NBA Street V3 Reviewed

One game has actually managed to pull me off of my World of Warcraft addiction--that game is NBA Street V3. As you might have guessed from the tone of the full review, Street V3 is an awesome game, one that no fan of basketball should miss out on...

The review's been up barely an hour and I've already received some inquiries from friends about why I picked the PS2 version as the best. As to the former, it comes down to control. The game feels like it was designed for the Dual Shock controller. Having one less turbo button on the Xbox and GameCube versions may not seem like that big of a deal, but once you play the PS2 version and go back to one of the other versions, you'll begin to miss that fourth turbo. Are the other platforms better in graphics and sound? Well, not appreciably. And certainly not to any degree that makes up for having to click down on the left analog stick for the third turbo in the Xbox version. I found that to be rather awkward, and while there's probably no other option to put the third turbo button on the Controller S, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop wishing it had four shoulder buttons like a Dual Shock.

So what's up with Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach on the GameCube version? Well. They're there. As I alluded to in the review, the execution is not as awkward as it could have been, and the artists did a reasonably good job at integrating these rather alien entities into a street basketball game. The bottom line is that if you were looking forward to having these characters in the game, then you're going to be happy with how it all turned out. If you hated the idea from the start, then you're probably not going to like it, although you can more or less pretend the characters aren't there, if you're that adamant about the issue. Are they an overpowered bunch? Yes, their stats are rather generous, but since the characters are so short, it seems like a bit of a hindrance to play them, as you tend to get your shots blocked a lot.

If you have other questions about the game, feel free to ask here -- I'll check this thread for a few days. And if you get the PS2 version, maybe I'll see you online!