One option that didn’t exist back in the day in NBA Jam is a crossover dribble move, which is controlled by the right analog stick. On the Xbox One, where my demo was, the A button passes and the X button shoots, while the right trigger controls sprinting on defense, X attempts a steal, B does a shove and Y jumps. The controls for everything are simple and easy to grasp. Certain NBA stars tagged as “epic players” have unique dunk animations. Right after my Griffin-to-Hill alley-oop, Karch came back down the court for a dunk in which the Chicago Bulls’ Dwyane Wade spun like the Tasmanian Devil while flying toward the basket.
Karch told me that there are over 300 different dunks in NBA Playgrounds, and they’re exactly the kind of physics-defying thing you remember from previous arcade basketball games. Even the animations for actions like jumping to contest a shot evoke the ’90s arcade classic from Midway.Īnd boy, those dunks. If you shoot while sprinting toward the hoop, your player will attempt a dunk. For example, you can swipe at the ball to try to steal it from an opponent, or simply shove the player to knock it loose (as long as you’ve got some of your sprint meter left).
The action ends up playing out very similarly to NBA Jam on both offense and defense.
Indeed, NBA Playgrounds is a two-on-two experience à la NBA Jam, rather than NBA Street’s three-on-three setup. Can indie sports games fill the gaps that EA and 2K Sports have left open?