NBA Baller Beats Hands-on - Preview

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 I don't really do sports games but I do thoroughly enjoy rhythm games, so to me NBA Baller Beat was somewhat of an enigma; a game that was one part repellent, one part attractive. After watching a few other conventioneers try their hands at NBA Baller Beats, I had to give it a shot; like the cocky rhythm and music game enthusiast I am, I jumped right in and played one of the hardest songs in the demo. I have to tell you, I've never had so much fun being humiliated in front of my peers. They tell me it has training modes to teach you how to actually get better ball handling, but I just wanna play a game, personally.

The game mechanics are pretty simple: you dribble a ball in time with the beat, while the kinect tracks your movements. That sounds easy, and watching others try the easy mode and failing certainly makes it look easy, but once all the different abilities and moves are incorporated, keeping track of the ball, the track on the screen, and your own body gets increasingly challenging. I played using only 5 of the different inputs: dribbling on the left or right, changing hands, fake shooting, fake passing, and switching sides between my legs. I was able to keep up quite well with the song I chose, New Fang by Them Crooked Vultures, until they threw the crossover dribble between the legs move; that's when I fell apart.

I found that keeping track of the ball while looking at the screen was the hardest part. I can usually dribble a basketball with ease, and I've never had these kinds of control issues before, but like I said, all the different moves and the roar of the crowd made it quite hard to keep myself under control. It doesn't look like a particularly deep or nuanced game, and I think that it will eventually require a bit of memorization to master, but for what it's worth I had a hell of a time and there's certainly enough challenge there to drive you to get better, even though the songs are separated by difficulty rather than having difficulty settings on each song.

There are going to be 30 tracks in total, encompassing rock, pop, hip hop, and even classic rock; here are the ones we know so far:

“Amazing” by Kanye West
“Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen
“Bangarang” by Skrillex
“Blue Sky” by Common
“Bust A Move” by Young MC
“Chillin” by Wale ft. Lady Gaga
“C’Mon Catch ‘Em By Surprise” by Tiesto vs. Diplo ft. Busta Rhymes
“It’s Tricky” by Run DMC
“Let It (Edit Remix)” by Machine Drum ft. Melo X
“New Fang” by Them Crooked Vultures
“Obstacle 1” by Interpol
“Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO
“Slam” by Onyx
“Stylo” by Gorillaz
“Tightrope” by Janelle Monae

NBA Baller Beats is due this September 11^th, and will retail for $59.99. As an added bonus, the game comes packaged with an NBA certified basketball!  

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