Dunk City Dynasty

"Hey Dad, check out this dunk." After spending 700 hours with Brawl Stars and showing me more pointless children's programmes he's accumulated, my son Frank has finally changed his favourite game. His iPad is now not only an official Brawl Stars platform, but more of a basketball-filled, NBA-scented home for big stars like Giannis, Curry, Durant, SGA and LeBron. Dunk City is finally here, and it's a good thing.

Dunk City Dynasty is an arcade sports game in the spirit of NBA Jam and NBA Street. NetEase has taken a healthy amount of inspiration from the arcade giants to create a basketball experience that's fast-paced, easy to play and simple - yet deep and challenging, all at the same time. You can either play three-on-three, with classic streetball rules - or 5v5 on the same premises as classic NBA matches and the challenge is of course to master the fundamental elements of the sport. As a forward, you have to shake off your defender and shoot when there is space. If your shot is contested by a defender, the chances of the ball going in the basket are extremely low. If, on the other hand, you wait for an opening, step sideways, get free and shoot, the odds are reversed. There's a button for passing, of course, and there's a button for "drive" linked to a superpower where you can force your way to the basket, leaving a light blue super-smoke behind you.

As a defender, the same applies - but in reverse. Fundamentals, only. In Dunk City Dynasty, there's no zone defence, everything and everyone is dotted down and you can both run freely and hold the 'defend' button to crouch down and really try to stay in front of your attacker, with a low stance. From there you can activate 'steal' to snatch the ball, with the risk that the defender will take advantage of the fact that you will then become static for a small mini-second and can thus risk the ball being dribbled away if your opponent acts quickly enough. It is of course also possible to block and on the whole, the game mechanics and the balance between the different functions are really good. Dunk City Dynasty feels like playing basketball, which I can't really say about many arcade basketball experiences.

Since this is a free-to-play game for Android and iPhone/iPad, it of course comes complete with micro purchases, loot boxes and those eternally messy menus with 100,000+ different icons, buttons, lines of text and logos. At times, it's generally impossible to understand what everything is and a significant part of me wishes the developers of these mobile-friendly free-2-play titles would realise that menus and the presentation itself should be kept as simple and easy to understand as the game experience, out on the basketball court, rather than the other way around. It should be said, however, that the micro-purchase requirement is never there, there are no forced adverts for some pointless strategy game that you have to suffer through for 35 seconds before you can continue playing, and you don't have to wait for upgrades if you don't pay, which is obviously the way to go here.

The aesthetic, along with the well-built mechanics, is what I like most about the Dunk City Dynasty. I like the design style, the mannerisms, I think Netease has captured the most distinctive characteristics of Curry as well as LeBron, Booker, SGA, Embig, Giannis, Luka, Jokic and all the others and the sun-bleached, colourful Miami feel rhymes perfectly with a basketball-influenced, wearable summer. I also love Kendrick Perkins' smooth voice as a commentator and think he does a great job of both summarising what's happening on the court and spicing it up with funny comments without feeling annoying or too repetitive. That said, Netease could have skipped the training thing where you upgrade your player and build a kind of greatly simplified skill tree, that part feels late in terms of development time and I think the game would have done just fine without it.

Dunk City Dynasty is a surprise, for sure. In a time where most lavish mobile games that are rolled out are stupidly idiotic with simplified game mechanics reduced to simple button presses on the same button and requirements for micro purchases, with constantly recurring prompts - this is a breath of fresh air even if Netease of course still wants your money. Dunk City Dynasty is certainly no new NBA Jam, but it's good. Fun. Stylish. Summery.