I remember the day I spent a school year living with a cousin whose geek collage dominated the then Nintendo 64 console. Since I was in the PlayStation Camp, Nintendo 64 literally could not think of the disgusting controller design and generally boring games (because the cousin for some reason had no Nintendo games). However, we had a game that has been having fun for almost all of the year and I still remember the N64 as a fun platform.
It was NBA Jam 2000 – an arcade basketball game we could play by controlling Dennis Rodman and Dino Rađa. But of course we did not play with them as a duckwolf duck on the parquet, which was unbelievable. Unfortunately, the publisher of the game has been bankrupt and until 2010 did not continue until Electronic Arts has briefly revived the series. Joy lasted for a short while, the last generation of consoles was replaced by a new one, and for arcade basketball games there was no particular interest. However, almost nowhere appeared the NBA Playgrounds, and I was hoping to remind me at least of the NBA Jam series and playing with the paratroopers.
NBA Playgrounds mostly “hit the trice” in what an arcade 2-on-2 basketball should look like. Excessive jumps when dangling, supernatural elements such as burning balls, blows not judged as a foul and commentator who laughs with their statements – everything is there. The game looks nice, the animations are smooth, and the field around the terrain is alive. Sounds like a dream, just to hit mechanics and controls!
„NBA Playground hits a trike in what an arcade basketball 2-on-2 should look like.“
One part is – the controls are quickly picked up in spite of a badly set tutorial, and the kick and dumbbell system is perfectly covered in the NBA 2K series. In principle, you have to keep the button long enough but not too short before throwing the ball / dump. For that you do not have any indicators, you can only estimate your basketball’s path – the right moment is usually at the maximum height that is found during the jump.
To my and your sorrow, these good things end. Initially, this mechanics works well, doing attractive actions to fill the special skill meter. It is selected in the “lottery” of five bonuses, each of which brings some advantage. For example, you can get a special skill to always think of the trice, that your dumbbells are worth twice as many points or let the players not get tired of running and taking the ball away.
„The special skills that give you the advantage are not all equally valuable so your random selection will happily define how you will play.“
The problem with this lottery is that not all bonuses are equally valuable and ultimately fall to your success in hard matches dictating pure happiness, not your skill. For example, it may happen that during a match you only get the advantage that players do not tire, which is not as valuable as the advantage of a double dummy score with which your opponent can reach +8 differences in only twenty seconds. Initially, this lottery is okay, but as you progress with the matches, so much greater impact on them has these extra points of luck, instead of having the most important impact you have the points you win with your skill.
The biggest minus of NBA Playgrounds is the lack of content. Unlocking the basketball basketball package is a neat approach, but players must offer more than one game mode. At your disposal you only have a tournament mode in which you unlock terrain and balls, but these are just cosmetic accessories, so the tournaments themselves are not particularly tense. Anyway, they play by equal rules and the only difference is the weight increases as you progress further. Once you’re done with tournaments, you can just play regular games – offline and online. League competitions are promised for online multiplayer, but the developer does not yet know when it will be available. There is no way to play the season, 1-on-1 matches, elimination matches, dominance, or “American” matches, ie 21.
A special omission is that in online matches you can now only play against unknown, random people, not against friends you have on Steam, PSN, etc. We may get this option one day along with additional terrains, modes and variations of the match. However, for now, only the music that is so easy to get into your ear can infect you in the NBA Playgrounds so you can catch it singing it all day. But you may remember it just because it’s the only music theme in the menu, and the hint of playing for 20 euros is just a minimal amount of content, enough to not call it a theft attempt.
