helps for a particular goal you have in mind, like stealing the ball with the point guard or using your center to try and block shots.

http://pastapadre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/live08screen5.jpg

There's a very good selection of different modes to play through, but the most important features of the game are the immense Dynasty mode and the online support. The Dynasty mode allows for lots of different micromanagement options, like scouting draft classes, conditioning your players, and working trades. We'd have liked a way to manually override trades, perhaps to simulate moves made during the real NBA season, but we can live without it.

Multiplayer is well-implemented across the board. You can play cooperatively on a single console, and you can even challenge players online with your buddies. Playing online is a cinch, and we had a great time hopping into matches and competing with the early adopters. Leagues had a bit of problems, but they worked out the functionality in the end.

The game has more issues, unfortunately. One issue that we encountered occurred when we passed the ball across the half court line. The camera stayed fixed to the wrong side of the court, and as the pass apparently missed its mark, we were stuck with having to call a time out in order to get the game working again.

Tweaking the game sliders works well in some cases and not so well in others. Just as an experiment, we tried lowering the entire computer shooting ability sliders down to zero. Not only did the computer continue to nail three point shots, but their mid-range game was still effective.

It's also very annoying to work under the basket, since players tend to want to go behind the backboard or to toss the ball straight up into the rim. The move schemes are annoying. It's one thing if this is some scrub off the bench, but if there's one thing Dwayne Wade can do, it’s shoot close to the basket. It's simply laughable how often some of the top players will miss easy buckets from close range. This is especially infuriating when playing online, even if it is affecting both human opponents.

The Sprite Slam Dunk competition could have really used some more fine-tuning. It's incredibly frustrating to line up what appears to be a decent alley-oop only to have your player misses snatching the ball out of the air entirely due to a split-second lapse in your timing. This isn’t even accuracy, but more like complicating the game for the sole reason of complicating it. And on the other end of the spectrum, we were able to execute a perfect 50 point dunk, with LeBron's arm going through the rim and fireworks everywhere, only we have no idea how exactly it happened. The random feel of the event, coupled with its frustrating learning curve, makes it hard to really embrace this aspect of the game.

The three-point shot competition is similarly lackluster. We've played this mode before, in exactly the same way, and it's hard to suppress a yawn when you realize that the outcome is entirely dependent on some random workings behind the scenes. We've learned how to time our release at the peak of our jump already, so when we miss, it's usually due to the difficulty setting.

Free throws have been a much-maligned part of the series since it went for the stick-flicking shooting control. It's too difficult to make free throws with even the better shooters in the league. On the other hand, you can bypass the free throw shooting system entirely and just press the Circle button to toss in your foul shots. While this is a bad way out, it’s better compared to the original system.

NBA Live 08 is an improvement for the series, but still lacks in enough areas to keep it out of the perfect All-Star game. With improved defensive play, a fixed free-throw system and perhaps more original ideas, we can expect bigger and better things from the future iterations of NBA Live.

Pro’s:

Great Graphics
Solid team system
Great online Functionality with Leagues

Con’s:

Framerate issues
Unfixed free-throw system
Uneasy controls and lackluster defensive plays.

Preview Line: NBA Live 08 is an improvement for the series, but still lacks the necessary enhancements to call this one a winner. Though fans of basketball might enjoy the great graphics, the gameplay calls for something more.

Score: 6.5/10

[The_Only]

Edited and Live.

Good review, Danny. I know next to nothing about this sport but I found it an entertaining, informative read.

Minor edits needed, including rewording of the second paragraph, as you worded it abit confusingly.

Also, added some more images.