A couple of console generations ago, EA had a label, EA BIG, that produced some fun sports games with an arcade twist. From NFL, NBA, and FIFA Street titles to Freekstyle, there was a lot of niche fun to be had. Arcade-like games based on pro sports have come and gone a couple of times over the decades, with the latest such game released for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. I was provided a review code for NBA Playgrounds for the PS4, and here is my take so far.
Everyone’s played NBA Jam sometime or another, the premise with NBA Playgrounds is very similar — two vs two on a shortened basketball court, elbow-swinging, opponent-pushing, above-the-goal dunks, crazy alley oops and four point three pointers (yep). This is an arcade game, meant to fast paced, fun, and enjoyable to play and watch. With 150 total NBA players, including dozens from years gone by (Iverson, Shaq, Frazier, Magic) and modern day stars like Westbrook, LeBron, Kawahi, and Curry. Like fantasy sports and similar titles before it, the combination of players can be really appealing to NBA fans. My first match included two of my favorite players, Rondo and Levine, giving me a potent combination of ball-handling and dunks.
Stats of the players don’t seem to ultimately matter a great deal, but your skill as a player is paramount. The two main gameplay mechanics players have to practice on is timing and managing your player’s stamina meter. Timing is vital for accuracy, not only with jump shots and three pointers, but oops and dunks, too. I was surprised at how many dunks I was missing until I started to focus more on the timing of the release of the Square button to finish a fancy dunk. In-game visual cues help you to understand if you’re releasing the button too early (shortening your shot) or too late (over-shooting). Once you get the hang of it, you can start to nail more and more ranged shots, and doing so with perfect timing actually gives you a bonus point.
Stamina is used when you boost, dunk, push, swing elbows, and dunk if memory serves. Shoving is a oft-used tactic on defense to try and force the ball loose for a steal and a breakaway, but you can’t shove more than a few times without having to cooldown to recover stamina, which is a fair tradeoff. Similarly, you can’t just sprint up and down the court, which feels very small anyway with the three point lines feeling like they almost touch the half court line. I liked how NBA Playgrounds began with a simple exhibition match and it showed the control scheme at the bottom of the screen throughout the match, and also stopped at times to introduce some of these controls and the few mechanics. This convenient tutorial teaches you the few basics there are to learn in the game and then you’re off to more exhibition games or the tournament mode that sees you traveling around the world to about a half dozen street courts to take on the CPU.
The difficulty is pretty flatlined, although the special powers or power-ups players can earn (there are about seven of these) can be irritating and swing the balance of the game unpredictably and can feel unfair. Ever play Mario Party? It’s kind of like that in how the flow of the game can get completely up-ended within a minute or two and that can be frustrating, especially if you’re playing online. Currently, online play is limited to just playing with random players, but something more structured may get patched in at some point. Seeing as there is little reason to keep coming back to the single player modes, a more robust online offering will help. You do unlock more card packs the more you play, which are how you unlock new players, though. Card packs are just like what they sound, you get five players — although often they’re repeats of ones you already have — every time you open a pack. No microtransactions are included which I kind of appreciate.
As far as presentation, NBA Playgrounds looks and sounds pretty good. The over-sized heads of the players makes sense in order to promote the arcade look and feel and to help the players standout. The animations are pretty good, commentary varies from forgettable to annoying (can be disabled), and framerates are smooth. The presentation won’t wow you, but it gets the job done, especially given that it’s made by an indie developer who’s never done a sports game and it’s priced at $20. The price is worth pointing out because this isn’t a AAA game, but it does fill a niche that has been needing some attention since NBA Jam a few years ago. 2K has clearly dominated and done an amazing job with NBA simulation, but if you’re like me, when it comes to sports and racing games, you always want a go-to arcade type to enjoy in addition or instead of the sims. NBA Playgrounds does alright for itself coming off the bench, hopefully we see Saber continue to refine this and perhaps we’ll see some kind of semi-annualized franchise here that gets progressively better.
###
