It’s been just shy of two weeks since the New York Knicks won the championship against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5. A victory decades in the making, an underdog story that’s turned players putting in the work into stars, and given the city chants that could rival the UK football scene. Long story short, whether you’re a Knicks fan or not, now is a great time to be into Basketball. The theatricality, the talent on court, the tense match-ups, it’s all there. So it should be a no-brainer then to take some of that action as a fan and live the fantasy in Play By Play’s debut game, NBA The Run.

A non-annualised sports game sharing the licence? Say it ain’t so. Yet here we are, with an NBA game in name and in gameplay sensibilities. This isn’t the buttoned-up 5v5 with contact fouls and four quarters, however. NBA The Run operates as a 3v3 set in street courts across the world, with rule modifiers to switch up each match as you play. Think of this as a spiritual successor to the NBA Street titles from the 2000s, but much like the Knicks’ win, it’s been decades since then, too. Times have changed; the depth at which we play sports games has expanded, developers and publishers backed by a bigger market share are risk-averse and live service is now the go-to for multiplayer-focused releases.

So, where does NBA The Run sit in all this? Not anywhere I can point my finger to specifically, but I like that Play By Play Studios have played to their strengths at the cost of being broadly palatable. Basically, take what I write with a grain of salt because, whilst I’ll get into what doesn’t work for me, I can easily envision this being someone else’s Jam.

Taking full advantage of the NBA licence, NBA The Run has a slew of stars to choose from. Whether it’s the new school of players like Ja Morant, Jaylen Brunson and Zion Williamson, or the more decorated players like LeBron James and Steph Curry, you can’t really go wrong with picking any of them. Despite the game’s impressive roster of 37 players, there’s a sense of fine-tuning and extensive testing felt across the roster, as every play has distinct advantages and drawbacks – often mimicking the real-life player’s attributes and skill set.

This creates an ambition to synergise with your picked team of three or with two other online players, to get the W. However, that is easier said than done if you’re going the multiplayer route. Like most online games, communication, teamwork and cohesion are what get results. NBA The Run doesn’t just encourage that, it feels like it penalises you if you don’t. Despite the game’s easy team-up functionality that automatically keeps you in a squad after matchmaking, not everyone is reading from the same playbook. As is the way with most online games, everyone fancies themself as the star player and the shot maker, leading to random matchmaking feeling like hell 95% of the time.

My go-to then became picking the tall defensive types that could swipe balls being shot, and cherry-picking the rebounds with ease to facilitate a counter. At least I tried. NBA The Run is quite fast-paced in terms of its moment-to-moment action. I struggled to read where the ball was at all times, who my teammates were, unless I had the greyscale feature turned off for the opposition, and the control scheme is a lot to get to grips with. It borrows quite a bit from the 2K series in terms of what you can do and how you perform those actions. Shooting has a similar timed action where you release the button at the apex, guarding is left to the left trigger, and dribbling is on the right stick.

Although I may have a slight leg up due to familiarity, NBA The Run doesn’t facilitate any tutorialisation to help ease you into the action. I figured out the gist from playing in an empty court by myself and took those brief self-taught lessons into the one mode the game features. Tournament Mode has slight permutations; an online mode with other players, an online mode where you operate all three players on your team and a friends-only online/offline play. I wasn’t good enough to play solo, I didn’t have friends with a copy of NBA The Run to play with, so online with other players is pretty much my only way to play.

I got my hands on the game a few days after release, and it already felt like people knew the meta, knew strats and could exploit the Christmas Day noob that I was. Only so much practice would have prepared me for this, and despite a dedicated rollback netcode to facilitate incredible response times, I was left in the dust… for hours. This is admittedly at a point where I need to “git gud” in order to enjoy my time with NBA The Run, but simultaneously, there’s no worse way to get better than to get stomped on game after game. I’d understand if there was a quick play functionality so I can jump in and catch a quick game, but with there only being a tournament mode, every game needs you at your best, or you’ll just get nowhere.

And for hours, that’s where I got with it, nowhere. It makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t a die-hard basketball fan, there isn’t anything for someone more casual like me. This is evident in the game’s depth under the hood. As I mentioned before about the players’ stats having a drastic effect on their viability on the court, this permeates through everything that NBA The Run offers. Each match comes with a random modifier. One game could be something simple, like first to 11 points with no stamina loss or alley-oops net you three points, whilst every other basket is worth one.

It creates a variety and a dynamic that’s great for that emergent storytelling we all look for in multiplayer games. How your team wasn’t equipped statistically to grab the W but defied those odds, things like that. Then you have this stylised art direction that pops on screen, like a mix between cel-shaded and realism, giving it an exaggerated look to heighten the stories you’re creating in-game (and maybe because Fortnite is the biggest entity in the gaming sphere, controlling how games look).

Everything in NBA The Run is intentional, painstakingly adjusted to give this level of simulation and arcade, whilst delivering something in service of the license. However, it’s intentional to a fault for me. One mode to get my butt kicked in three different ways, no training of sorts, leading to a surface-level offering at a fairly reasonable price, but only if you know ball.

NBA The Run is out now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series S|X and PC via Steam.

Developers: Play By Play Studios

Publisher: Play By Play Studios

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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