Inside Social Games

Viral sports games are hard to come by, and Hot Shots Basketball by Unit 501 makes a valiant effort.

The game looks simple, you control a Flash-animated hoopster who must shoot as many baskets as possible before time runs out. It actually isn’t so simple, however. The hoop keeps moving back and forth and there is considerable lag between when you throw the ball and when it arcs to its target. You have to lead your shots a bit. To make matters worse, every round the hoop moves faster, increasing the difficulty.

In the first round, your character looks like he got out of shop class with his welding goggles and work pants. During the second round, you play as Ron Howard’s character from Happy Days. Finally, you play as a Michael Jordan clone, if Michael Jordan ever wore Macho Man Randy Savage’s glasses.

There’s an annoying soundtrack that you can’t turn off that plays on loop, but the commentators and unseen audience reacting to how you play via shouts and boos is a nice thouch.

The development is still in its toddler phase, however. The global leaderboard and friend invites are in place, but you can’t challenge your friends yet or see their scores. The developers have a partnership with Crazy Taxi, so the two cross-promote each other. Both games are crude Flash games that hope to keep you clicking away because of their difficulty.

This one is plenty challenging and the best basketball-arcade game I’ve seen yet on Facebook. It’s not NBA Jam, but it’ll do for now.

Gameplay: 6

Developers: 3

Soundtrack: 1