I have owned both NBA Street and NBA Street Volume 2, both of which I have played for well over 100 hours and spent so many nights up until 2 or 3 or later playing them. When I saw that V3 was coming out I was so excited I could barely sleep. It definitely lives up to all the hype that I gave it. After I plugged in the game and played it I was a little disappointed at first...because I couldn't figure out what I was doing! The addition of the Trick Stick is hard at first because you have no idea what moves you are doing. After I got a handle on the certain types of moves that each number of turbos would do, I realized how awesome it was, especially since you can unlock harder and cooler looking moves as you play the game and perform tricks. Dunking, along with trick moves, is also improved quite a bit. Instead of having set moves by pressing the corresponding turbo buttons (Dunkalicious, Honey Dip, The Hammer in Volume 2), the difficulty of the dunks increases with the number of turbo buttons you do. For example, when you performed the advance dunk on Volume 2, it would do Nerve Damage every time unless it was a created player with an assigned move such as Flossin' or Krunk Junk. In V3 any one of the four advanced dunks will be selected at random when you hold down all the turbos. I have also noticed that certain players have different preferences to how they dunk. In my game experience (I don't exactly know if they designed it this way, but it seems like it!) Vince Carter does a lot of between the leg dunks and Honey Dips (where he hangs on his elbow as in the dunk contest not too many years back). Amare Stoudemire seems to always do his long extension one-handed tomahawk jams that he always does in real life, which I think is an amazing feature. The actual difficulty of the game is pretty challenging. On Volume 2 I would always play on Mad Game (medium) and find a decent amount of difficulty. On Mad Game on V3 it is a little easier, so I took the step up to Legendary (hard). That is quite a step. The computer seems to always trick counter if a trick is lazily done, and if you go into the lane for a dunk when you aren't clear you will always end up being blocked or smashed to the concrete if you are going up against anyone with a block rating of 75-80+. One dramatic improvement on this game is the 3-point shooting. On Volume 2 you could have a wide open look at a 3-pointer, and miss 70% of the time, even with Peja Stojakovic. To have a decent chance of making a 3 ball you would have to completely fake the defender out with and off the heezay or another move and still only make it about 40% of the time. In this game if you are covered and just putting up 3's like nobody's business, good luck, but it rewards smart passing and taking a nice open shot which the previous version didn't seem to. On the other side of the ball, defense is a lot harder. The AI is dramatically improved on getting around the person you are controlling and taking advantage of the mistakes you make. If you do a trick counter, they won't do a trick and get it stolen like on Volume 2. Instead they will run right by and hammer it through the net, then do a little dance like "you just got owned idiot!" Another great addition is the way that gamebreakers are done. Like most reviews have said so far, getting rid of gamebreaker 2s and replacing them with this is a definite plus. Basically, you can get +2, +3, or +4 depending on the amount of tricks you do, the difficulty of the tricks you do, and the number of players you involve in the gamebreaker. Usually you can involve at least 2 players, if you can get three you are lucky and will 99% of the time get at least a +3. I have only gotten 3 +4's so far, so it is not as easy as it might seem. Make sure that you don't go too crazy. At least half a dozen times in street challenge I have had a gamebreaker on the final point, and I string together a double hook-up 6 trick combo gamebreaker just to get greedy, do one too many moves and get a flubbed dunk and a turnover instead of an insane 1,000,000 busted rim to end the game, so be careful. The dunk contest is similar to dunking in the gamebreakers, and is a lot of fun to play. This adds props, crazy off the knee to the backboard passes to yourself on top of the insane tricks you perform in mid-air. I haven't practiced with it a ton, but I still love it already. The Create a Baller feature has improved TENFOLD and the Street Challenge is amazing! It has to be my favorite part of the game. You can edit EVERYTHING about your baller, even down to how close you want his fat (or skinny, or wide, or thin, or thick, you decide) lips to be to his chin, and if his chin should be pointy, thick, not very big or Jay Leno style. Everything you could imagine is in here. You can even create your own kind of shoes. Creating a court is also a lot of fun. There are many different types of nets, backboards, colors for the court, billboards, logos, court types (college, playground, pro, international), etc. The amount of different possibilities has to be in the millions. I really enjoy the Street Challenge, too. They allow you to do all different types of games (i.e. dunks only, old school scoring, first to 250,000 trick points, first successful gamebreaker wins) and they start out easy (since ur baller sucks at first) but progressively get harder and more challenging at just the right rate. This feature alone makes the game awesome. Graphics were something I was unsure of before I bought the game, because I though V2's were amazing, and didn't know how they could improve on them. The Graphics are amazing! Much more realistic and street-like, and the way the jersey's move in a fluid motion are jaw-dropping. I also love how baggy the shorts are. There is nothing better than seeing the little white guy Steve Nash look like a gangster in his oversize clothes as he is dribbling down the court. Another great thing about graphics is that you don't have to be in "wide" camera view while playing multiplayer (which is another good thing...you can have 3 users on one team instead of a max of two on V2). Bottom line is...this game is GREAT! The only sub-disappointing feature is the sound. I think Volume 2 beats it on this feature alone. The sound effects are really quiet, but if you turn the music down to about 45% and the commentator to 50%, it sounds a lot better (my preference anyways). Sorry if this review is too long to read, but there is a lot to rave about the game. I probably left so much out as it is. I recommend this game 100%, it has to be the best game I own, and I know I will be hooked on it for at least a month. It is my favorite game and I have only had it for two days! Plus I am only on week 6 of street challenge mode. Now get out there and buy it!
This game is filled with new awesome features such as, a court creator, dunk contest, & a street challenge to own the streets. It also has a custom baller mode which has an advantage over the last one, you can actually p... Read Full Review
This game has brought street basketball to a new level. As u start to play the game things are different from the other NBA street basketball volumes. V3 has a move called gamebreaker when u reach this level u can fly in... Read Full Review
