NBA Jam

Originally written 1-23-11

NBA Jam makes its return by bringing back that classic old school feel and adding a few new twist to old ideas. For those who don't know, NBA Jam was originally developed by Midway, and it debut in arcades back in 1993. Heavily influenced by Arch Rivals, NBA Jam featured a basketball tournament where a majority of the rules were completely thrown out with only two rules remaining; which happens to be the 24 second shot clock violation and goal tending.

The game was a two on two match up, that featured blatant shove downs and slam dunks. However, the dunks were taken completely out of the realm of realism and showcased the players flying several unbelievable feet into the air to slam dunk the ball with authority. These dunks can be downright hilarious consisting of many front flips to 1080's in the air.

Recreated and released in 2010 by EA Sports, NBA Jam recaptures the magic of the original and most of its sequels. The nostalgia kick will no doubt run rampant in the case of veterans, and newbies will find the game easy to pick up and play. However, some will find the game to be quite redundant despite the many play modes.

Game Play:

NBA Jam is a two player game that features 1 - 4 players offline and 2 - 4 online. It's still a two on two basketball game that ignores almost all of the rules. The match ups are four quarters with 3 minute time limits against an aggressive AI. In two player and regular mode, those only two rules can be removed and the time limit can be increased to 5 minutes or lowered into 1 minute. The game features all thirty teams with the most popular players. The teams range between 3 - 5 players including unlockable characters that can be subbed during halftime.

The characters have their own attributes with certain players stronger and weaker in certain areas than others. For example, Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics is a very crappy three point shooter, but his ability to steal the ball is uncanny. While Paul Pierce of the same team is an excellent three point shooter. The characters attributes are listed and displayed in numbers under their profiles during the character select. In this area concerning the characters. I think EA kind of dropped the ball here. There was no real reason to have so many players, because the characters do not suffer injuries or tire out to force a sub. You can keep the same two guys the whole way. On top of that, you cannot mix up the teams but this wouldn't make much of a difference anyway. Since the teams really don't play that much different. This is a part of the game that was definitely under developed.

NBA Jam features many different modes to enhance the game play and I'll describe some of them. The first of which is the Classic Campaign; In this mode, the player must select a team and play through the rest of the NBA as well as hidden teams. Completing this mode unlocks many other features. Remix Tour is another mode that features various unlockables. Remix 2 v 2 reuses an element from NBA Jam Tournament Edition. In this mode, icons appear on the court and they give players super abilities like quickness, shove immunity, accuracy, to only name a few.

Smash mode is a battle to destroy the opponents backboard. This is done through lay ups, jumpers, three pointers, and dunks. The backboards have a health meter and it's lowered after each attack. Once the final blow is delivered, the glass on the backboard will be completely destroyed. 21 is a one on one half court battle to see who can score 21 points the fastest. Elimination is a 4 player every man for himself battle. The objective is to score as many points in an allotted time. The player with the least amount of points will be eliminated, and this will continue until there's only one left. Jam Camp is a training session to help introduce players to the control features; Here, you will learn how to dunk, steal, block, etc. There are a couple of other modes, but I'll leave those up to those who are interested in picking the game up.

The game has a difficulty level that can be changed even in the tournament mode before the match begins. On the easy level, the games are just that, very easy and this is great to familiarize yourself with the controls and the game mechanics. I recommend only playing between 5 - 10 games here, because there is no competition at all, and you will be bored very quick. On the normal level, the competition is taken up a notch. During Classic Campaign, the matches are still fairly easy, because I blew the CPU out many times. However, this is not the case in the additional modes, as the CPU is very competitive and it will give you a run for your money. On hard and above, these levels are recommended only for the most advance players. A novice will find himself in a 21 - 6 hole after the first quarter easily, used and abused the entire way. The AI will fight you to the death on these levels.

The player only has the ability to control one of the characters, while the other is CPU controlled. I have heard from many others that the CPU controlled player is completely useless and incompetent. I disagree somewhat here. The CPU definitely has its clumsy moments, by allowing the opponent to make uncontested baskets that could have been easily stopped. On other occasions, it bailed me out of many tough spots, by going through the dunk motions on its own for me to make a pass and get the assist, making quick steals, and key blocks on many, many, occasions.

The AI can be very tough, but it can be very cheap as well. At times, frustration will build up when you watch a 15 point lead in your favor dwindle down to three. This mainly occurs when your character is missing dunks, layups, each move is predicted, and you're shoved down repeatedly until the ball is loose. Smash Mode for me stands out the most in this area. On one occasion, I needed only one dunk to win the game, while the CPU probably needed about 10. My player screwed up every single dunk, bricked every last shot, and when I had an opened opportunity for a slam dunk on a fast break, that was also screwed up. Until, my health was almost completely empty, and I had to dish the ball off to my CPU player for the win; but I lost more games in this mode because of things like that. It gets very irritating sometimes when this occurs, and I found myself just shutting it off. The other modes also seem to pull off this form of cheating and weaker players become Superman out of nowhere.

During online play, I didn't notice any type of lag, but I did notice it was hard to find games at one point. I haven't played it in a long time, and I don't really have a desire to either.

Controls:

For the most part the controls are fluid and it's pretty easy to pull off everything. The player has the option of using the directional pad or analog sticks. The left controls movement and the right stick can pull off steals and dunks, but the player can resort to the D - Pad and buttons if necessary. The controls can pretty much be mastered through a few games on the easy setting. However, I did run into my fair share of issues here. Many times when I had the ball, I tried to properly manage my turbo, and I would quickly tap the button twice by accident. This would cause my character to start dishing out elbows, and I would have to pass it. Many times it felt like I didn't really push it that quickly.

Other times, I know for a fact that I went for a dunk, and the player would stop and perform a jump shot or a head fake, with no one defending him at all. This has also occurred when the player was on fire and dunking is his main attribute. The controls are also set and cannot be customized. I really don't understand why EA chose to do this, but it doesn't really bother me.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Visually, the game is pretty good, but nothing I would say is breathtaking. In big head mode (which happens to be the characters with over-sized heads), the facial features are on point and the characters are easy to recognize. The character designs have some variety as well with characters like Kobe Bryant wearing the over-sized, knee covering shorts that are in style for most males these days, along with John Stockton sporting those short-shorts he was known for. This also goes for Magic Johnson wearing those knee high socks. There is also an obvious difference in the characters height. Yao Ming clearly towers over Kobe Bryant.

The movements are pretty well done, with characters getting all twisted up and hitting the floor when trying to guard the vicious crossovers and the rims shaking from hard dunks. The crossovers look pretty cool too, plus characters hitting the floor with legs up way in the air trying to either guard the dunk or blocking it. The dunks have some fluid movements like the characters performing quick stunts with the ball in mid flight. When the character is on fire, they can perform showtime dunks. These are dunks that are far more exaggerated than the normal ones, with the characters grabbing an enormous amount of air time, and the camera zooms out sending the character more into the background. This is by far the coolest moment in the game.

The courts resemble their real life ones with bright shades of blue for arenas like the Orlando Magic. Several of the other modes like Smash and Domination feature black arenas.

The graphics aren't perfect though, because I noticed that the game would skip frames, and give off a blurry look. This only occurred when on some occasions when the players would scramble to their positions after a score. I found the backgrounds to be pretty bland with not much movement taking place.

The soundtrack is pretty vast with the modes having their own specific songs. The songs appear to be traditional, head bopping beats that fits basketball nicely. The beats would go into a more, sped up like instrumental when a player is on fire. Tim Kitzrow returns as the announcer bringing back classic lines from the original, with several brand new hilarious ones in which I think the Smash Mode has the best lines.

The sound effects are good at best. When the ball is on fire, you will hear a light crackling sound as the ball burns the net. The slam dunks are fine, and during a showtime dunk you can hear the crowd going camera crazy. Only two real flaws stood out to me. Sometimes you can't hear the ball hitting while being dribbled, and there is absolutely no sound from the sneakers.

Overall:

If you're a die hard fan of NBA Jam or basketball in general. Then you will find hours on top of hours of play. There are so many unlockables here, and challenges to unlock them it could take a few weeks to get them all. Plus you can check the Jam Challenges mode, to keep track of your progress and learn the requirements to unlock more content. In addition, playing these multiple modes will better prepare you for the online players who can be even more aggressive than the AI.

The multiple modes in this game may not truly appeal to non basketball or sports game fans, and I fall into the latter category. I am not a fan of sports games, because I find them to be a bit too repetitive, but I know there are some who feel quite differently.I only recommend NBA Jam to die hard fans of the series, basketball fans, and sports game fans. I seriously doubt if I'll bother with any other sports games from now on. I'm only going to keep this around for groups.

Overall Rating: 6/10

Pros: Multiple modes, online play, pick up and play, majority of big name stars and unlockables

Cons: Can be too cheap, backgrounds and sound could have been better, minor control issues