

It’s still fun to watch the defender get blown out of the lane or foul you as you pull down a thunderous dunk. This is when you can exploit inside moves and rack up big points in the paint.

One exception is weak matchups such as when you’re controlling a dominating inside man such as Shaq or Tim Duncan. There is now a nice balance between how physical a defender can be in the paint versus the a**nal of new inside moves for your low-post man. It’s not a perfect swish but it’s definitely a two-pointer.The focus this year is on the inside game, which is refreshing since this has always been a weak spot in the EA Sports’ NBA series, in particular inside defense that was way too easy to break down. With that said, I would have to say I’m a bit surprised how well NBA Live 08 plays. Fortunately, PS3 owners were spared the horror since NBA Live 07 never made it to Sony’s next-gen system.

Coming right off of the heels of the impressive NHL 08, I was expecting a similar level of quality with NBA Live 08 but yet I approached the game with a bit of caution considering how poorly the previous NBA Live 07 fared on the Xbox 360. After a disastrous outing last season, EA Sports brings NBA Live 08 off the bench for the PlayStation 3 with a fully revamped game and we have the lowdown on well it performs on the hardwood.
