Just like in real life, NBA Ballers: Rebound enables you to choose your friends. It’s part of the multitude of things you can do when you create your Baller before taking him out on the street to play in clownish one-onone ‘basketball’ tournaments where you can kick a ball through an opponent’s legs as part of a special move. What the customisation mode doesn’t enable you to do, though, is stop your player looking like a complete dick when he celebrates after scoring a simple lay-up. It’s all part of the style, y’see, because here is a game that’s not so much a sport sim as something that should come free with issue 238 of Bling! magazine. An afro comb in a player’s hair doth not maketh the game.

In saying that, NBA Ballers: Rebound can be quite good fun, and certainly accessible in terms of gameplay if you find it easy to get past the trendy nonsense that decorates the game. It’s responsive, quick, light and, of course, flashy, making for a pretty alright portable sports title. As ever with these things, there are many modes available with which you can play the same game, but unfortunately none that mean that this is anything other than a mini-game with far too many bells and whistles.

Perhaps some of you may think we’re being ignorant to the modern culture of basketball, but the fact remains that a well placed wrist band will never help you hit more jumpers, and a merry jig after scoring a reverse lay-up won’t mean that the points were any more fun to play.

Aaron Asadi