Gym Class VR vs Blacktop Hoops VR - Free Basketball on the Meta Quest 2 — Reality Remake: VR Is the Future (2024)

First off it’s just great to see basketball games coming not only to Virtual Reality, but to the Meta Quest 2. It would be hard to imagine playing a half decent game of VR Basketball with a wire hanging from your face, so a standalone headset is really vital to bringing the Basketball experience to VR. That being said, let’s see if any of the available options are a good basketball experience for you. To find out let’s look at the two new players on the court of the Meta Quest 2. Blacktop Hoops and Gym Class.

In this article you will find what each of these games has to offer in several major categories as free VR Basketball experiences, starting with their presentation.

Blacktop Hoops blows Gym Class out of the water in terms of presentation. I mean, just listen to the intros of both games. Blacktop comes in strong with an energetic hip hop jam and a New York City streetball aesthetic. Gym Class is… well it’s less exciting. It has a more futuristic synthetic look that overall is less interesting. Just watch the intros side by side and guess which one you’ll be more excited to start playing.

The menus are kind of the same way. Blacktop lessens the energy a bit, but still has an interesting menu track, while having that menu be set on the same street-side court that the Basketball games themselves take place on. Gym Class has sort of bland menus, though it does have a bit of an interesting 80s Synthetic look to it. Still it is generic, the menu could work just as well for any other type of game.

Gym Class has a slightly more down to earth look to it. Instead of a public court you get a closed in Gym, as the name of the game implies. A big sign says “Welcome To Miami” above one of the walls. The walls are painted bright teal and pink. There is no music to accompany the Gym, just the bouncing of balls and squeaking sneakered footsteps.

While the walls are a teal color, the court looks a lot like an actual basketball court, drier and crisper than the court in Blacktop Hoops. There are no splashes of color accompanying a near miss, just the clank of the hoop. Though the satisfying swish of the net when you sink a basket is just like in real Basketball.

It’s also important to note that Gym Class does not have a tutorial at all, just a control layout in the pause menu. Blacktop Hoops has a phenomenal tutorial that you play through the first time you start the game.

The core of everything in Basketball is Dribbling. If you can’t dribble you can’t move, and if you can’t move you can’t play anything other than a game of HORSE or a Free Throw Contest.

Blacktop Hoops makes dribbling even easier than it is in real life. The ball is attached to your hand like it’s on a yo-yo string. Unless you throw the ball or it is knocked out of your hand by an opponent, it will stay in your hand. Still, unless you move your hand up and down to dribble the ball, you can’t walk or run no matter how much you move the joystick on your left hand. Just like in real basketball you have to dribble to walk, and it’s pretty easy too.

As for Gym Class there is no dribbling system as there is in Blacktop to keep the ball in your hand. Attempting to simulate a dribble by slapping a loose ball with your hand into the floor of the Gym will give you mixed results. Often the ball won’t rise back up far enough to keep a dribble going, and dribbling the ball in this way while moving is next to impossible.

You can kind of dribble by using the grip button to hold and throw the ball at the floor and grab it when it comes back up. This method is much easier but still falls apart when moving. Sometimes the ball will not bounce forward with you. With practice this is easier than just trying to slap the ball, but is still really tough.

Due to this most players don’t dribble at all in Gym Class. Instead in games they will just hold the ball and walk as they try to get it into the basket. This makes these games technically not basketball, as every player is always travelling.

That all being said there are people who dribble in Gym Class it just takes a lot of skill.

Okay so that might be a little disappointing for some, but what about Shooting? Even without Dribbling, the ability to shoot a ball is one of the core parts of, and possibly the most fun to be had, in Basketball. Seeing the ball arc through the air over the defense, and the anticipation of seeing if it will go in or not is just as good in VR as in real life.

To the credit of both games, they both have excellent shooting. Starting with Blacktop Hoops the shooting is just as intuitive as all other aspects of the game. Just hold down trigger to go into shooting mode, and then hold up your other hand to support the ball during the shot. You can hit a button to make your character jump a little while you release the ball, or physically jump along with the shot to make it a jump shot (watch for ceiling fans).

What differentiates both games is how shooting can be modified in the settings. In Blacktop Hoops there is a setting that changes how hard shooting is. There’s Casual, Pro, and Manual. You originally set this option during the game’s phenomenal tutorial, but can change it from the menu at any time.

The thing is… there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of difference between these difficulty settings. Each of them from Casual to Manual seems basically the same when shooting. No matter which one you choose it’s pretty tough to make shots as a beginner, so you’re best off going with Casual or Pro, just in case it helps more than is obvious. No need to make shooting unnecessarily hard at the beginning, or you’ll be doing nothing but dunking.

Gym Class doesn’t have a shooting mode for your hands like Blacktop does. Instead you just hold down the grip button and let go of it to release the ball. Gym Class does have a more refined approach to shooting settings. Instead of a general setting that affects all shooting, Gym Class lets you select the angle of your wrist and the strength of your shots with sliders.

Dunking is not as vital a part of the game of Basketball as movies and the NBA would have you believe. Mostly because in real life a lot of people just can’t dunk. It requires a really high jump and a lot of precision to do correctly. Though VR is a place to live out new worlds and great fantasies, like being a newcomer to Basketball that is somehow able to dunk.

That is the approach that Blacktop Hoops takes. There are not one but two jump buttons. One brings you up a couple of feet and is good for jump shots. If you press down the left joystick instead you get sent really high up into the air up to the level of the basket, an insanely high jump for most people. You can not only slap an opponents shot out of the air from this high, but you can easily dunk the ball if you are next to the basket.

It’s really easy. If you manage to get next to the basket you practically get a free point by pressing down the joystick and doing a dunking motion with your ball holding arm. They’re not hard to land. Though higher difficulty opponents give you a really hard time getting that close to the basket, and can even smack the ball from your hands before you land the dunk if they’re close enough to you when you try. That only happens on very high difficulties though.

Dunking is also the easiest way to score in Gym Class. By holding down the jump button you can jump as high as the hoop in this game as well. You just need to hold it down for a while before letting go, which is still more difficult than in Blacktop, where the jump is instant. Other than that slamming the ball home is largely the same between the two games.

The biggest difference between the two games is who your opponents are. Blacktop Hoops is an entirely Single Player experience, while Gym Class is entirely Multi Player. Both games have practice modes where you have the court and an infinite supply of Basketballs to yourself. As far as opponents go though Blacktop Hoops has AI opponents for you to play against, while Gym Class relies on playing against other players in public lobbies.

What makes this annoying is not only the apparent loose logic in the AI’s responses to your guarding, but also how it will sometimes basically ignore your presence. It can just jump right through you, if that’s what it’s animation dictates, as though you aren’t there. The AI can phase through you easily, so you can’t really guard it nearly as effectively as it guards you. It’s like defending against a ghost. Your best bet is to just wave your hands around as quickly as possible so hopefully one will touch the ball and send it flying out of the AI’s hands for a steal.

So if the AI in Blacktop Hoops still needs work, how about playing against other people in Gym Class? Well, there are generally a few games open that you can join, though none of them might need new players. You can always warm up on the free half court while the game is running its course.

You might be noticing a trend here. Blacktop Hoops tends to be a much more arcadey experience. You can do great crosses, dunk the ball, and have amazing plays right out of the tutorial. A lot of the tools of Basketball that take a lot of practice to acquire are just given to you. You don’t need to accumulate a lot of practice and skill in order to be pretty good at the game.

Both games are great at what they are trying to be. They’re really just different types of games trying to do different things with the same sport. Whichever you prefer is up to what you’re looking for. Arcadey fun that’s fast and easy to get into, Blacktop Hoops. A grounded and competitive experience, Gym Class.

Both of these games are free on the Oculus store App Lab right now. They are both great games for the Meta Quest 2. Blacktop Hoops is also available on Steam, for free. There are paid addons to Gym Class, which have not been covered here.