Customer Reviews

NBA Live 08

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I just bought this game yesterday and have not even began to examine this game in-depth, but I'm already almost completely turned off. I installed the game and got to the menu screen with no problems, the irritation began when I started a new dynasty. Made it through the draft, staff signing, and training camp and was looking forward to the upcoming season. First things first, I had a couple players I wanted to add to my roster so I went to the trade screen and was immediately irked that I could not find player salary listings. This makes it almost entirely impossible to trade if either team is over the salary cap as player salaries on both ends of the trade need to be equal (or within 20%). It took me forever to get a trade completed that was equal, as you are offering blind. Moving on very irritated, I went to update my starting lineup to plug the holes that my trade had just created only to learn that the idiots at EA forgot to add the reorder rosters button into 2008. You literally have to manually adjust the starting five before entering each game, but that doesn't solve the issues if you sim games... Anyway, highly irritated, I moved on to my first game, manually setting my starting 5. Tipoff, game starts I've got the ball hit Peja Stojakovic who is wide open on the perimeter for 3. Missed, got the rebound, back out to Peja, missed, over and over again. I've always been a good shooter in the NBA live series and by the time I exited the game, about half way through the 1st quarter, Peja had missed 10 straight 3s (most of them wide open...). Other problems in game were as listed in the other reviews. One player taking every shot, wild baseline fading while leaning left/right shots for 3 being drilled, awkward player movements, inaccurate game fatigue (Shaun Livingston about ready to drop dead from fatigue 6 minutes into the 1st quarter), etc... Irritated beyond belief and amazed, I quickly checked NBA Live's website for an update, "there has to be an update for these problems, there must be...", I said to myself, I was almost speachless when I found that there was not a single update to be had on NBA Live 2008's website. Keep in mind that this is MONTHS after the games release. Sure, amateurs have thrown together workaround fixes, but these require downloading game modifiers and manually loading them into the game folder. EA really dropped the ball on this one. They have, in effect, released a half completed game and have failed to remedy the situation. Do EA employee's even try out their junk before it's released? It took me 5 minutes to find fatal flaws in this game that make it well near unplayable as is (and retailing at 50-30$, this is a complete slap in the face). With NBA Live 08, EA is saying loud and clear that they don't care about ripping off their loyal consumer base. I have bought EVERY NBA Live since 99 and have NEVER been so disapointed with the end product. When EA releases NBA Live 2009, I'm going to have serious reservations about buying, if I ever buy...

I haven't played the NBA Live series for a few years but this one turns out to be a disappointment. What I'm saying is, it is not as realistic as before .

In the game, the opposition's offense concentrates almost on only one, or maybe two players. For instance, when I play against the Raptors, Chris Bosh would attempt like half of the team's field goals. Other similar examples are Antawn Jamison and Gilbert Arenas in the Wizards, and Kobe Bryant in the Lakers. Often times half of the points scored by the opposing team are from only one player. I remember, in the previous versions, say 2003 or 2004, the attack was more balanced.

The opposing team also tends to make some very unbelievable shots, like off-balance/fade away from beyond the arc while I could miss layups. And players like Kobe, Lebron would just dunk, dunk and dunk and you couldn't stop them no matter who you have in the paint. Maybe it's me, but I've been playing the game since 1998 with Tim Hardaway on the cover. I can say I'm a pretty experienced player on this and these didn't happen.

The biggest joke of the game is its simulation which is completely unrealistic. I opened a season mode and I checked the boxscores of the CPU-against-CPU matches. I was amazed how could the likes of Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Pau Gasol and Shaq attempt like 5 to 10 3-pointers in a game and they actually made them as if they were Jason Kapono.

I was completely turned off by the lack of realism in the game and I decided to only play a single match once in a while.

Since I haven't been playing the game for 3 years, what I said above might not be new. But it certainly didn't happen 4 years ago.

The game hasn't changed much since the last couple of years, but it still keeps you entertained. My favorite part of the game is playing on Dynasty Mode. You get to choose your players and your coaching staff. It feels like you were a real GM of your favorite team.
I like the new FIBA World Championship. I just wish you could play single games with international teams instead of having to play the whole championship.
I feel like the commentaries while you play for this game are not as good as the ones from NBA Live 2005. Creating your own player was better, in my opinion, in that game too.
I kinda miss the option of watching the cheerleaders coming out at halftime in NBA Live 2000. I wish they still had that option. Even though it serves no purpose for gameplay, it feels more realistic.

This is the best NBA basketball computer game out there!! There are many improvements over NBA Live 07. Substitution and fatigue are better.

Commentry is also continuing to excel. In addition, the presentation is very good.

The new feature Hotspots is cool. It indicates where on the floor a player likes to shoot. This makes the game more authentic since players make shots where they do in real life. Red squares indicate where players are hot and blue is where they are cold. However players may occasionally make a shot in their cold spots and miss from their hotspots.

The dunk and lay-up buttons are together again this year, and it makes it better since before when you attempted a lay-up, it always seemed to get blocked, and so that forced you to dunk the ball since there was a greater chance it would go in.

I would recommend this game for any basketball fan. Even if you do not watch the NBA, you can still have fun because of the addition of HotSpots since then you can see where players can shoot. This way you know that players like Shaq are dominant near the basket and Ray Allen can drain threes.

I bought '07 about eight months ago, loved it, but lost it last week. This was $10 at fry's so I bought it. It is almost exactly the same game.

Players:
The biggest downside by far. First off, the ratings didn't change at all. Players like Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, and David West, who were all rated in the low 70's in '07 should have gone up at least 10. But they have the exact same stats as before, as does just about everyone, even players like Steve Francis (82, has sucked for a few seasons now) and Jalen Rose (71, retired). Also, rookies (half of whom are missing from the game) have completely messed up ratings. Alando Tucker is an 86. Chris Paul is an 85. About 15-20 rookies have messed up ratings like this, in the 80's. That completely screws up dynasty mode if you do a fantasy draft. I had to edit about 150 players total (rookies plus vets with ridiculous ratings) and save the roster just to make dyansty mode not a total joke. It took about 3 hours. Another problem is that pictures weren't updated, which means rookies have no pictures. Not a huge deal, but still it shows how lazy they were in making this game.

Gameplay:
The same as '07. Commentators say pretty much the same stuff, graphics haven't gotten any better.. sure, the graphics aren't bad, and the game is reasonably fun, but it's a new game, shouldn't they have updated it more?


The Good:
I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 for the following reasons:
-The music is absolutely amazing. Mostly underground/indie rap, I absolutely love just about every song.
-Some decent new features. The FIBA tournament is alright, even if the players ratings on teams from other countries are stupid as can be.
-It's still kind of a fun game. It's just about the same as '07.


Bottom line: Wait for '09. I'd be willing to bet that they'll do MUCH more to update next year, because I'm sure they realize how lazy they were in making '08. If you absolutely can't wait, just get '07, you can probably find it for about $5.

The is game is incredible! It is so realistic. The gameplay is exactly like what would play out in real life. The only issue is that it is almost impossible to defend anyone. When you try and defend someone or steal the ball from them, all that happens is you end up fouling them and it gets pretty annoying. I've found that it is also not the best idea to create the perfect roster. Your team will actually do worse. I went on a 7 game losing streak with a perfect roster. The slam dunks, however are awesome. Overall, this games is great. Strongly recommend you buy this game.

This game is a joke. Seriously. If you're any kind of basketball fan, you can't seriously like this. First, they don't adjust many of the player ratings from like 2005. I own that game, too, and Carlos Boozer is still rated 73, while Kirilenko is still rated 88. Hmmmm. Plus, the collision detection is awful and the gameplay is just sloppy and frustrating.

I used to be a huge fan, but Live has just gotten more and more insulting each year. Do yourself a favor and get NBA 2K9 if you want a good basketball PC game.

I "loved" the live series. The best one was 2005 in my opinion. I still play 2005 with updated rosters and player ratings adjusted to current players' abilities. The reason why I mention this is that none of the live series after 2005 really improve the game from 2005, rather, the series gets worse every year. I won't re-list all the issues - I agree with almost all of them. EA will not make any patches, updates for the game because couple months after each live series is out, they are already finished making the next one simply chaning the number Live 08 to 09, 09 to 10 etc. The graphics, game physics, menus, system have not changed in a long time. Sure, it may look a lil better and players get flashy signature moves or "zones" where they are supposed to get "hot" and make lots of shots. None of these things matter unless the game is balanced and actually fun to play. This game has no substance, no replayable value. It gets very boring very fast plus it has all the issues other reviers had mentioned. They should just make one solid game and have users buy patches every year and maybe, update the graphics every 2-3 years. Do not waste your money on this piece of junk. I just gave mine away to my lil cousin.
EA really needs to wake up. I'm so glad the 2k9 came out. I wish EA made this game so that the users have complete freedom. Like changing rosters- if they arn't going to give us roster updates, just at least give us freedom to change it easily. and you know what? Try blocking shots in this game it feels like nothing. EA, please consider firing your current live team.

Well, I'm not a big basketball fan, but I thought I would give it a shot. For a game made it 2008 this thing looks absolutely primitive. In the end I just didn't enjoy it.

I don't even know where to begin with this game. First it was on sale for $[...] so I thought what the hey and bought it. Big mistake. The interface is a disaster with cuts of game footage in the background which looks like a bad MySpace page. Any roster or player editing is a pain because you have to individually click to get to the bottom of the player list. Like lets say your editing Clippers players, to get to the last player you have to click 11-12 times to get to the player you want to edit instead of scrolling which the game developers did not put in.

Everything about this game is difficult, the developers didn't seem to put much thought into this game, perhaps because it was PC instead of concole.

The gameplay itself is a joke, if you just want to play some arcade style basketball its ok but for the diehard fan its an absolute nightmare. Scrubs point guards getting 60 points a game just because they drive to the rim and score even though you have 3 big men guarding the basket. Modifying to make the game better is impossible and for the life of me I COULD NOT SAVE ANY GAMES!!!!!! The first thing they should've done is make saving games as easy and effortless as possible.

In short I am done with the NBA Live series, I will switch to the 2K9 series.

Oh and the Gilbert Areanas cover with the horribly ugly uniform has got to be the worst nba game cover in the history of mankind. They wouldn't pull this kind of stuff for the Madden series. EA Sports treats the NBA Live series like a ugly stepchild.