Genesis ~ NBA Live 98 Review

Overview

In case you don't know, NBA Live is the highly successful series of official NBA basketball games from EA Sports. This one was the last for Sega Genesis, so you can pretty much expect it to be the best basketball game a Genesis can offer. Or can you?

Gameplay and Realism

Run around the court with your 5 trusty players trying to put a ball through a hoop. This game can be played by nearly anybody, provided you're into basketball. Spend more time hoofing the ball up court to a forward running pass opposition and shooting the ball or play it more real with a patient passing game. The computer's AI is quite good, offering a good challenge without playing many dirty tricks. Games normally don't flow very realistically, because with players bunched up together and scrambling around quickly, you can sometimes never tell what is happening.

8 out of 10

Graphics

Alot of detail has gone into everything, including differing player heights, a fully animated crowd and the team benches waving their arms around. The animations of the players look fairly good, although their movements don't flow very well together.

4.25 out of 5

Sound and Music

The menu music is a crappy little boys tune. Going ingame, we have pretty realistic sound effects all around and even music playing in the background just like in real life.

4.5 out of 5

Playability and Versatility

The player controls are very straight-forward with only 3 buttons; sprint/steal, pass/change player, shoot/jump. The other 3 buttons are to efficiently make tactical changes on the fly. It only takes a few minutes to get the hang of it all, making it great for little kids to play.

The menu however is absolutely terrible. Scrolling through it is so damn slow, and after pushing a button to select something, there is this stupid long pause to further annoy you. It has the potency to madly twitch your fingers as well as your mind!

3 out of 5

Options

Wow! Everything you could ever want is jammed in! Exhibition, season and play-offs, with 2 save game slots. There are also heaps of ingame options that I can't bother playing around with. But the best bit is the comprehensive practice mode that has all these fun extras. Shoot-outs, 3-Pt shoot-outs, 2 on 2, 3 on 3, team practice, individual player practice. All the players and teams are real from the 97 rosters. It's all good and likable stuff, but it would have been better if the menus weren't so damn hard to navigate!

4.5 out of 5

For: quite easy to pick up and play, detailed graphics all around, realistic sound effects, plenty of options, real rosters.

Against: game doesn't flow particularly well with players bunching up and choppy animation, silly menu music, terrible menu navigation.

The main thing that got me real twitchy was that dreadful menu navigation. Besides that, it's one of the best basketball games for the Genesis if not the best.