First off, let me get this out of the way: NBA 08 is a good deal for the money considering it isn’t just the basketball game you are buying; it contains so much more in the way of mini-games and playable modes that it could choke a horse before you could get around to playing horse.

Unlike its console brethren, NBA 08 forgoes any sort of story line development of a career to focus on just playing the game. Being presented on the PSP, SCEA significantly focused the shorter one-game matches and mini-games to the quick pick-up mentality of the handheld; a majority of the sub-games could be completed within 10 minutes or less. Or if you are more inclined you could create a profile to stretch through playing a season or more interesting the conquest mode, which combines Risk and basketball.

Conquest places you as a city that must win games against surrounding cities to win the zone and move on to an essentially national match-up. As you win games you can gain losing team players to build a super team, and completing a zone allows you to unlock older legacy players to fill your roster. It is the tactics that make this more than just playing a straight basketball game simulator that help elevate this mode of NBA 08.

Other on-court mini-games range from the standard horse, to three-point competitions, including another tactical based Elimination match where you try to get each of your players to score six points. Once they do they are out and you are forced to try to finish the game with the remaining teammates for better or worse. It’s just the nuances that they threw into this game that make it more playable. Even if straight basketball isn’t your thing, there is an entire section dedicated to A