EA have caught onto the idea that Nintendo arguably pioneered the business of making games available to everyone; however, unlike Nintendo, EA aren’t always quite as good at it. The latest in EA Sports range of “casual but hardcore” games is the All-Play series. What would have been a normal cross-platform game for EA has now been heavily modified for the Nintendo Wii, and all sports games seem to be undergoing the All-Play transformation. NBA Live 09: All-Play is the latest iteration of this new franchise, and it certainly is aiming itself at all levels of player experience.

Unlike the US, Basketball in the UK is one of those tiny sports that no one really knows anything about, much akin to Hockey, American Football, Baseball and most sports that are played in the US. In fact, Basketball rarely gets mentioned on the news, and if there’s some form of basketball event, it’s only ever mentioned on a slow news day. With this sort of coverage in the UK, NBA Live 09: All-Play already has a diminished target audience.

There are various modes of play, of course: the usual Wii Remote option is naturally the preferred option of play, but the NES style controller is also available for play. The setup on the Wii Remote style is very simple and feels fairly intuitive; flick up and then down to try and make a shot whilst using the nunchuck to aim. With the NES style control, it’s pressing 1 and 2 to make passes or to shoot, with the B button for running. For older gamers, the NES style controls may feel more natural when playing a sports game. This is due to the inaccuracy of the standard Wii Remote option. Frequently there are incidents when flicking the Wii Remote will not work, and waving the Wii Remote around the room to make a pass is not only dangerous, but also non-productive for a fast-paced sports game.

There are several modes of play: multiplayer modes, team modes and an online mode. Strangely, there is no career option, which is usually a staple for all sports games, as it not only allows progression, but it also gives the game a purpose-driven feel. Fortunately, the Online and Multiplayer modes are of a great quality and are fun and fast-paced. As is predicted from this style of game, the Multiplayer and Online modes are almost the same thing, just with real people at the other end of the line rather than Artificial Intelligence. There’s not often lag when playing online against other players, and even with the controller accuracy incidents, the overriding feel of fun emits strongly from NBA Live 09: All-Star.

In some of the other modes, such as Party Mode, the balance between NPC and player needs to be addressed immediately. The AI is annoyingly strong and the game feels skewed towards the success of the computer -- not to the point of Mario Kart -- but enough for it to be strongly noticed. Along with the infuriating AI, the graphics on this game are appalling. For a Nintendo Wii game, these characters look sub N64, possibly early PS2 standard.

There are various problems with the game in terms of scoring. With the difficulty of the AI coming into question, there are also various glitches in the games program that makes scoring from distant points of the floor possible. When playing online this is something that’s so glaringly obvious, and nothing has been done about it. It can easily be likened to the “snaking” that people did with Mario Kart DS. This may be fixed online with a patch to the online system, but it’s likely that nothing will happen.

Unfortunately there is commentary on the player’s performance by a voice over actor. This is painfully done; as throughout the game the voice actor simply sounds bored and random phrases are just being shouted at the player.