Let's Have A Block Party - NBA

989 Sports has done a fine job of bringing almost every sport to the PSP in its young life, with hockey, baseball, soccer, and basketball titles. Though their track record has been shoddy as of late, Sony's sports division has pressed on and are using the PSP to revitalize their once-proud franchises. Built from the ground up for PSP, NBA, like its cohorts, is a bit short on features compared to console editions of NBA Shootout (which is a dead brand), but instead hopes to offer some innovative gameplay and fun mini-games that are better presented on a handheld system. However, NBA is a strange breed, where the mini-games are actually better than the actual games of basketball, due to a frustrating shooting interface and other various gameplay woes. If you want a basketball sim on PSP you don't have much of a choice right now unless you go with NBA Street Showdown – the game is not bad, mind you, just flawed in crucial areas; but if NBA Live and NBA 2K6 find their way to the PSP later this year, it will be outclassed in a hurry, great mini-games or no.

NBA has very basic styles of play – basic exhibition games for both single and multiplayer via Ad Hoc wireless play, a season mode, a playoff series that skips the full season, the mini-games, and online play via Infrastructure. Games online are smooth for the most part and it features quite a few things to do, though you can sense the potential is not quite realized at this early juncture of the PSP's life. The season mode is largely a disappointment; though you can play a full 82-game schedule, it's quite limited in that you can only play 4 minute quarters (meaning scores tend to be in the 50's on average), stat tracking is atrociously laid out, and otherwise feels tacked on – the lack of a true franchise mode is one thing, but the season pales in comparison to the ones found in MLB and Gretzky NHL. From another point of view though, the 4 minute quarters allow for quick games to progress the season fast, a vital thing for a portable system. However the ability to adjust the length of quarters would have been nice (unless it's hidden somewhere and I missed it in all the time I was playing).

Of everything, the mini-games shine, thanks to their addictive nature. The first mini-game, the NBA Skills Challenge, lets you put up to 4 players in a pass-the-PSP style format to see who's the best all around player with the ball (this is the same thing that you see during the NBA All-Star Weekend, other wise known as the 2005 Suns pwn you show this year), is fun but a bit clunky at first while you get used to the format of the game. The absolute best mini-game is the 3-point shootout, for up to 8 different players and 3 rounds. It's the best place to learn the awkward shooting mechanic and is extremely well put together. Not only must you actually shoot the ball, you have to even get the ball of the rack and establish a rhythm to perform your best. It captures the need for rhythm really well; if you get into a groove of shooting, getting the ball, shooting, etc, the shots just fall like crazy, while stuttering and not keeping consistent leads to many missed shots. It's really fun and I spent more time doing this than anything else when playing. The final game is called 'Paint', though it's got nothing to do with being in the paint on a court. Instead, you and another NBA player compete to 'paint' the entire court their color by making shots in designated zones and getting the most points, or by taking the opponents away by making shots in areas they've 'captured.' It's difficult to describe, but a ton of fun, though slightly devious if you can say put Steve Nash against Shaq and watch Shaq airball threes to keep up.

NBA's most obvious gameplay trait is the way you shoot the basketball. Most other games use the tried and true button hold method, but NBA does something different - though in this case, innovative doesn't mean good. Instead, you tap the circle button once and then tap it again at the top of your shot and when the colored circle that appears around the ball turns green. There's also a chime when you get off a perfect shot. At first it's just really difficult to get used to, and its a pain in the shorts the closer you get to the hoop since the timing is different. Actually, what's neat is different players have different shooting mechanics so you can't really get a 'timing' down universally, you have to learn each player. It wouldn't be quite as bad if the game wasn't block city, however. While it's really a solid bit of gameplay that open shots are difficult to get and involve a lot of passing and working your way to a shot, even if the window is a second, if you try anything but a fadeway shot with someone in your vicinity, the ball is swatted away. Any if Stoudemire is going for a 10 foot jumper, no little 6 footer should be able to block the shot. In short, if 989 is going to stick with this shooting mechanic, it needs to be a bit more user friendly and remember that blocked shots don't take place often on the perimeter in real basketball. Granted if you're playing online, this isn't quite as big a problem, though it still exists.

Other than that vital part of the game, NBA plays fairly well and presents a challenging game of hoops. The controls are a bit slippery at times and turnovers are constant (it's too easy to get a rebound near the lines and slide around out of bounds as if you were on ice skates), but once you adjust to the shooting, it can be fairly fun in spurts since it requires a lot of strategy. The free throw shooting, however, is atrocious – instead of perhaps using the same shooting system for FT's, instead you have to stop a crazy-fast meter in the middle of the backboard, and then line up a moving box to the basket for an accurate shot. Too bad even decent free throw shooters have a meter that moves so fast you'd need the Force to accurately shoot the ball. Regardless, the mini-games are still the best part of NBA – though you could see that as a real problem, they're fun enough to make the game worth checking out, and the online setup is decent enough for quick games against friends or just random citizens. The foundation is here for quite a game in a couple years, but as of now, it's a matter of time before 2K Sports or EA socks it to NBA with its much more polished and playable game, though neither has presented as good a set of mini-games as 989 has.

Graphically NBA looks pretty nice, with a slick framerate and solidly animated players to play on shiny, accurate courts. However, the game obviously was not optimized for a portable due to some annoying flaws. Using the default camera, players are far too smallish, making it difficult to pick out who has the ball, especially since there's no number or name indicators whatsoever. The alternate camera angle does better but still, without an easy way to identify players, knowing the skills of them is a bother. On the other hand when you're playing the 3 point shootout you see all the details in the players, from facial features, sizes, and shooting motions due to the solid motion capping. It's all far and away better than anything put on PS2, but a few things should be done to better tie NBA into the PSP's screen size; more zoom angles, please. And a way to identify players too. The audio is barely worth mentioning, aside from cheering crowds, squeaking shoes across the court, the swish of going through the net, and various grunts, there's little to talk about. There's no announcers other than the PA guy who's in all the other PSP sports games from 989, making the whole thing seem awfully quiet.

The Last Paragraph

989 Sports has a good foundation here for the future in NBA. The shooting system, if implemented again along with a reduced block ratio, could be good though I can imagine it being far too easy after a while (similar to the system 989 used with the NCAA Final Four games on PlayStation 1 long ago). Get rid of the free throw system for something more conventional and intuitive, make the game more portable friendly in the graphics department, and fix the slippery gameplay and you might have a heck of a basketball game for NBA 2006 – but for now, NBA is a flawed game that has some awesome mini-games hampered by a troubled simulation end. If you need a hoops sim and can't stand NBA Street, or want something to play online and show off how cool Wi-Fi can be, this is your only choice, and that might be good enough as long as the problems with the game can be forgiven with time.