Basketball fans, it’s officially NBA season again. That’s right, the long wait is over. Some of you probably bought NBA 2K20 for PC/consoles the day it came out, but I personally cannot support their microtransaction practices anymore. While 2K single-handedly dominates the NBA game landscape on PC/consoles, there’s definitely more variety in the mobile landscape.
For one, there’s NBA 2K20 mobile, which is a pretty solid translation of the console game. There’s also NBA Live Mobile and NBA Jam. Well, as of today, there’s yet another mobile option with the release of NBA Now Mobile.
Mobile NBA Action From Gamevil
Gamevil is a mobile game juggernaut, and between Baseball Superstars and MLB Perfect Inning it’s established itself as something of a sports game specialist too. Therefore, it makes sense that the NBA turned to Gamevil to make a free licensed basketball game for smartphones. I’ve played around with it a little bit, and all things considered, it’s actually kind of fun.
NBA Now Smartphone Game From Gamevil
NBA Now will look pretty familiar to anyone who has played a sports game involving trading cards. You start by picking your favorite team, and that gives you the card of the best player on that team (for me, the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo). From there, you’re ushered through a pretty typical mobile game UI filled with daily check-ins, challenges, and gacha mechanics.
Aside from all the annoying mobile monetization nonsense, it’s not the worst way to spend your time. Basically, you play against someone else’s team and the matchups are determined based on the cards you have (so your center might have a good chance of dunking on another center based on both of their stats). The game partially plays itself, but you can control passing, driving to the basket, and shooting. In other words, its kind of halfway between a game like NBA Jam and an idle game that autoplays.
Altogether, the NBA Now mobile game could be better, but it could definitely be worse too. If you want a more full-featured mobile game, you should pick up either NBA 2K20 mobile or NBA Jam mobile (or NBA Live Mobile, if you don’t want to spend any money), but the NBA Now mobile game is definitely a fine way for an NBA fan to waste a few minutes on their commute.
Download the NBA Now mobile game for free for iPad (apparently not available for iPhone yet?) or Android