I got a PS3. The 20GB unit. A scalper spoke for the 60GB at Target before I could get my hands on it. Tonight I downloaded the NBA 07 demo, which is fairly impressive to someone who hasn’t really played basketball video games in a long while, not with any seriousness since the old days of NBA Jam. I’m also easily impressed by graphics. So take that as you will.

While playing this demo I noticed a few things:

• All NBA games appear to involve rap music, most of the demos which include it appear to include no option to disable said music. I like some rap music, but this pop stuff isn’t it. I assume this is some kind of attempt to pander to the audience of 18-24 year olds who love pop rap.
• The players are lit unrealistically, and the shadows you see when players jump belie the limited shadowing available (it is a very blurry squared low-poly shadow figure) when you’re rendering an otherwise fantastic stadium and many other players.
• Along with terrible sprite trees, which speedtree only partially negates in games that use it, my other big gripe with a lot of games are a sprite based audience. I’m incredibly happy to hopefully never see that again, and although the audience doesn’t have a lot of polys, it has enough to partially fool me during motion.
• The sideline announcers are static polygon models, ugh. Please fix this in the release build.
• The cloth physics are nice, but they’re completely disconnected from “reality” when you engage the replay mode’s vcr controls, snapping around and reacting differently each time. This probably isn’t solvable, or worth solving at the moment.
• Also in replay mode you’ll notice players clipping through solid objects. This image from the gamespot review is a good example.
• Similarly, in replay mode, they’re at least smart enough to zap the player model if the camera moves anywhere near enough to clip the camera through the model, seeing the inside.
• The game is ridiculously pretty in motion, most of my graphical issues with the game aren’t noticeable when I’m playing. Which brings me to my next point:
• I don’t feel the uncanny valley whilst NBA 07 game is in motion.
• The uncanny valley ruined my experience with Madden on the 360, at various points the animations of players on the field, the most valuable and observed asset in the game, would cease animating while at the line waiting for the QB to start the play.
• I wish there were a 3D NBA Jam with this level of engine and quality.

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