![]() ![]() Pick your team, get ready to jam, and play without limits! The high-flying arcade action also features a massive roster of over 200 current and retired NBA players with new player models and animations. But I’ve still had more fun online than off.The smash hit is back! NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 takes street balling to the next level with a host of new additions and improvements, including a new Season Mode and a new Playgrounds Championship ranked mode. (The Switch version has no online play at all right now, but Saber says it will be added in a post-release patch.) This, in conjunction with the lack of four-player online play, really hurts the online component for now. However, it’s not very well built out at the moment – at launch you’re limited to matchmaking only, so there is no way to play with friends online. Playgrounds is not a game I would want to keep playing for long if I were only going to play against the CPU, and so couch play and online is where I’ve spent more of my time. Going up against a dynamic duo like Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson required some trial and error to find the right combo, which felt jarring because Playgrounds didn’t usually ramp up the difficulty match to match. Tournament mode took me roughly four hours to complete, but it only took that long due to a couple of frustrating difficulty spikes. This is a missed opportunity to me because there are a ton of awesome dunks and a healthy variety of dribbling animations, but without telling me what I’m getting, I don’t know what to look for game to game.Tournament mode, exhibition, and online play are the three modes available, and winning each of the six tournaments the first time rewards you with a new court, a “golden” pack of cards (which gives you a better chance of finding Epic and Legend players like Allen Iverson, Magic Johnson, and Shawn Kemp) and a new power-up. Unfortunately, Playgrounds does not make it clear what types of animations are being unlocked, so I didn’t really care much about getting my players from the “bronze” to “gold” level. The players you use will also level up as you play more games with them, giving them new animations in the process. Those little miscues can be the difference between a win and loss, and so the high-level competitive aspect of this game online will rely on four players being able to control all the action. For example, sometimes when I tell my teammate to go up for an alley-oop he’s very delayed or never does it at all, which leads me to idly dribbling around or trying to score a different way before I lose the ball. Currently, it’s limited to two players online, with each controlling a team with an AI partner, and as of now the teammate AI is functional but not ideal. ![]() Speaking of post-release content, one other update that will be a welcomed addition is four-player online play. For example, Giannis Antetokounmpo is not currently available, but if I were a betting man I’d say he’s likely to appear later. Saber Interactive has promised that more players will find their way into the mix post-launch. The roster has impressive depth, with each team having three to eight current and former players available. I love opening a pack of cards to hopefully find one of my favorite players like Allen Iverson, or Steph Curry, or Alonzo Mourning. Importantly, there are no microtransactions – you simply get new packs each time you level up by playing the various modes. It takes a page out of NBA 2K’s myTeam or EA Sports’ various Ultimate Team modes by having you start off by opening three packs of cards to unlock your initial players, and earning more packs immediately becomes the main draw here beyond the gameplay. “These hiccups are frustrating because the core of Playgrounds is solid. There’s no way to really know if shot timing is tied to each shot or alley-oop animation, or if it’s the same across all of them, so even after playing for many hours I am no closer to deciphering the perfect timing that the AI can execute reliably. ![]() ![]() The intent is to add an element of skill that separates experienced players from the inexperienced by rewarding a perfect release with an extra point, but the animations just aren’t consistent or readable enough. The timing-based shooting mechanic is another element that does not quite fit this style of game. It feels bad to lose completely randomly like that. The problem is some power-ups are much better than others, and the system can come off feeling unbalanced when your opponent gets the equivalent of the blue shell and makes a shot worth 12 points. For example, you build up a meter by doing things like throwing alley-oops and blocking shots to get a random power-up, like in Mario Kart. “But in that same way, the more I got into Playgrounds, the more I noticed some things that felt unfair or difficult to read. ![]()
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