In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
When EA releases a new sports game it’s rarely a surprise. That doesn’t mean, however, that I was any less excited to get my hands on NBA 08 and give it a try. I have found that recently EA, for their 360 titles at least, have tried to create game play which has a much more authentic feel than some of the previous arcade type games. This trend has continued with NBA 08.
All new EA Sports titles have a free roam mode which appears as soon as you pop in the game. I played around for a while as Gilbert Arenas, who appears on the cover, to try and get a handle for the look and feel of the game. The first thing anyone notices is how a game looks; and I am no exception. The game looks awesome. Players can be easily identified by NBA fans simply by their appearance, as virtually every detail was captured.
More difficult to achieve than accurate looks is accurate movements and it is here that NBA 08 really shines. Virtually every player has their own unique movements in the game. Shawn Marion shoots like Shawn Marion, Arenas fades away like Arenas and Lebron dunks like Lebron. Little things that had always been a little dodgy in previous versions of NBA, like quick break passes, have mostly been taken care of as well. If you watch the NBA than you will be sure to appreciate the depth of visual detail in the game.
The next thing you notice when picking up any new game is the game play. A game can look great but if it isn’t fun to play it will soon be gathering dust on the shelf. Fortunately for all of us I don’t think NBA 08 will be collecting dust bunnies anytime soon, or at least not until NBA 09 comes out.
The game play is really good, not great, not amazing, but really good. Before all the new movement options are mastered, like the complete dribble control and signature move ability, the game play can be a little choppy. After spending a few hours playing the game though the choppiness I had noticed earlier seemed to be disappearing with my increasing skill level. In the end, NBA 08 provides a very realistic feel, while still managing to provide smooth, fun game play.
NBA 08 offers the gamer a choice between quite a few game modes including a Franchise, Dynasty, Online, All-Star Weekend and the FIBA league.
I love playing games in Dynasty mode. Dynasties start with your choice of taking over an existing franchise, with their current rosters, or truly start from scratch and complete a fantasy draft. I really appreciate games that allow you to draft your own team. I find that I have a much stronger emotional attachment to created teams, and therefore enjoy the long 82 game season that much more.
The only thing more satisfying than sinking a buzzer beater against the computer is doing it against a real person online. In my opinion, the most fun can be had playing online and if thats all the game came with I’d probably still buy it. It’s that good.
As for the other modes, they are fun the first couple times around but they lose their appeal and grow repetitive quite quickly. But nobody really cares about the International League or the dunk competition, do they? I sure don’t. While it is nice to have the option, I don’t foresee too many 3 point contests in my future.
One of the few complaints I have with the game is that the cross over rating system must be changed. Every point guard who is good enough to play in the NBA is capable of performing a crossover. EA apparently does not agree. Bottom tier point guards, like Jose Calderon on the Raptors, frequently, too frequently, loses the ball while trying to perform a simple crossover. I am not saying those players should never lose the ball but they are clearly under rated. EA allows you to remedy the situation, however, by allowing you to edit anyone’s ratings. The obvious problem being that the newly rated Jose Calderon is now as good as Jason Terry at doing crossovers so it kind of throws everything out of whack, but to a very minimal degree.
Another minor annoyance that should be mentioned is the in-game play calling and substitution interface. It requires the use of the D-pad, which in turn forces your thumb off the main joystick. In time, I am sure that I will be able to efficiently call a play on the fly, but for the novice gamer play calling can be a handful.
The last negative aspect that is worth mentioning manifests itself in the form of the new Hot/Cold feature which, when a button is pushed, reveals where the current ball handler is either hot or cold shooting the ball. In theory this is a great feature, but beyond the marquee players the hot/cold zones seem to be arbitrarily selected. Only die hard NBA fans will notice this though.
I must say, however, the good definitely outweighs the bad. All in all, whether playing a season against the computer, a game against someone online or simply having a dunk competition with friends, NBA 08 is a must have for all basketball fans.
Graphics: 4.5
Gameplay: 4.5
Sound: 4.0
Replay Value:5.0
