NBA Live 98

Another Year, Another Version of NBA. It's been quite a good year for EA, principally because the games that looked as if they had run their course last year have now been successfully reborn and relaunched, especially with the advent of 3D acceleration. NHL is a prime example, and now NBA can be added to the list. Like NHL, it looks so much better than last year's game. Players are now far bigger in the default view, and everything's so clear that, for the first time in any full-team basketball game, you don't lose track of the ball in the pixellated mob when things get crowded around the basket. Rodman's hair does change through the season. Sadly, you don't get to follow him home after the game and watch him shag Madonna while wearing a wedding dress (or whatever he's getting up to these days). Still, you can't have everything.

Everybody's talkin' at me

Again, as with NHL, EA seem to have made a bit of a leap in the commentary stakes, with an improved, more varied and flowing commentary which adds to the atmosphere. It doesn't quite reach the heights of that in NHL, but that's because it doesn't stoop to openly taking the piss out of the players with the colour commentary; nevertheless, it's certainly among the best. Presentation throughout is (as usual) excellent, with music that equals the output of many popular beat combos.

New stuff

Each major NBA star likes to have his own individual dunking style with a fancy name (ideally with an apostrophe in it). Many of these are impossible to differentiate between, but who's going to argue with people who are eight feet tall?

Anyway, this year, for the first time, these individual moves are faithfully reproduced. And for those of you who never go out, and have thus progressed to a point where you found the previous highest difficulty level rather easy, a fourth one has been added. Oh, and if you don't fancy a full game, you can opt for a three-point competition, which I'm sure I've seen in previous console versions, but which claims to be all-new.

Power corrupts

If merely playing basketball isn't enough for you and you want to get all anal and... well, American about it, you can set up and draft players into your own customised league comprised of anything between four and 32 teams. The general manager mode allows you to run a proper NBA Draft in all its multi-million dollar complexity, trade players, suffer injuries and work to a salary cap.

And finally, if you happen to be one of those people who need a couple of distractions from watching all the male players darting about the place, you'll probably be pleased to know that the ever-popular and crucial cheerleader movie sequences have been improved and expanded. Let there be singing and dancing in the streets (ideally with lots of high kicks and tan-coloured tights).