I grew up during the GOLDEN AGE of arcade-style sports games — NBA Jam, NBA Hangtime, NFL Blitz, Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey, the NBA and FIFA Street series. Sure, we had our “realistic” sports sims too, but they weren’t as real as today — EA Sports was the leader in sports sims back then with Madden, FIFA, NHL, and NBA Live. 

Today’s current go-to sports games include EA FC, Madden, EA F1, EA NHL, NBA 2K, and MLB The Show. Every year these games get closer to what it feels like to watch a live sports broadcast. Even in the early 2010s my mom would ask, “is this real or a game?” when I was playing Madden or NBA 2K.

Whenever a new studio comes along and tries to recreate that classic arcade sports era they usually turn out not so great (WWE 2K Battlegrounds, NBA Playgrounds 1 & 2). The best arcade-style sports experiences I’ve had in recent years were seeded within the top-quality sports sims — NBA 2K’s Blacktop mode, EA FC’s Rush mode, EA NHL’s Threes mode. These are fast-paced, quickplay modes with less players on the field, court, or rink.

Something New

For years I thought I wanted a spiritual successor to all of my favorite arcade-style sports titles, but mostly NBA Jam and NBA Street. What I’ve learned is that we don’t need to remake those games. We need to use today’s new gaming features to create a new arcade experience. 

What Sifu developer, Sloclap, created with Rematch (an online arcade-style soccer experience) is more of what we need today. It’s got that fast-paced, smaller team soccer gameplay, with online capabilities.

When it came out people were all over it, the problem is that with any repetitive online game, the players want updates. I haven’t gotten back to Rematch, but I would hope they continued to add new features — World Cup season would be a great time for some new content in a soccer game.

NBA THE RUN

When NBA THE RUN was first announced, I was already hoping for that next-gen NBA Street experience. There is a little bit of NBA Street in this game, mainly commentary by the great Bobbito Garcia (aka Kool Bob Love aka DJ Cucumberslice from the NBA Street series). This is no spiritual successor to NBA Street, but it’s a new experience and a good fit to today’s gaming landscape.

The more time I spend with NBA THE RUN the more I appreciate the fast-paced 3V3 streetball gameplay. The roster is made up of mostly real NBA players, and a few fictional ones to unlock. It’s not a huge roster, but it’s a nice start and I know the team is working on adding more NBA players — will we also see some Hall of Famers? Dr. J, Bird, MJ? It’s always nice to see another sports title get to use real-life pros.

NBA THE RUN launched with three 3V3 game modes:

• Knockout Squads allows for six players, where each one controls one player on each squad. I felt left out in this mode.

• Knockout Solos is my main mode, where two players go head-to-head and control all three players on their squad. I don’t like to share.

• Knockout Friends allows you to create your own private tournament and play alone vs AI or with friends. This is the only mode I won a tournament in so far — against AI.

All three game modes feature a full sixteen team elimination tournament with one team left standing, making each game feel like a Battle Royale. 

Another fun addition is how each game has its own random set of rules. You can play up to 21 with traditional two- and three-pointers. One ruleset makes every shot worth one point, while dunks are worth three. Some games are up to a certain score, while others are timed. Some feature certain power ups and modifiers.

Re-Learning Streetball

The tricky part of NBA THE RUN was learning how to play this particular style of streetball. Today’s game genres have universal controls. For instance, when you jump into a new FPS game, you expect to have an understanding of the basic controls based on Call of Duty or a Bungie FPS. When playing a basketball game, I expect shoot and pass to be the same as NBA 2K — the current leader and standard in basketball games.

The hardest part of NBA THE RUN is mastering defensive play, since your defensive moves are steals, blocks/rebounds, and push/shoves. There is a defensive stance, but no posting up or boxing out. Streetball is more about offense, and embarrassing your opponent with skills and tricks. There’s even a head bounce move.

I started off losing almost every game, or not making it past the second round of any online tournament. Once you go down a few buckets, you are probably out of the game. Playing vs AI, I got a better grip on defense. When playing online humans are unpredictable.

In previous NBA arcade games I was all about pushing/shoving and stealing on the inbound. This is tough to execute in NBA THE RUN, so I would fail on the turnover and leave the rest of the team open for an easy basket. Getting back on D after scoring is more important in NBA THE RUN. You can’t just spam the steal or push, you have to time it perfectly. Also, blocking is about timing the jump.

After playing a few games, and slowing down I started to get a better grip on the NBA THE RUN gameplay. When it comes to offense, anyone can score, but playing smart on defense is how you win games in NBA THE RUN.

What’s Next?

I’m really enjoying my time with NBA THE RUN. It’s a great, quick basketball game to jump into. I like that I can login to my PlayStation 5, play a quick tournament or a few, and move onto some other game.

I reached out to the team about any planned updates. I know they are working on adding some more players to the roster. I’m sure they will come out as packs, hopefully FREE DLC.

I can also see new locations being added as time goes on. What I want to see is what other game modes and rules can they add to this game? Will there be timed exclusive modes? 

NBA THE RUN is fun and easy to understand at launch, but I’m excited to see this game evolve.

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*myVGBC was given a review code for NBA THE RUN by the publisher.