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By Keith B (23rd Mar 2007)

There are 7 seconds on the clock. He takes the inbound ball and flies down the court like a cheetah chasing a fat gazelle. With twirling moves, that even a ballerina would be proud of, he ‘whisks' past the opposition making an incredible under-the-leg lay up with the siren sounding as the ball brushes the net after passing through the ring. The crowd would be going nuts! Your team mates would be chairing you around the court for a victory lap! The reporters would be lining up for your interview! All these things ‘would' happen if you hadn't just lost by 53 and that last bucket meant NOTHING! In similar fashion, NBA Live 07 comes up short, waaaaaaaaaaay short!

I was quite excited about reviewing this game. I was first introduced to the NBA Live franchise with the 1996 version on PC, which was gold! However, since that early release I have not jumped back into the ‘Live' pool. So needless to say I was full of eagre expectation of where the game had come ten years on. The term ‘giddy as a school girl' does come to mind.

As usual the start movie sequences were very slick, which is pretty stock standard for EA Sports products. The Menu's and Menu Screens are also very ‘toit'. Nice graphic art, little clips of the stars ‘doin their thang' in the top right corner, a nice package in general really. The music was also not too shabby! Way too much rap for my liking, and also the use of a Black Eyed Peas track again, not to my taste, but the highlight of the whole game did turn things around! Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" is featured. I know it has been played a hell of a lot on the radio, but it is a sweet tune! So overall I was pretty impressed with the introduction.

There are quite a number of game types to choose from. Most of these an NBA Live fan would be used to i.e. Exhibition Game, Season, All Star Match, Practice, Three Point Shoot and Dunk Off etc. The newest member to the team is Dynasty Mode, which happens to be the new focus of the game.

Dynasty mode gives you the reigns of the team for a 25 year span. For that period you have to hire staff (coaches etc.), handle the roster and recruit, and at some point you actually get to play some games. I think their strategy was to get you bored senseless and just ‘gagging' for the game, then the player will enjoy it. Well, Communism is very good in theory too isn't it?! Of course as an incredibly diligent reviewer, dedicated to experiencing all aspects of a game, I was fully prepared to play all 25 years.....cough cough. Fortunately I got all the information I needed after playing only a couple of games. This I attribute to two major things. The first is that I am awesome at everything (modest too)! The second is that the game SUCKED!!!

Lets start this bagging session with the graphics. They suck! The crowds are dodgy; they have no depth and very little detail. Fortunately you are too busy being pissed at the game play to notice this too much! The player rendering is not too bad, faces are pretty ordinary, but again, you really don't notice too much! The player animation is really annoying and very rough. In this case smooth animation would have gone a really long way to making the game a lot better! The courts themselves look good, not awesome or anything but good. I really think if the team at EA had spent more time and money on the game and less on the start sequences and music it may have been a good call!

I swear the opposition teams have all paid off the ref! Your opponents seem to be magnets for drawing fouls! And don't worry if you are not directly in the play, one of your team mates will definitely foul in your stead! Also, consistency really does not pay off! You can shoot the same way each time and hit 1 from 7 shots (this is not an exaggeration) no matter how close you are from the basket or how free! If you regard a reward as the opportunity to rebound your own missed shot, then you are paid off in spades!

The opposition point guard employs a clever tactic. He uses the ‘I'll stand still till you fall asleep' ploy! One would think it would be easy to steal the ball at this point? Nup! Save some time, effort and frustration, just don't try! The biggest problem I have with the game, the WHOLE game, is the lack of cheerleaders! Not one! Which, given the fact I am a depraved deviate, is really disappointing.

There is a ‘Superstar Freestyle' aspect of the game that I feel I must touch on. I don't necessarily think it is any good, in fact I don't, but they make quite a big point of it being a new feature. The key players in each team are assigned ‘super star' characteristics that can activated in the game. In a first for this incarnation you can change the player's attributes on the fly, while you are playing. I apologise for using the term "on the fly" but I have watched the incredibly Americanized tutorials and have been tainted for life! Basically this means that with a quick flick of one or two buttons you can scroll between your players ‘superstar defensive powers' to his ‘superstar x-ray vision'. Seems to me they decided to complicate a winning formula by crossing basketball with the key mashing usually associated with Tekken!

Just one final thing before I round up. There is also an ‘X-Factor' aspect, where you can activate a pre ordained, ordinary bench warmer to super star status for one or two minutes simply by playing him for most of the game. So broken down you get 60-120 seconds where the player is ‘starting five' quality all for the low-low price of wasting the rest of the game on his crap abilities?! Sign me up!

The Scott's Final Word.
To summarise all of the above is really quite simple. If the game had Cheerleaders, decent Cheerleaders, I probably would have forgotten about how crap it was! Word out to the NBA faithful!