NBA Playgrounds review

Reviewed on: PS4

NBA Playgrounds comes to fill the void in arcade-style sports games. Amid its small flaws and imperfections, the game manages to shine through its quick entertainment and fun multiplayer matches.

Fun: 7

NBA Playgrounds has a scarce selection of single player content, prepared specifically to help players develop and improve for the competitive online matches. There is a single game mode, for singleplayer as well as local and online multiplayer, that is quite entertaining – especially in local multiplayer sessions with friends – but tends to get repetitive for its lack of variety.
It is clearly an appealing game for parties and group gatherings, but not recommended for prolonged play sessions.

Mechanics: 6.5

NBA Playgrounds offers a single game mode: arcade basketball in a 2-on-2 format.

The characters are based on today’s most famous players, basically covering the most important representatives of each team in the Association. As the player progresses in the game they receive sticker packs, adding the personalities represented there to their collection. Each athlete has countless attributes, but in practice you don’t feel much difference – the game is practically unaffected by the characteristics of the chosen players.

The basic controls are easy to master: there is a stamina bar that is consumed when running and performing some special actions (such as blocks and steal attempts), a button to pass the ball and a button to shoot at the basket. Shot accuracy supposedly depends on the character’s attributes and the moment the shoot button is released, but the game only mentions this and never bothers to teach what the correct moment is. In fact, the game has terrible tutorials: you will need patience and persistence if you really want to master these mechanics.

Each pair also has a Special bar, which fills up when making good plays and drains when making mistakes. Once filled, the pair instantly receives a random bonus among countless options, including more speed, more accuracy, more stamina, etc.

Fortunately, even all this inaccessible complexity doesn’t diminish the game’s merit in terms of fun. Matches are quick and you don’t need to understand everything that is happening to play well and win – mastering the basic concepts already gives you good chances of doing well. Playing with friends in particular tends to be quite a fun experience!

Audiovisual: 7.5

NBA Playgrounds is a game with simple but pleasant visuals. The color selection gives a cartoonish, light air, and the light hip hop fits the sport and the setting of street games.

I personally don’t think the art direction got it right with the big-headed characters, and I think the game would benefit from offering the option to normalize the characters’ head size… But that is a matter of opinion!

Final thoughts

NBA Playgrounds is far from a perfect game. At the start, you miss clearer tutorials, and after a few hours of play you miss more game modes (and perhaps get tired of seeing the big-headed characters). But even so, the game has a well-judged pace, stylish presentation and arcade gameplay that delivers fun both online and with a group of friends. We can only hope the studio Saber Interactive has more time in developing its next game, because with more polish and more content they could develop a game to bring friends together and liven up gatherings.

Score

Narrative = 7
Mechanics = 6.5
Audiovisual = 7.5

OVERALL : 7

PlayStation 4 version