NBA Live 09 All-Play

"Really not that good..."

I am a huge fan of basketball. I love playing it as much as I love watching it whether it is college basketball or NBA. This came out and I was a little excited to have it for the Wii. I thought this should be great because I have enjoyed playing different sports on Wii Sports and get to play as all of the NBA all stars. I was sadly wrong about this game. It isn't good at all and not really fun. The game play did not live up to expectations. There were many flaws in the different modes of play and it was not difficult at all.

I hoped to have more actions with the Wii remote for the game but there really wasn't all that much to it. You swing the Wii remote up and forward to shoot. The shot depends on the release time of the ball. I thought they could have at least made it so you needed to swing down straight or the shot would be crooked. Whenever you need to pass all you do is aim the remote and press the A button. There is no way to make it a bounce pass or regular chest pass. You have only one type of cross over and I felt that could have been customized way better. These are only a few of the many problems with the game play but I felt these were the largest.

One thing that really ticked me off was the fact that in the season mode it ended after one season. You can not continue and draft rookies. There is no next season where your players continue to grow and you can continue to trade and draft to make the ultimate team. It all stops after the first championship. Another thing is the Dunk Contest. I felt they should allow you to customize how your guy does the dunk a little more than they did. Finally it was painfully easy. I never came close to losing a game I played. I had it on the highest difficulty setting and was blowing the computer out by at least twenty if not thirty points. They should have made it a lot harder. So overall this game really was not that great and far below what I thought it would be. That's why I gave this game an overall score of 3.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/23/08

Game Release: NBA Live 09 All-Play (US, 10/07/08)