Red Review: NBA Rush

The concept of level grinding is something that I latched onto when I first started playing RPG.  I sincerely liked being about to spend hours doing the same tasks over and over in an open field for the sole purpose of leveling up a secondary character or gaining an ability that I may end up never using.  There were times when, instead of looking for a job, I spend all day leveling up characters in whatever Final Fantasy game I was playing at the time.  In recent years I have recognized that level grinding is not just found in role playing games.

Like many of the previous games, MLB 2K13 has a section in the game called My Player.  In the My Player mode, you create your own baseball player and use the player to play out a major league baseball career.  While you can play as your character in the MLB postseason and even play in the World Series, most of the game takes place in the regular season.  In the regular season you do the same tasks over and over, usually out in an open field, for the sole purpose of gaining experience points.  Most of the My Player mode in MLB 2K13 amounts to level grinding, doing the same tasks over and over in an open field for the purpose of leveling up your character and gaining better abilities.  MLB 2K13 is not the only sports title that utilizes a level grinding system.

NBA Rush is a recently released free game on iOS developed by RenRen Games USA.  In the game you take on the role of a basketball player as you avoid obstacles, collect coins, and defeat the alien menace.  No, really, the point of the game is to collect coins and defeat aliens.  If this sounds vaguely like the plot of Space Jam to you, you're not alone.  The basketball player you can play as depends on which of the many players included in the game you have unlocked.  For this reason, Joakim Noah should feel insulted by NBA Rush.

Joakim Noah is currently an NBA basketball player.  He rose to prominence thanks to his play in the NCAA Tournament, playing for the Florida Gators.  He has since gone on to have a fair to middling career playing for the Chicago Bulls.  While some would say that his career has been disappointing to this point, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would say that Joakim Noah is one of the worst players in the NBA.  No one, that is, except for RenRen Games USA.

When you start NBA Rush, you are given three players to play as.  These players are replaced as you gather coins and unlock players, assumably players of better skill.  Joakim Noah is among the first three players you receive in the game, along with Kawhi Leonard and Jose Calderon.  If you can play NBA Rush  fairly well, it's fair to say that you won't be playing as any of these players for very long.

Other than the possibility of feeling insulted by the rating of the players you play as, or the general ratings of the players on your favorite team, there's nothing really wrong with NBA Rush.  The game's not too terribly deep, but I get the impression that's not what the game is supposed to be.  NBA Rush is the kind of game that you can play on the go, or while waiting for something else to happen, that you can quickly get some enjoyment out of and then leave without much consequence.

NBA Rush: B-