NBA Jam HD Review

With developers cashing big on nostalgic games, the focus has been mainly on the days of 8-bit consoles and arcades. There is plenty of room to remember the early 90's arcade experiences and EA hopes to start filling this void with NBA Jam HD. Current Gen Xers spent a lot of time in the arcades and in friend's basements talking trash and yelling "Boomshakalaka!" The classic fast-paced 2 on 2 battles with cartoonish dunks and secret, unlockable celebrity players is back and updated for your ipad.

There are 3 modes of play offered: Play Now, Classic Campaign and Multiplayer. Play Now is a quick way to jump right into an exhibition match. You just enter your intials, choose your difficulty, select the teams and you're off. The Classic Campaign offers an excellent 1 Player mode that has you choose your team and work through the rest of the NBA with your favorite squad. Unfortunately for me that team is the Washington Wizards...still though it was an amazing feeling unlocking Manute Bol. While fun, the season can drag on with really only the goal of unlocking some classic player left as the main incentive to keep chugging along.

The gameplay is a very faithful recreation of the fore mentioned arcade classic. You move your player with a virtual control stick and have 2 buttons that allow for passing, shooting, stealing, jump/blocking and even calling for alley-oops. The controls work as well as any virtual controls which means passable. The fling control stick did help me break more ankles controlling John Wall. The graphics look great and set the bar for sports video games by really focusing on creating great character models with hilarious expressions, but also paying attention to the stadium and crowd and creating a fun and dynamic environment. You also have a few display options including normal or big head and different skins for the ball. My choice: big head + globe ball. The audio is another component that this game does right with the classic commentary that fans will all remember as well as fun sound effects that help liven up the game.



While the gameplay is fun and it feels like the old arcade game, some more variety would have strengthened this title. I know that having more unlockable characters for each team would have kept me more motivated. Also a few more game types, while differing from the original, would have fully rounded out the experience. I could have used some wacky h.o.r.s.e. or dunking competition. The challenges are a decent reward system that helps unlock players (I beat the computer without shoving and won the gentleman challenge. reward: mark price. sweet!) Still this is a great package for any fan of the nba or the classic arcade game.