NBA Street V3
Why can't all basketball games be this good?
Published: February 21, 2005
When it comes to EA's BIG spin-off for xtreeeeeeeem sports games, two titles seem to consistently carry the brand: SSX and NBA Street. Sure, EA has tried to heap on a couple of other efforts, but where games like NFL Street or Sled Storm or Shox have tried to capture the quality and universal appeal of the brand's stars, they ultimately fall flat.
For all intents and purposes, the first two titles I mentioned are all you really need to keep on your radar. With each iteration, they get better, flashier and further distill the essence of what makes these series' great. In the case of NBA Street V3, it's pure arcade basketball, and it borders on interactive art.
Developer EA Canada stripped down the control scheme to make the until-now unstoppable Gamebreaker moves fully interactive, moved the tricks to the right analog stick and gave the whole mess an improved graphical look that is, quite simply, one of the most stylized and best looking sports games on the market.
They also bulked up the single-player modes, adding a slam dunk contest that looks deceptively simple (just approach the hoop and take off with a turbo(s) and the circle button, then use any combination of the eight main directions on the right analog stick and the shoulder buttons to create a dunk), but gets rather deep (you can add in props, toss the ball off of the backboard or kick/throw/flip the ball to yourself on the way to the rim), and thickened things up with a more expansive "career" option that borrows elements from NFL Street 2.
While a simple pick-up game will get you onto the court, the Street Challenge mode is where most of the game lies. After whipping up your own character (complete with piddly stats), you'll assemble a team of random ballers (all with better stats than you -- at first), whip up your home court, pick a logo and then take to beating the pants off of anyone that dares play you.
For the most part, you're limited to three or four venues to play on until you build your rep with wins and all have conditions (no Gamebreakers, dunks only, first to 750,000 trick points, etc.). After some matches, you'll get the opportunity to enter a tournament or dunk contest or direct challenges from other ballers and more venues open up to keep things fresh.
Winning matches -- especially with high trick points or use of multiple gamebreakers -- nets you points, which you can then use to boost player stats, customize your home court, buy gear or design your own, and generally just blow a whole lot of them thar earned reward points on new stuff.
Aside from the slam dunk contest and the revamped trick system (now any one of the eight major directions on the right analog stick and any combo of one, two, three or all four of the trick buttons results in a different trick), which you can customize (of course) with points earned from matches to help round out your trick book and add a particular cohesive style to your moves, the gameplay is more or less identical to the first two games. Unlike, say, the NFL Street games, though, the underlying gameplay here is instantly accessible, and works far, far better for non-sports gamers.
Visually, the game has gotten the same sort of heavily stylized lighting overhaul that most of EA's games have received over the past couple months. The character models look and move as well as they ever have, and framerate, texture detail and variety are all slathered in quality, but the real improvement here is just in the way things are lit. Whether it's white-hot shafts of sunlight pouring in from the eaves of a covered outdoor court or the almost blinding floodlights that pour down over a court at night, everything is drenched in very obvious super-saturated hues. Pulling down a Gamebreaker throws the whole color scheme into a slightly tinted visual overdrive, and helps further illustrate that you're in Gamebreaker mode, a handy clue if you've turned off the music.
Depending on your tastes (or, perhaps not), you'll probably end up turning off the music anyway, because some of the work the audio team did on the transitions is absolutely fantastic, usually scratching or using some form of turntablism chicanery to transition from one song to the next. Unfortunately, there aren't too many tunes, and few of them will have much universal appeal (even with The Beastie Boys donating a track and their likenesses to the game), so after a few hours, most of the songs tend to grate.
That goes double for the announcer, who rattles off an handful of random comments on the gameplay, none of which are especially consistent and feel more like a series of canned statements that generally match up with what just happened (i.e. dunks, steals, loose balls, etc.), but don't really reflect what's going on screen.
There is a bright side to turning off the music and commentary, though, as the DTS separation is fantastic, and cries of the crowd like "you can do it, baby!" from over-eager bleacher moms or random sideline comments really do add to the sense of emmersion -- especially when one of them comes blaring from the back channels as you're trying to pull off a massive combo string.
In the end, V3 doesn't really do much more than the first two games did. The expanded, deeper career system rewards gamers with a nice, steady progression of skill upgrades and new customization features, and the difficulty notches up steadily to ease players into their roundball addiction.
And make no mistake, this is definitely a game that can quickly have you addicted; it's clean, fast, plays incredibly well, and uses the right analog stick in an intuitive yet flexible way. Everything that the past games did well, this game does better, and with more depth to boot. If you even watched someone play one of the first two games and thought "hey, that might be kinda fun," well, it is, and you need to get out there and buy this game.
For all intents and purposes, the first two titles I mentioned are all you really need to keep on your radar. With each iteration, they get better, flashier and further distill the essence of what makes these series' great. In the case of NBA Street V3, it's pure arcade basketball, and it borders on interactive art.
Developer EA Canada stripped down the control scheme to make the until-now unstoppable Gamebreaker moves fully interactive, moved the tricks to the right analog stick and gave the whole mess an improved graphical look that is, quite simply, one of the most stylized and best looking sports games on the market.
They also bulked up the single-player modes, adding a slam dunk contest that looks deceptively simple (just approach the hoop and take off with a turbo(s) and the circle button, then use any combination of the eight main directions on the right analog stick and the shoulder buttons to create a dunk), but gets rather deep (you can add in props, toss the ball off of the backboard or kick/throw/flip the ball to yourself on the way to the rim), and thickened things up with a more expansive "career" option that borrows elements from NFL Street 2.
While a simple pick-up game will get you onto the court, the Street Challenge mode is where most of the game lies. After whipping up your own character (complete with piddly stats), you'll assemble a team of random ballers (all with better stats than you -- at first), whip up your home court, pick a logo and then take to beating the pants off of anyone that dares play you.
For the most part, you're limited to three or four venues to play on until you build your rep with wins and all have conditions (no Gamebreakers, dunks only, first to 750,000 trick points, etc.). After some matches, you'll get the opportunity to enter a tournament or dunk contest or direct challenges from other ballers and more venues open up to keep things fresh.
Winning matches -- especially with high trick points or use of multiple gamebreakers -- nets you points, which you can then use to boost player stats, customize your home court, buy gear or design your own, and generally just blow a whole lot of them thar earned reward points on new stuff.
Aside from the slam dunk contest and the revamped trick system (now any one of the eight major directions on the right analog stick and any combo of one, two, three or all four of the trick buttons results in a different trick), which you can customize (of course) with points earned from matches to help round out your trick book and add a particular cohesive style to your moves, the gameplay is more or less identical to the first two games. Unlike, say, the NFL Street games, though, the underlying gameplay here is instantly accessible, and works far, far better for non-sports gamers.
Visually, the game has gotten the same sort of heavily stylized lighting overhaul that most of EA's games have received over the past couple months. The character models look and move as well as they ever have, and framerate, texture detail and variety are all slathered in quality, but the real improvement here is just in the way things are lit. Whether it's white-hot shafts of sunlight pouring in from the eaves of a covered outdoor court or the almost blinding floodlights that pour down over a court at night, everything is drenched in very obvious super-saturated hues. Pulling down a Gamebreaker throws the whole color scheme into a slightly tinted visual overdrive, and helps further illustrate that you're in Gamebreaker mode, a handy clue if you've turned off the music.
Depending on your tastes (or, perhaps not), you'll probably end up turning off the music anyway, because some of the work the audio team did on the transitions is absolutely fantastic, usually scratching or using some form of turntablism chicanery to transition from one song to the next. Unfortunately, there aren't too many tunes, and few of them will have much universal appeal (even with The Beastie Boys donating a track and their likenesses to the game), so after a few hours, most of the songs tend to grate.
That goes double for the announcer, who rattles off an handful of random comments on the gameplay, none of which are especially consistent and feel more like a series of canned statements that generally match up with what just happened (i.e. dunks, steals, loose balls, etc.), but don't really reflect what's going on screen.
There is a bright side to turning off the music and commentary, though, as the DTS separation is fantastic, and cries of the crowd like "you can do it, baby!" from over-eager bleacher moms or random sideline comments really do add to the sense of emmersion -- especially when one of them comes blaring from the back channels as you're trying to pull off a massive combo string.
In the end, V3 doesn't really do much more than the first two games did. The expanded, deeper career system rewards gamers with a nice, steady progression of skill upgrades and new customization features, and the difficulty notches up steadily to ease players into their roundball addiction.
And make no mistake, this is definitely a game that can quickly have you addicted; it's clean, fast, plays incredibly well, and uses the right analog stick in an intuitive yet flexible way. Everything that the past games did well, this game does better, and with more depth to boot. If you even watched someone play one of the first two games and thought "hey, that might be kinda fun," well, it is, and you need to get out there and buy this game.
