by Danreb VictorioAs sports games grow ever closer to fully adopting a freemium model, people continue to long for the good old days of arcade sports. I’m a huge NFL fan who got into it by playing countless games of NFL Blitz, then NFL Street a few years after that, and I’m sure there are hardcore NBA fans out there who got their start on NBA Jam and NBA Street. We need those games back, and NBA The Run seems like we’re almost there.
I got a chance to hop on the last couple closed betas we had, and while I ran into more than my fair share of technical issues due to playing on a Steam Deck (when I’ve heard from the horse’s mouth that it’s not optimized for it yet), I still had a lot of fun with what I played.
At its core, NBA The Run is a 3-on-3 arcade-style basketball game, and while it excels with its pick-up-and-play mechanics, there wasn’t much flexibility during the beta periods.
Only one mode was available at the time of the beta: a Knockout Tournament. To make things even more limiting, you were forced to play online with other people. I understand that’s the point of a beta, but it would’ve been nice to find my bearings before we started playing for real, because once games started, we absolutely were playing for real, and that includes playing with real teammates–to my dismay.
The beta came packed with just about every star from every NBA team. Wemby, Antman, and LeBron are all there, and there were even some fictional players who all have different strengths. I’m a Golden State Warriors fan, so who do you think I was rolling with? Yeah, the GOAT of shooting, Steph Curry.
And he is fun to use. There were a few times I ended up somehow grabbing rebounds, and immediately shooting and making treys from just about anywhere.
Unfortunately, even when the rules called for more threes than dunks, my teammates rarely ever passed me the ball. People would rather dunk with Luka than pass Curry the rock wide open from the arc, and while I’m not going to take all the responsibility as a good shooter, the lack of actual teamwork from my teammates resulted in me never making it past the semi-finals in any bracket, so while I was having fun–my teammates made sure I couldn’t have the most fun I had.
So that’s where the beta’s ugliness began to show itself. I honestly wanted to spend my time using my entire trio against bots by myself, but we were forced to deal with humans the whole time. When you’re still learning, there isn’t much fun in all that. And since there was no real way to practice, I didn’t know how to dunk. The devs say such a mode exists where it’s truly 1v1 with all three players controllable with one human player, but it wasn’t working in the beta. It’s really frustrating using Giannis and charging up the basket only to attempt a layup that you miss because you didn’t know if there was a certain way to press the shoot button. This is all stuff that the game needs to communicate better, and I have confidence they’ll make this happen. By the time I realized there was a practice during the second beta, I ran out of time.
Again, I was playing on a platform the game isn’t yet fully optimized for, so I’m not sure if others saw the issue I’m about to discuss. The one that was most apparent was at the start of every game. To determine possession, you play “steal the bacon” with the ball at the center. In every single match I played, the game froze for about 3 seconds before I could resume play, and there were quite a few times when the game caught up, only for my team to be behind on the scoreboard. This is something I definitely hope to not see once we get the game on consoles.
To close things out, NBA The Run is definitely fun, but aside from some kinks that need to be worked out, decisions need to be made to maximize its fun factor. I have friends at other publications who, while the game will be playable solo, also mentioned that the game will only be playable online. So much about this game wants to be the new NBA Street, but you can’t be the new NBA Street without couch multiplayer. To me, this is the only factor we need confirmed before we can call it a day-one purchase when the game launches on June 9 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).
