After years of motion-based faux-sports games where you mimic pitching, hitting, football passing, and basketball free-throws, NBA Baller Beats actually gives you a regulation basketball and has you practice your dribbling skills. It’s a lofty ambition for a game — and one that entails a bit of sacrifice — but for the most part, your efforts are rewarded.
Taking cues from Dance Central and Rock Band, Baller Beats has you performing b-ball feats in tune with 30 tracks from Kanye West, Gorillaz, Them Crooked Vultures, and more. Most of the action is you physically bouncing the ball in time with icons flowing down the screen, although you’ll earn multipliers by matching special moves — some simple (crossovers, fake passes), others more tricky (higher difficulties in¬clude tempo-skewing flow dribbles and Hopkins moves where you toss a ball under your legs and catch it with the same hand).
In terms of difficulty, forward- and rear-leg crossovers are the hammer-ons and pull-offs of Baller Beats.To the game’s credit, you’ll definitely learn moves and increase your skills even if you never graduate past the Rookie difficulty level. With our staff’s b-ball experience topping out at mid¬dle-school bench-warming, we found left-hand dribbles and crossovers flummoxing at the start, but after a few hours, we became ambidextrous ball-handlers. However, even with a “Beat School” move teacher, we found learning tougher moves a bit too difficult. Sure, Baller Beats will show you how to perform the move via simple diagrams, but would it have hurt to include a video clip of an NBA star telling us how to keep our rhythm intact after a between-the-legs dribble?
Sadly, the biggest hurdle to enjoying Baller Beats may be societal. Between playing the music at an appropriate volume and the act of constantly bouncing a basketball indoors, you’re bound to anger neighbors if you share common walls. The game also requires a fair amount of space — the standard six feet from the TV so Kinect can read you, plus a foot or two more in which to freely bounce the ball — and just to be safe, you should clear the entire area of fragile items, as the ball can careen away on rare occasions (though usually not that far or fast, in our experience).
Despite this not-small barrier to entry, we do recommend Baller Beats to anyone hoping to increase their b-ball acumen or try something new. If noise and space aren’t an issue, it’s definitely worth a shot (or a dribble and pass, in this case).
Miss a special? Make sure you’re on the correct side afterward to continue scoring.PUBLISHER: Majesco • DEVELOPER: HB Studios • ESRB: Everyone 10+ • MULTIPLAYER: 8-player round-robin • ACHIEVEMENTS: Inspiring • COST: $60 (includes compatible Spalding basketball) • RELEASE DATE: September 11, 2012
+ An effective teaching tool that’ll up your game and make you sweat.
+ A great soundtrack that mixes rap and rock, and works well from a gameplay standpoint.
– It’s noisy and requires space; tougher moves could’ve used better instruction.
? Will school phys-ed classes use it as an exercise tool?
