NBA Ballers: Chosen One Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 11th June 2008

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We this game become the chosen one after reading this review?

NBA Ballers: Chosen One Details:

	Sports
	Xbox 360
	Midway
	Midway

Out Now

N/A

Pick up and play sports games that focus on fast paced action seem to be all the rage at the moment, but sadly these games rarely live up to the same standards as those that focus on being simulations of sports, so is this latest NBA offering from Midway any different?

NBA Ballers is all about individual players rather then the team sport that is loved the world over. The game focuses on the individual style of players and rivalries with you trying to show who the king of the court is by performing showboating moves and basically acting the fool, making the other players look bad.

NBA Ballers: The Chosen allows you to compete in individual games or you can create your own baller and play through the games story mode, which is split into episodes featuring the different game types available in the game. Playing through the story mode allows you to earn extra attributes for your baller as well as unlock new gear which you can apply to your created player when ever you feel like it. The game allows for pretty extensive character customisation and you are able to choose everything from clothes, hats, jewellery, tattoos and so on. On the whole it all seemed a little pointless to me as it doesn’t really serve to improve how your created player plays the game. The game attribute system also isn’t the best, editing your player’s attributes automatically after each game. Attributes can go both up and down depending on how well you played in your last game.

The different game types that make up the challenges in the games story mode are 1v1, 2v2, 1v1v1, shootout and 3 point challenge. These modes can also be played as individual games in addition to practice mode to hone your skills. Each of the games has a number of rules that can be changed to offer a different challenge, something that is used throughout the story mode. This is a pretty nice addition that adds to variation to the different game types.

NBA Ballers: The Chosen One also features a power–up system known as juice. This is filled up by pulling off moves such as dunks and alley-ops and taking advantage of the games acting the fool moves which include hitting other players with the ball and generally showing off. Pulling off these moves is the fastest way to build up your juice meter and once full you can pull off special moves that are near impossible for the opposing player to defend. You can also take your juice meter up several levels which allows you to perform ever more impressive moves and get the better of your rivals.

As a challenge NBA Ballers is pretty simply to get to grips with and progress through, however some of the rules that are used with in the game do seem to make it pot luck to who wins as in most games you have to retreat behind the D before scoring again, however some games have this rule turned off so the opposing player can simply stand under the basket gathering the ball each time they score and quickly get another basket. Before you know you’ve lost the challenge, this can become quite frustrating and can spoil the enjoyment of the game, which is a little limited at the best of times due its repetitive nature and lack of control over your characters development. The only saving grace with this repetitive scoring from opposing players is that it’s relatively easy to steal the ball and block shots.

NBA Ballers: The Chosen One also includes multiplayer support, allowing you to compete in ranked and unranked quick matches as well as custom games made up of those featured in the single player game. Again you can choose the rules to make the game as open or closed as you please.

Visually the game has a very arcade look to it, it moves at a pretty fast pace which adds to the games action orientated style but it doesn’t really look as good as some other NBA based games. Character models are ok but have a plastic look to them, animation also isn’t the greatest as they seem to move quite strangely, however having said that the game does implement a good alley-op and dunking system.

Sound in the game follows in the arcade styling of the graphics and is probably one of the games biggest weaknesses, commentary is done by Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, although who ever wrote the lines for him didn’t put much effort in and his random announcements will start to grate on you after a short time. The games music is fairly fast paced which is fitting to the action orientated play of the game, but other then the usual squeaks of the court and thumping of the ball there’s not really much else to talk about.

I don’t know what it is about pick up and play sports games that make them quickly become tiresome and unrewarding to play, but it seems that NBA Ballers: The Chosen One has fallen foul of this curse. Maybe use sports fans secretly like the monotonous rules featured in simulations of our favourite sports, but what ever it is NBA Ballers looks like it will be stuck on the side lines for now.