NBA Playgrounds is a bit of an odd one. On the one hand what it sets out to do; be a zany, off the wall arcade basketball game akin to NBA Jam, it does pretty decently but there are some issues and oversights that drag the whole product down to the point where it is pretty mediocre.
Firstly, your mileage may vary to mine because every single player in the game is behind lootboxes. WhenNBA Playgrounds is a bit of an odd one. On the one hand what it sets out to do; be a zany, off the wall arcade basketball game akin to NBA Jam, it does pretty decently but there are some issues and oversights that drag the whole product down to the point where it is pretty mediocre.
Firstly, your mileage may vary to mine because every single player in the game is behind lootboxes. When you level up you get a pack of 5 random cards and when you win a tournament you get a pack of 5 random "gold cards" that have a higher chance of landing you good players. I was lucky and within 30 minutes I had packed Legend Jerry West which essentially broke the game. You just had to inbound it to Mr Clutch, sprint to the three point line and hoist one up. The odds were good it'd go in and you even get rewarded with an extra point for a perfect release which happens fairly often as him. It didn't really matter who I paired with Jerry, we'd annihilate the opposition. Now this is my experience getting a good player early, somebody else who just kept landing modern day squad players would maybe say otherwise. But the truth is, there isn't a vast amount of difference between the players because of the rating scale of 1-10 in 8 categories there can only be so many outcomes.
As such you get a weird world where John Stockton is pretty comparable to Jerry West and better than Magic Johnson or Stephen Curry. The weirdness doesn't stop there really. Kevin Durant is a decidedly middling player who can't dunk that well and isn't an upper echelon shooter. There are 2 versions of Shaq that I found (I am sure there are more) but the difference between prime Lakers Shaq and Boston Celtics end-of-his-career Shaq is... Boston Shaq shoots 2pters better. You can see what I mean. Not only do the stats not make sense from the perspective of somebody who knows NBA basketball but it also takes the shine off of the only carrot you have to chase in the game; unlocking players.
Every time you see a loading screen you can see Steph Currys card. Now as one of the most popular players in the world most players would probably want to lootbox this player the most. However after a bit it dawns on you that not only is your Jerry West card better than him, so is your Stockton card and honestly there are a bunch of other cards not that much worse than him that are far more common to acquire. The card collecting portion, which is basically the bulk of the game outside of the on the court action, rapidly becomes absolutely pointless. You play and grind to get a pack of cards and the odds are good most of them are going to be players of Nene or Luol Deng caliber. In 9/10 instances of cards you win, you may as well never get them because you'll never player with them. It's a 2 on 2 game with no restrictions as to how often you can play as one player or another. So you pick your best 2 and then all of these other players, which must number in the 150-200 range are absolutely superfluous.
The on court action is decent. It's a pick up and play arcade game so the ease of access is to be applauded and they throw some interesting wrinkles on the convention game with stuff like the first basket is worth an extra point, a perfect release is worth an extra point and some interesting power bar time boosts that can shorten the opponents clock or give you double points for dunks. But the gameplay grows stale fast. Firstly the AI is pretty awful. In fact if you leave them to their own devices and actively NOT defend they will kill clock, do somersaults and between the legs passes until they have to put up whatever shot is there. Actively defending actually works AGAINST you because the CPU will auto steal attempt for you which drains stamina and slows you down. It's truly bizarre to see. The CPU has no situational awareness. I've had them down 3 on the last possession and they don't rush up a 3pt shot they still do the same weird showboating until the buzzer expires before looking forlorn that they lost.
The courts look quite decent in the games defense and there is some charm to the caricature player models even when some prominent players look nothing like their counterparts; Dirk Nowitzki being the most glaring example.
I could only really justify under $5 for this. I actually was surprised to see I got 3 hours out of it because truthfully whilst the gameplay isn't exactly chess or even a particularly decent representation of the sport it is still fun and wacky to see Dirk Nowitzki do 3 front flips, bounce off the rim like a trampoline, corkscrew and then plummet to the ground because John Stockton just threw himself into the comet like path of his dunk.
If you've got gamepass this is worth a go for a laugh when you're bored but really not much else. The music and commentary are awful and were switched off in the first 30 minutes and ultimately once the fun of the gameplay has subsided you realize how pointless the whole affair really is.… Expand
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