A pretty ballin' time
The gamebreaker is activated. I dribble the ball, break dance around it, throw it off a guys face and then jump off my players back towards the hoop, only to throw it up to my teammate overtop of me so that he can put the ball away. Welcome to NBA Street Homecourt.
NBA Street began with a PS2 game, and has slowly evolved to where it is now. If you’ve played any of them before, just know that this is the same game with shinier graphics and a strong online component.
But for the rest of you, this game is truly an experience. When you fire up the game, you’re met by a very “East Side” feel. EA actually did a good job of nailing the feel of it, even though it feels a bit forced at parts. (Having the other team insult you before the game in an in-game engine cutscene is kinda pushing it.) But everything is very smooth and feels good.
The main mode here is NBA Street Challenge. In this, you create your own player (With a pretty sweet player creator) and then recruit two more players to make your team. From there, you have to take your team through a series of challenges against other teams. You either have to be the first team to 21, or the first team to get a 3-point lead or some other variation. When it comes to actually getting on the court, the game really shines. If you haven’t played this game before, you will be shocked by the simplicity of pulling off insane tricks. All you have to do is use your Y and X buttons to do tricks, and then modify those tricks using RB and LB. It’s all very smooth and is a lot of fun. The only problem here, though, is depth. The game gets very repetitive, as you might know if you’ve played a game in this series before. There just isn’t enough tricks or dunks to keep you experimenting for very long.
But, on a more positive note, this game looks stunning on the court. Everything animates like you’ve never seen, and the player models look fantastic. The movements you’ll see will really remind you you’re playing on a powerful machine. Things like a player waving to you to jump off his back towards this basket, or watching your player grab his head after you hit your head on the backboard.
The online component also helps this game a lot. The AI is great, but playing against a human is much more satisfying. There aren’t a ton of options, but just know it all works well without much lag.
So, to buy or not to buy, that is the question. I would say this game deserves a definite rental before you buy it. That’s what I’ve been doing, and I know personally I won’t be buying it. It hasn’t changed enough from it’s previous versions to make it worth a purchase to me, but if your new to a rental, I would definitely purchase a used copy of this game.
Positives: + Amazing animations and graphics
+ Sick moves
+ Online play
+ Decent soundtrack
Negatives:
- Lacking depth
- Not a very strong online component
- Sometimes tries too hard with the “Street Feel”
