Even for the now-ailing PS2, the graphical quality of SCEA’s NBA 07 Featuring The Life Volume 2 is, in a word, terrible. Okay, I’ll show a little respect because some of the cut-scenes are acceptable. But get out the crash cart, because the in-game player textures, plain and simple, lack life. The athletes look flat and lack any detail that is present in most other sports games out there, even with the PS2’s hardware specs.

Fortunately, the audio of The Life Vol 2 doesn’t fall victim to the same (lack of) attention to detail that the visuals do. In fact, starting with excellent music tracks, you’ll immediately love to listen to the game. But the real treat of the audio is shown in full force when you enter into The Life, the game’s career mode. The cut-scenes have a fairly good voice acting quality to them, which many other titles lack.

If you're thinking that NBA 07 is just another NBA baller, you're sadly mistaken. While it's true that you do have the ability to play through a season or jump into a quick exhibition game or some even faster mini-games, where the heart of the game lies is definitely in Vol 2’s career mode, The Life. This year’s story involves a rivalry between your player from last year’s Vol 1 (The Kid), and a star from this year’s Vol 2 (Big W), both looking for the prize of a championship ring and the coveted MVP trophy.

If you haven’t had the chance to play the debut game of the series last year, let me give you the run-down. In The Life, you will be taken down a story of NBA stardom. Along the way, the drama unfolds, and you’ll be involved in a lot of tests, both physically and emotionally. To continue the story, you’ll have to hop into a ton of scenarios, ranging from simple one-on-one matches, to actual games.

The Life’s scenarios each contain specific goals that need to be performed on the court. There are also two categories of goals, with some required for advancement in the story, and others that go above and beyond that of the ordinary man. Regardless of the category, many of these goals will allow you to not only increase your attributes, but also allow for the unlocking of special rewards. This is a slick way to tempt players to replay these scenarios in hopes for the Showtime Goal rewards.

And while the story mode is good, it can’t make up for the gameplay, unfortunately. The computer A.I. has some big problems in certain situations, and the overall fun-factor of playing a game of hoops is nothing compared to games like the NBA Live and NBA 2K franchises. An example, an extreme annoyance is that the game is not smooth upon changes of possession. After every shot, regardless of a made basket or a miss with a defensive rebound, the game freezes, the view changes, and play continues. This takes the player out of the moment, and further has a problem that automatically resets the defense into the same position every single time after making a shot. You really don’t have control over your players at all times, and that’s a huge problem in my book.

In addition, the game seems to have some technical drawbacks. First off, The Life Vol 2 should probably read "The Life Vol 1.5" because it appears to use last year’s engine, which means similar graphics and lack of improvement. However, it is only fair to mention a big bonus due to this; you can actually import last year’s profile and use your already-created player in part of the drama for a second season. Some other drawbacks include EXTREMELY long load times, black screens that often seem like the game has locked up, and a non-intuitive interface.

The Scenario Challenges pose a wide variety of goals, from generic "Win The Game" challenges, to specific ones like "Scoring 2 Points After A Juke Move with the Point Guard." The game also has a nice feature that reads when you are having difficulty performing the tasks (read: you fail too many times), and gives you the option to lower the difficulty of the required tasks, and include them only on the bonus side of things. But aside from some of the goals during scenarios, the gameplay difficulty is on par with that of other sports games. There will be times when the computer A.I. is not smart at all, and other times when you’ll have a great experience because the game plays smoothly. However, the difficulty usually depends on your opponent, if you know how to control them down the stretch and your selection from the 4 difficulty settings to choose from.

When it comes to the controls of NBA 07 Featuring the Life Vol 2, they are almost spot-on. In fact, I was able to pick up and play without ever looking at the default controls, because they all felt intuitive. I only had two major problems. The first being that the right analog’s special moves can sometimes feel a bit clunky, but for the most part, are okay. The second is that the steal button and the dunk/layup button are the same, and often times when you are mashing the button to get a steal, you end up shooting the rock from the opposite side of the court by accident.

Since the actual gameplay of other NBA titles is better than that of The Life, it’s hard to recommend this game over them. However, if you are interested in a different type of basketball game, including the drama of The Life and the fun-factor of many quick mini-games, then Vol 2 may be for you. Bringing the style of the great stories that happen around the league in the form of an interactive movie, if you will, is a pretty cool trick to have under your belt. In short, NBA 07 Featuring the Life Vol 2 is a new story, but the core gameplay hasn’t really improve that much over last year’s Volume 1.