thank god I'm not a regular joe

I've been keeping up with this series since the Dreamcast days and it seems to get better every year (we'll forget 2k2 existed)

"Which is funny, because the last not-NBA-Jam basketball game I played was NBA Live. 95"

Oh Jeeze, you're totally the wrong person to have been given this game :P

I kid. I think NBA Live 95 was the first basketball game I owned (for super nes) so go figure. I haven't played any in a few years, but they definitely have changed since the Live 95 games. It's become a lot more realistic and actually takes some practice to be good. I'd say that's a good thing, albeit frustrating. The graphics look hawt though. For a wee second there I thought that was a real pic.

Thanks for the impressions btw!

Some vague screen shot comparisons between the two games would have been a sure fire hit.

Give it time. You'll catch on. Sure, I get mine handed to me by a friend that knows the game and basketball better than I, but I still enjoy it. And trust me, I'm not a basketball nerd.

But I agree on the manual and in-game practice modes/tutorials. They are almost completely useless.

You gotta give it some time, there is definitely a learning curve. Once you get past that, those feelings will disappear. Things start making more sense, even if you don't know much about the game. Hell, I still don't know much about basketball, but gave NBA 2k7 a chance, and it's great.
I jumped on the Golden State Warriors bandwagon last season, and that's why I got this game. I got hooked after a while. Good stuff...
I'm pretty sure there is an NBA 2k8 demo on LIVE right now.

You can't really blame the game for not accounting for your decade-long absence from basketball games.

I mean, Gears of War doesn't have a tutorial on dual-analog controls.

Like others said, you really need to give the game a few days before writing it off. It's definitely got a learning curve (even for people that have played last-gen basketball), but once surmounted a great experience awaits.

Wow, a really good basketball sim comes along and you write it off because your either too lazy or too busy to hit the net and read up on specifics of the game?

The last thing we need is our sport sims being dumbed down like the Madden series. Next time, if you're not willing to put in the time, hand it off to someone who cares about a basketball game playing, like, well, real basketball.

You're dumb, blog poster, you're really f'n dumb.

The game is freakin' awesome, if you actually applied yourself, you'd enjoy it. Oh no, game is hard, I must put down. I hear Barbie Horzez Adventure 5 is coming out on the DS, that's more your speed. You can kick some ass right out of the box and with Barbie, you'll rest easy knowing you have a lot in common... well, mostly cock sucking.

Oh noz, banzor.

@akashhhhh: I think a better Gears analogy would be if the tutorial level was taken out and it never told you how to use the action button to hide behind cover, SWAT turn, or vault over low cover, and instead the manual just said "press A at certain moments".

I agree with Luke in that sports games really need to include a quick tutorial mode to go through the controls, and of course, show off the new stuff in obnoxious EA style, complete with whatever stupid buzzword they made for the new feature.

Pshhh,
The only good basketball every made was NBA Jam for the Snes.

It's gone allll the way down hill since those mighty days.

@Ghettellectual: "Oh noz, banzor."

One can hope.

@Chef: It's the Luke Plunkett fangirl brigade, complete with dumb comments.

You know what they have? Easy modes where the game isn't too hard and you can learn it on the fly. You know what I think sucks? The Wii, because Nintendo doesn't fly a guy out to your house to show you how to flail around like a spastic. Needs the direct help, can't learn on own, it hard!

Games r tuff make game bad.

@Aimless: Pshhh,
The only good basketball every made was NBA Jam for the Snes.
It's gone allll the way down hill since those mighty days.

I can't disagree more.

If I had to pick the best of the "Jam" type games, it'd be NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC for the arcade (with a good port, but not perfect on the Dreamcast)

It still gets playtime today. How about an XBLA release with updated rosters, Midway?

@Chef: I mean, that's true to an extent, but how hard is it to know which button is pass and which is shoot? At least that much was in the 2K7 manual, and more besides because I referenced it often.

Thank god for the nba 2k series....
nba live 08 was the worst thing i played in a long time..well, in a year, before that the worst was nba 07 ...those EAsports guy sure dont like sports...
lame games...
the wii is killing the videogames as we know them and creating an army of people who dont want to think as they play...and thats bad for games...and good for the nintendo arks of sexy money and shiny red coins...
thats why wii sells, thats why madden and easports games sells...those dont need a brain to work...

why i ended up talking about the wii? marketing!

@akashhhhh: I gave it a week. Five days. That's a long time to give a game a chance.

For anyone whining, remember, these are MY IMPRESSIONS. Not an authoritative review. I'm just sharing my impressions.

@Ghettellectual:
Thanks for stopping by!

@Plunkett: Agreed. That's kind of a bummer, I really thought that 2K7 was an amazing multiplayer experience.

Anyway, NBA Jam should make it's way to XBLA soon enough. Cheers.

@sinny:

In what way is it killing games?

Every console has hundreds of simple games. For some reason the Wii is getting picked on this gen because of different controls or games which are supposedly too simple.

Every console has a whole ton of crap seemingly complicated games, or ones which aren't simple but are lacking any depth. These are the ones which should get blamed, not any specific console.

I think the Wii, at the very least, has the ability to make simple games fun. Excite Truck was a blast and that had, what, accelerate, boost and tilt to control?

Good point about the marketing though :P

And on a not totally related note, I'm not saying NBA 2K8 is crap because I haven't played it, and barely play sports games, but perhaps it should have made it easier for Plunky to get it.

nice read

I love NBA 2k but hate the menu system they used in 2k7 and apparently in 2k8 as well, very annoying with the right stick and you cannot go back one level in the menu you go back to the beginning...aaaarrgghh

@ashcraft:

lol, meet the banhammer

@Plunkett

Wow, five days and you still couldn't get things figured out?

You got a shoot button, a pass button, a post-up button, a crossover button. There really isn't much more than that to enjoy the basics of the game. You may have given the game a chance but your impressions make it sound like Harvard grads are the only ones who can play and enjoy.

My uncle hardly knows his left trigger button from his left bumper button, but he knows enough without looking at instructions to enjoy the game even when it was his first time playing.

I don't follow any sports and I picked up NBA 2K7 last year on a whim, the last basketball game I bought and played was one of the Live games on the original Playstation, and I don't really see where you're coming from. Granted I haven't played NBA 2K8, only played the demo, but I can't imagine you not being able to realize that you pull down the stick and push it forward to shoot. You don't need to know anything outside of pass and shoot to be able to win a game.

I don't know about everyone else, but I actually prefer to figure things out on my own and very rarely will ever bother to look at a manual. I guess I'm just odd that way.

the fact is Luke should have never been the one to play the game. The controls are not hard to learn and you do not have to be a genius to figure out how to score.

That's what 2-player is for!

Learn at the same pace...

-

I wanna know:

Can you still make CRAZY characters with the player-editor?

That was my favourite thing back on my DC.

We had 2on2 games with strictly historical figures or religious icons...

Ever wonder if Kobe Bryant could get a dunk past Jesus' D?

I know the answer.

Great impresions. I buy these games every year, and I couldn't agree with you more - The barrier of entry for these latest round of sports games is waayy too high. The games are simply confusing. The fact that people are saying you have to 'play the game a while to get into it' is BAD. If the developers of sports games want to sell more games each year, then they need to make these games 'easy to pickup and play, yet difficult to master' which NBA 2K8, Live and NBA 08 DO NOT do. It's a shame, too...

The game is great and is truly not that hard to pick up. I'm just glad to see posts and features on Kotaku about sports games. Some of us are able to enjoy videogames, Japanese culture, AND sports.

/pantsu too.

Normally I'd use this space to call Luke a tool for being too lazy to learn the game, but he's dead on. 2K pulled an EA Sports with the manual. It doesn't explain anything beyond the basic controls (ie: the IsoMotion controls) and the lack of a tutorial is garbage. And unlike every other 2k game released in the last few years, this one doesn't have a 40 page manual in the box or a 60 page updated manual in the actual game. I just randomly found that if you hold the L trigger and pass it, it'll do a dump pass/alley pass. Nowhere in the game or manual does it tell me that.

But really, it isn't anything you shouldn't be able to figure out in a few days just by running quick games or messing around in the practice mode. Doesn't really sound like you tried L-Plunk. Still far better than anything EA's offered in the last 5+ years on the hoops side of things.

Yeah, this is a true BBall simulation game. Love it to death. Makes you implement the Off or Def play calling. No more take it to the basket for an easy layup every time you come down the court. No more one-on-one defense or the offense will kill you on the back-door screen.

Now I've only played the demo, but a quick glance at the controls that they flash you for 8 seconds or how ever long usually isn't enough. So you just have to learn it while in the game through trial and error. You probably wont win your first game but I was able to win the second (It helps being the Spurs over the Cavs which are a one man team). The Bottom line is that this game isn't that difficult to pick up and play.

Basketball sim freaks, UNITE! This game is the absolute best..

Now, if I can only figure out how to do an alley-hoop more consistently...

@roker:
HEY I LOVED 2K2 ON DREAMCAST!

If you think NBA2K8 is for basketball nuts, then it is the best basketball game in the industry.

Live is arcadey, not even close to a sim b-ball.

Lets take a moment to reflect; some of you are chastising Luke for not "trying hard enough" to figure out the controls to a game, in an instance where said controls are not in the instruction manual. Are you kidding me? I agree with Luke, this game is just too hard for the average player to pick up. While yeah, you can pass and shoot and do a rudimentary crossover, there are sooooo many higher level dribbling combinations that the manual / game just decides to not tell you how to do. It really is ridiculous. Imagine if you bought an RPG where the instruction manual didn't tell you how to operate in the battle system or the menus, just "Press A to talk to NPCs, Press B to jump, Press other buttons to do other things". I think you would probably be a little upset....

This blog posting has left me scratching my head. while i wouldn't go as far as GHETTELLECTUAL (oh LOOKSZ! he's BANNED! i hardly knew ye!) did in his criticisms, Luke should have at least gave it at least a FULL HOUR of playtime before he gave his impressions. the intuitive controls will make up for the lack of information in the manual.

I mean seriously, look at how EASY it is to do cross-overs! and doing variation of shots by using the right control stick! I MEAN, WOW. I played real basketball, too...and when i figured out the right stick doing those moves while shooting...IT MADE SENSE!

NBA LIVE series is pure crap compared to this one. i mean, sure, the SIXAXIS free-throw was kinda stupid in the beginning..but once you get the hang of it...it's AWESOME.

with all that said, the menu system is ATROCIOUS. whoever designed that menu should be fired or move to EA Sports.

Nothing could be worse that last year's instructions for Pro Evo (Winning 11 2007). I still don't know what some of the icons mean and what all the moves are. You would think that after spending the money to develop the game, they would put minimal effort into explaining how to play it.

People are criticizing this post? This is the perfect compliment of this game. Anyone who has gotten bitter and disgusted with NBA Live since 2000 or so would read this and just smile. This is what they've been looking for. I'll consider buying a 360 to get this game if it is truly how the writer described it.

YCS

This review fails, cuz my grand aunty, whooped me yesterday on NBA 2k8. Fail.

It's been said, but despite my love for 2k7 (and my impending purchase of 2k8), the manual is crap, and some of the controls are less than explicit. I had to turn to gamefaqs to figure out several things in 2k7, because the menu system is horrible. Now, the actual game is the best basketball sim out there, and it does require some knowledge of the game, as in you played on a least a couple non-casual teams (competitive AAU, hs, college), to where you understand how moves work and plays are run to be successful, but things aren't completely spelled out.

I wish NBA live didn't suck now, am I the only one who wants one of the better Genesis/SNES versions to come out (on XBLA/PSN) with updated rosters and shiny, redrawn 2.5D graphics? I would play the heck out of that online, should be no lag with a game like that. Just a thought.

The NBA 2K has actually taught me a ton about basketball and the NBA. But it's definitely trial and error learning. But that's video games. That's the fun part for me. Going up against a learning curve and getting better. Nobody told me what weapons and dual wielding combos were dope and which were shit in Halo 3. I figured it out by trying and dieing. The 2k series is ill once you get on the court but the overall interface and user experience could use a complete overhaul.