System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £11.99
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Sports
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Standing
Multi-Player: Yes
Age Rating: 15+
Description: The NBA 2KVR experience gives you the thrill of walking right onto the court, with All-Star Paul George providing guidance and tips. Compete in a series of fun and intuitive virtual reality basketball mini-games with numerous Gatorade boosts available to improve your performance. With NBA 2KVR, it’s now possible to shoot hoops with all the sights and sounds of a professional stage.
Review: NBA fans have been crying out for a fully licenced VR experience for a while now and a lot of their hopes will be pinned on the NBA 2KVR Experience. Hosted by NBA All-Star Paul George (Who?) you get to play a series of fun basketball related mini-games. There are Three-Point Shootout, Skills Challenge, Buzzer Beater to name but a few. Most of them consisting on getting a ball through the hoop.
The game works with the Oculus Touch controllers and I would like to bet it is a much better experience with those than it is with the controller as I found the game a little too easy to play with it. Every shot seems to go in and the aiming was deadly simple, but like I say I do get the feeling that is because I was using the controller. There is also some heavy Gatorade advertising consisting of energy and stamina boosts as well as a nice range of other powerups all designed to make your life a little easier. I would guess that with the Touch controllers you will be jumping and shooting hoops just like you would in real life making it feel much more realistic.
OK, so this is not the full VR NBA game people might have liked, but to be honest it is a pretty well-polished experience that looks and sounds fantastic. Entering the court for the first time and hearing the crowd roar is a great experience even if it is just the intro to the game mode menu. I really do think you need to be a big basketball fan to see the value in this game. While I found the mini games fun, other basketball games like Baskhead are half the price and are just as much fun. Still, if you love your hoops and also know who Paul George is, you will find this a well-made game that really gives you a good experience.
