NBA Live 08 (Wii)

There's a reason real basketball isn't played with a nunchuk.
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Ordinarily, if we were playing some stream-of-consciousness cognitive connections game and you threw the words "basketball" and "nunchuks" at us, we'd probably think of the movie "Game of Death" and a chuk-wielding, yellow-track-suit-wearing Bruce Lee taking down a gauntlet of foes before coming face to face with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. At least that's what we would have thought of before EA Sports' NBA Live 08 for Wii landed on my desk. You have to hand it to EA for being bold. As the first developer to bring the game of basketball to the Wii, it was stepping into uncharted territory. But, just like Jabbar found out when he decided to mix it up with the baddest man on the planet, the results may not always be so great.

In an attempt to make everyone happy and make the game accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike, development has introduced two separate controller schemes. Using the EA Sports Family Play set-up, only the Wii remote is used. According to the manual, this makes things so intuitive that you can "put the Wii remote in Grandma's hand and let her put on a clinic." Sure, the visual is a great one -- my grandmother blowing by some hapless defender as she soars over him for a dunk, or flying into the stands to start a fight with a fan who may -- or may not -- have thrown a drink at her. In reality, this Family Play set-up is only fun if you're the type of person who derives joy from preventing others from experiencing it.

The play in this simplified game has been so dumbed-down, it's hardly recognizable as an interactive experience. On offense, pull the remote back and then flick it forward to shoot, shake it side-to-side to dunk, and use the A button to pass. On defense, you jump to block and rebound by pulling the remote back and forth, and the side-to-side deal will attempt a steal. That's it. If you noticed, certain concepts -- like being able to control your player's movements -- have been scrapped. The game controls all player movement. Offense is a complete drag. You inbound the ball to your guy and he heads up the court. If you leave him alone, he'll slowly make his way to the hoop, where you can wiggle the remote for a dunk. Defense is the only aspect that's even remotely fun. It's cool to block shots by timing the flicking of the remote. The bad part is that after you block a shot, you usually end up back on offense. In other words, your grandma will not be putting on a clinic. If anything, she'll want you to drive her back to the clinic.

The advanced controls play a lot closer to what you expect from the Live franchise -- to a degree. The addition of the Nunchuk adds a whole lot more buttonage to things, and being able to do some fancy ball-handling by rotating the left-hand controller is a kick. And, yes, in this mode you can actually control which way your guys run on the court. That said, it still plays like an arcade game. If there were any sort of all-powerful gaming court whose word was law, this would legally have to be a big-head basketball game. There's not a lot of strategy required here.