Sony actually canned the franchise last year to take some time and formulate a new game that wouldn’t be a complete rehash of the thoroughly flawed Shootout series. The end result comes in the form of “The Life”, which is the major gameplay mechanic present in NBA 06.

The Life works a lot like a simulation/RPG for a sports game. You create a character, assign a Jersey number, and work his way up from lowly trainee to being drafted into a team, and then you proceed to carry your character onto the championships. There are actually bits and pieces of this format that work pretty well, but there are quite a few places where it falls flat on its face.

First off, you’ve got the customization and create-a-character. Or, better yet, lack of customization. You can give your character a name, jersey number, and a favorite team (which will in turn dictate who drafts you). You can even tack on some tattoos, and other bits of gear, such as elbow/knee pads, headbands, etc. You cannot, however, be anything other than a Point Guard. In a game that presents itself as a true simulation of being a player in the NBA, that seems to be a fairly large shortcoming. Think of it as World of Warcraft having NPC’s of Mage’s, Paladins, Shamans, etc, but only allowing you to be a Warrior. That’d pretty much suck, right? On a slightly lesser point, you’re also not able to customize the size of your character.

Once you begin “The Life” mode, and make your way thru the character creation, you’re put into training mode. From here you’ll familiarize yourself with the button layouts, available passes, etc. This is all done in story though, and used as precursor training to the actual draft. After going thru the motions, you’ll be put into the draft and then picked up by whomever you ended up listing as your favorite team in the beginning.

While The Life does put you into the role of an actual NBA player, its not as simple as winning and losing games every couple days. Instead, you’re given a series of goals to complete. The majority of the goals are number based, such as scoring so many points a game, grabbing so many steals, and so on. The biggest problem with this formula is that if you don’t complete a certain goal, you have to do it again. Even if you win a game, you’ll end up having to play that game again simply because you didn’t get X amount of steals. As the game and difficult progresses, this becomes really frustrating and begins to feel like more of a chore than an interesting aspect of gameplay. Granted, by completing challenges, in true RPG fashion, you’ll acquire stat upgrades that’ll make things a bit easier, but there’s nothing like smashing the Lakers over and over and over but not being able to progress thru the season because you didn’t achieve a certain number of rebounds.

The AI of your teammates is pretty standard. You’re able to control certain moves, like alley-oops, and the method of doing so is pretty interactive. However, there will be times when certain simple moves will go incredibly wrong for no apparent reason. Also, there isn’t enough of a noticeable effect when you’re pushing strong defense against your opponent. The system seems more set on chance than actually factoring in what you’re doing and what’s going on around you.

The character models are very basic and really pretty bland, so much so that when you’re playing an actual game it becomes difficult to tell the difference between players. The crowd is flat, static and boring, and the animations of players are fairly limited. For some reason (possibly to simulate the feel of being a player?) there is no voice-over present during games, which in turn causes each and every game played to feel much longer than it should. The squeak of sneakers is no replacement for a play by play, even if it’s a bad play by play. The game is also littered with some rap/hip-hop tracks, so if you’re into that style of music, then you’ll probably enjoy the soundtrack.

All in all, the idea of “The Life” mode is more interesting on paper than it is in actual execution. For the next installment, I’d like to see something along the lines of a penalty based system for missing your goals that doesn’t involve you playing thru them again and again, maybe something more stat based. Improved character models are a must, as is a decrease in load times between cut scenes (they’re atrocious). There are other improvements to be made, so hopefully Sony will take the time to work things out with what could be an otherwise unique and entertaining mode of play for a very tired genre.