PS2 gamers are well aware that the Live series has been on the downturn since peaking what seems like a lifetime ago with Live 2004. Now that the series is making its debut on the PS3, PS2 owners have more reason than ever to fear that the slump will continue, as development puts its energies into next-gen gaming. Happily, I can allay those fears. Live 08 is the most playable version of the game in quite a while. In a bizarre turn of events, while most last-gen games suffer at the expense of next-gen progress, this looks like a case of a PS2 title reaping the benefits of some creative PS3 development.

The main new feature when you're out on the court is the ability to see the hot spots of the members of your team. From the pause menu, you can access a screen that lets you go one-by-one through your teammates to see where they like to shoot from and from where they're likely to toss up a brick. The chart is broken into 12 different areas, so it gives you a pretty detailed breakout of what your team can do. For the most part, a lot of the info is common knowledge. It's no surprise that Ray Allen can drain it from just about anywhere on the outside, but it was interesting to see that Dwyane Wade is far stronger from the right side of the court than from the left side. I found this especially helpful in the season mode. To be able to get a good read of the strengths and weaknesses of my entire squad took a lot of the guesswork out of late-game substitutions.

While the Hot Spot feature was helpful, I look at the improved play on the court this year as being the result of addition by subtraction. EA got rid of a couple of questionable concepts and now things are a lot more balanced and play more like the real game.


First off, development has bagged the Freestyle Superstar deal from last year's game -- and that's a good thing. It made the elite players too God-like and the role players mere mortals. Besides, it looked odd. Shaq would be running down the court with a silly-looking giant fist icon underfoot. In its place are go-to moves that have been individualized for certain players and that are performed using with the right stick. In general, it doesn't give the top players any more of an advantage than they already have; it just makes what they do look a lot cooler and more like what their real-life counterparts are capable of out on the court.

Also gone is the X-Factor. This was the oddball feature that -- if you used it correctly -- would turn one of your role players or bench players into a superstar for a limited amount of time. As a result of these two changes, the game plays a lot more realistically. Sure, every once in a while it was fun to have some twelfth man get hot and give a game a storybook ending, but if you really want that much sappy drama in your balling, you should be playing "The Life" mode in the PS2 version of Sony's NBA 08.