Basket Dudes is an Online Free to Play Basketball Game (MMO) similar to older arcade titles like NBA Jam. You are given control of a 5-man team and must complete head-to-head with another player, using various power-ups and special abilities to win.
Our initial impression of Basket Dudes was very positive. Upon entering the game for the first time you are immediately given a number of different customization options for your team, ranging from clothing colour and team types, to creating your own unique team name and logo.
This is a very welcoming beginning to this type of game, and as one of the key components of Basket Dudes is to offer an MMORPG experience, one that we found immediately engaging. These customization options are not only easy to use; they look absolutely incredible and really help to create a sense of ownership over your team.
Having created a team and familiarized yourself with the style and glamour of Basket Dudes, the next step is to begin playing a game. Regrettably, the tutorial here doesn’t do a great job of preparing you, as it is entirely text-based and doesn’t offer any chance to experiment.
As such, your first chance to play a match will be against another — likely more experienced — player. Fortunately, the controls and gameplay elements are very easy to grasp, and though it’s likely that you won’t win your fist game, you should fair considerably better in your second. Especially so thanks to the RPG-infused level progression and character improvements.
After each game you’ll be awarded with some experience and a random assortment of bonus items. Some are talent points used to increase specific abilities, others are clothing and equipment imbued with various statistic increases. Though most common are the enhancement cards that offer a massive range of abilities — some passive, others requiring activation within a game to temporarily increase player abilities (and allow for special moves like slam dunks)— but all of them are necessary for higher levels of play.
There’s also a cash shop that will allow you to purchase the usual in-game goodies to make you a better player. Most of these can be obtained during normal play, but players wishing for a faster progression experience will get it, and though this may cause some late-game balance issues, it has little to no bearing at all on the beginning levels.
In summary, Basket Dudes is our favourite Basketball MMO. Hell, it's our favourite online sports game. The graphical style not only looks amazing and helps to reinforce the ‘old-school’ arcade feel, but it also means that you can play on almost any PC (the client size is just over 100MB).
The lack of a single-player mode (and most especially, a hands-on tutorial) is a devastating mistake, as it forces players to PvP immediately and will likely make many players uncomfortable in the early stages of play; however, as previously mentioned, the gameplay is very simple (more so if you use a control pad over a keyboard) this isn’t game-breaking, and shouldn’t persuade you from trying Basket Dudes for yourself.
