Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Repella

Well the summer is now officially over. Baseball is deep into the playoffs and NFL quarterbacks are being injured left and right. You know what that means, it’s NBA time. The latest installment of Sony’s NBA 09 The Inside is being released on the PSP and PS3 this year. The series has become known not only for offering a pretty good basketball simulation but for also a having host of fun mini games and alternative play modes.

The PSP version of NBA 09 The Inside has received some hefty updates this year, including new mini games, an all new strategy style elimination game, a franchise mode, improved AI, downloadable rosters, online play and more.

So is the PSP version of NBA 09 The Inside worthy of your basketball dollars?

NBA 09 doesn’t look all that different from the PSP’s 08 version. Sony San Diego took the time to do motion capturing and incorporate it into the game. As a result the players are very well animated and move realistically. Sometimes players on defense can be seen doing the crab walk (walking backwards in a squatted postion) when they shouldn’t be. But I really didn’t notice this issue very often and it doesn’t take away from the overall experience.

Visually the game is clean and the players are fairly detailed with headbands, wrist bands, etc. However, don’t expect PS3 level player models. You will be hard pressed to tell Lebron James apart from Kobe Bryant. Sometimes the game will show you a close up of the player after a particularly good play and then they become more recognizable, but most of the time the players resemble every other basketball player.

The game's presentation is fairly solid. It is sponsored by TNT and the game provides a TNT style broadcast. The stadiums are fairly accurate to their real life counterparts and they are filled with cardboard cutout fans.

Overall the game is just below a first generation PS2 game in visual quality and for the PSP that isn’t so bad. Sony says that it runs at 60 fps and I didn't notice any slowdown so I don't have any reasons not to believe that.

 

NBA 09 The Inside does have a music soundtrack. It’s primarily made up of upbeat dance type songs with little to no lyrics. Sony didn’t include any popular rock songs or standard pro sports type songs that you would hear at a real game. I actually wasn’t familiar with any of the artists on the sound track, but that just may be because I’m getting old. However, I have the feeling that not too many people would recognize the artists or the songs either.

The game's commentary is provided by Ian Eagle and former UNC player and NBA star Kenny Smith. Eagle handles the play by play and Smith does the color commentary. Both do a good job. Most of the time the commentary is able to keep up with the onscreen action. However, throughout the game they will lag behind from time to time.

The usual assortment of in game sound effects are all present and accounted for. The crowd will cheer at appropriate times, sneakers will squeak on the wood and whistles will blow.

 

Anyone who has played a basketball game going back to the Super NES days should be able to pick up NBA 09 The Inside and be able to play. The player primarily uses the face buttons to pass, shoot, steal and change players. Advanced players can use the directional buttons to call plays and select specific passing targets.

Long time fans of the series will be happy to hear that the shot meter has been replaced this year. In its place, the area around the ball will glow red, and quickly turn green when you are taking a shot. The idea is to release the shot button before the glow turns red again. The closer you are to green, the more likely your shot is to go in. This may sound strange, but I found it to work quite well and look more natural than a regular meter. This new shot meter applies not only to foul shots, but to regular court shots as well.

Also gone this year is the rebound indicator. This means that just like in a real game, players won’t know if a shot is going to go in until the ball hits the rim.

The only real complaint I have with the controls is that your player will sometimes pass to the wrong guy (if you don’t use the specific target controls), and the players have a tendency to take a jump shot when they should be dunking instead. These are minor complaints, but ones that seem to come up with every NBA game.

The core of any NBA title is the exhibition and season mode. This year NBA 09 offers a full 25 year franchise mode. Players will have the opportunity to take control of their favorite NBA team and make every decision from drafting players, signing free agents, managing player contracts and team budgets. You can also simulate franchise seasons. I did this with the Cavaliers for two years. At the end of each year you get to sign free agents, watch the lottery (I had to do this twice since the Cavs finished so poorly) and then participate in the draft.

Sony has promised improved Artificial Intelligence with this year's game. I found that on the default difficulty setting of veteran the CPU would keep the game really close. I could usually pull ahead by 6 or 8 points and then the CPU would tighten up their defense and start taking better shots. The biggest disappointment with the Ai is that it doesn’t manage the clock at the end of the game like it should. It doesn’t call time outs or make fouls to attempt to stop the clock if it is behind. So in the end the AI is still no substitute for a real human opponent.

This leads to the inclusion of online play. Finding and joining a match is easy with the games browser. Each player has a ranking; the higher the ranking the better they are. You can also view other players' wins, losses and disconnects. The biggest problem I had with multiplayer was that it did tend to be laggy. However, I don’t know whether or not it was because of my connection or the other players.

Last year the game offered Conquest Mode and this year it is back along with an all new Elimiquest mode. The Elimiquest mode plays out a lot like a game of Risk. There is a gameboard comprised of a map of North America and each city with an NBA team represents a territory that the player needs to control. In order to control each territory you must use your team to challenge the controlling team in a five-on-five game of hoops. The twist is that each player is given a certain amount of points to score and once a player scores their share of points they are eliminated from the game. The first team to eliminate four of their players wins. If the invading team wins the match then they gain control of the territory and all the “enemy” players. The ultimate goal is to control every NBA city in the nation. To add to the strategy, teams can only attack territories that are within a certain distance from their city. For instance Cleveland can’t attack L.A., but they can attack Detroit. I actually found myself enjoying this mode more than any other mode in the game including franchise mode.

Making a return this year are a host of mini-games. This includes some all-new ones, from the bowling-style arcade game Alley-Oop, to contests such as the modified 5-on-5 game Give & Go, and a dodge ball style game where you throw a basketball at the other team and try to peg them. Some of the carnival style mini-games are more fun than others, but none of them detract from the overall game. In all honesty the game probably could have gone without most of the mini-games. I think some players are likely to try certain mini-games once and then never go back to them. But still, their inclusion doesn’t hurt the game.

Even more impressive is the inclusion of seven basketball themed pinball games. Some of the pinball boards are better than others, but overall I found the pinball games to be very fun. The set of them almost offer an entire game in and of themselves.

On top of all of the game modes, Sony added in ticket points awarded throughout the game that you can use to unlock bonus items like throwback jerseys. Sony has also included a roster update feature so players can make sure that their favorite team is accurately represented throughout the season.

The fact that Sony wasn’t content to just make a basketball sim adds tremendous value and replayability to this game. There are exhibition, season, franchise, conquest, Elimiquest, online and LAN modes. On top of that there are several basketball themed mini games, basketball themed carnival games, seven pinball games and ticket points for unlockable items. There is no other basketball game on the market that offers this many modes. By themselves the Franchise and Elimiquest modes are complete games and offer a lot of replayability,

Sony could have decided to make an NBA simulator complete with season and franchise mode. They didn’t stop there. Instead they created a truly unique Elimiquest mode that is both addictive and fun. Once you tire of franchise mode you can still find a lot of enjoyment in the elimiquest mode. The game would have been good with just Franchise and Elimiquest modes. But on top of that there is online play, pinball games, carnival games and minigames.

I’m not sure what else Sony could have thrown into the package to make it better. Anyone looking for a solid NBA simulator with a strong franchise mode and who also wants something more with their game can’t go wrong with NBA 09 The Inside for the PSP.

Gaming Trend Score

85

1. Graphics: 80
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 80
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:85