While Live Was Down....

Last Friday I finally broke down and subscribed to Game Fly. Lisa had been anxious to try out Chromehounds and I wasn’t about to give up my copy in order for her to do it! I was a little concerned about the turn around time since GF is in Cali and I live in Indiana. The first disk actually arrived on Monday with the second showing up on Tuesday. Not bad. Not Netflix good, but not terrible either. When I signed up, I chose the 2 out at a time plan. I didn’t really have anything in mind to try but I figured the Mrs. Might like to try out a couple of other titles. They didn’t have the other game we wanted in (Lego Star Wars) so I decided to take a chance and try out NBA Live 07.

I haven’t played a basketball game on a console since Arch Rivals. I figured that the game play would have greatly advanced since then but I had no idea what I was in for. Since Live had been down the last two days I was relegated to playing alone vs. the comp. I decided not to try and do any season type modes and opted for a simple “arcade” style game. I jumped into the first game knowing that I had no clue what button did what but figured that by halftime I’d figure it out.

This is my first major complaint. It seems like game developers have decided that if a controller has 10 buttons + a D pad, then they are required to have the game take full use of every button. I’m all for having a certain level of control over your players, but I’m a simple guy. I can either play the game or coach the game, but being asked to do both at the same time while trying to keep track of 14 buttons is a little much. The other issue is that there appears to be no way to change the button layout to suit my preference. I looked around a little, maybe it’s buried deep within one of the many convoluted menus in the game. I couldn’t find it. I wanted to use A to shoot and B to pass but I guess no one cares what I want.

Secondly, over the last 10 years game play hasn’t really improved all that much apparently. For some reason Dwayne Wade is able to dunk a basketball from a standing position from 15 feet away from the basket. If T Mac is stuck underneath the basket, no problem, he’ll some how dunk THROUGH the backboard. That’s if you’re the computer. If you are trying to control the players it’s a different set of rules for you. Shaq can be standing point blank under the rim and if the comp thinks there’s too much traffic around it won’t allow you to attempt a dunk. There’s no man alive that can stop Shaq from dunking from underneath the basket. Apparently the folks at EA didn’t know that. Also if the ball gets stolen from you, don’t expect your teammates to run back to play any D. It’s a guaranteed break away for the other team. Defense in general in the game seems to be an after thought. (Maybe it’s like the real NBA after all).

Admittedly I only played a couple of games and I suppose if I had a few hours to put into learning the game from the ground up it might get better. You see that’s my problem. I don’t want to invest several hours learning a game just to feel competent to play, much less good. If a game is going to grab my interest it better do it quick. Developers need to learn that just because you can make a game that has a 2 week learning curve, doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes simpler is better. After putting the game away for the night I remembered that Rashanii had done a great review of this title a couple of weeks ago. I should have remembered sooner. I could have saved myself a lot of frustration. Rashanii? Do you mind reviewing Need for Speed: Carbon for me when it comes out? It’s next on my Q and it’s not too late to remove it if you think it sux too.