NBA Street V3 is a remarkably well-done basketball game that might please almost any basketball fan.
User Rating: 8.5 | NBA Street V3 XBOX
The NBA Street series started back in 2001, and it pretty much followed in the footsteps of an earlier arcade basketball game called NBA Jam. Well, around a decade later, EA Sports BIG decided to create their own arcade style basketball game that had the essentials of NBA Jam, plus some new things to make it more lively instead of something outdated. So far, EA Sports BIG has accomplished that role, and now the third installment of their popular arcade basketball game, NBA Street V3 has arrived. Does it prove worthy enough to hang around in the arcade basketball scene for a little while longer? NBA Street V3 obviously isn't a regular basketball game like NBA Live where there are lots of rules like an ordinary basketball game would have. NBA Street V3 is basketball...taken to the streets, hence the title name. It's one of the top urbanized sports out there. NBA Street V3 uses the same engine as the other NBA Street games, so people who played one or both of the earlier NBA Street game shouldn't really have a problem setting in with NBA Street V3, but with the list of tricks and dunks to pull off, you still might need a little practice learning those moves, too so you can really get the best out of NBA Street V3. By now, you should pretty much know the formula for street-style video games, which isn't hard to learn if you haven't played any street-style games, and that's one way of explaining NBA Street V3. It's a quite simple and pick-up-and-play type game, but you really need to know how to do some of the tricks in-game if you really want to succeed with NBA Street V3. Shooting the ball, stealing, and blocking are all basic commands of NBA Street V3, but learning how to dunk using all those nice looking moves you've seen will take a bit of practice pulling off, which is explained again in the above paragraph. The biggest note of NBA Street V3, is that it now supports XBOX Live for online play. EA Sports BIG finally implanted the feature to NBA Street V3, so they can enjoy the online goodness of NBA Street V3. Not only can you play a regular exhibition match with just another player in cyberspace, but you can also play in other great modes like a Dunk Contest, or other modes that puts the leaderboards on XBOX Live to use. But a real disappointment with NBA Street V3 on Live is that you can only play against one person. You can still play 3 on 3 in an exhibition match, but playing against only one player (which means one player takes control of a team of 3, and the other player takes control of the other team of 3) is a real disappointment. I felt like playing against 5 other humans in a 3 on 3 match, which really could of been so much fun. NBA Street V3 isn't NBA Street without dunks and moves. As I stated earlier, being able to pull off tricks might take some time to learn, and with the limitation of the controller buttons, most of these tricks might be pulled off randomly or with just a bit of luck. There's a reason to learn all these tough and cool-looking tricks, because you'll be filling up your "Gamebreaker" in the process to pull off those insane moves to the max. The Trick Stick works in a fairly simple fashion; each direction on the stick performs a different move, which is illustrated on the screen with text and the direction that was pressed to perform the trick. Up to 32 moves can be performed by pressing the stick by itself, or in conjunction with the left and right triggers. The triggers plus the stick give four possible ways of pulling off tricks (no triggers, both triggers, left trigger, or right trigger), with eight tricks mapped to the stick for each. This gives a total of 32 trick moves at your fingertips which can be pulled off when you want to pull them off. Tricks have also been broken down into "chapters", and you have to unlock all the chapters to get and use all the tricks. Chapter 1 is already unlocked, and you have to proceed with the game to unlock Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and so forth. Each chapter has it's own unique set of moves ready to be unlock, so expect to be playing through these chapters for a while. The chapters allow for 96 possible tricks in all, but only 32 can be activated at one time. Once every trick is unlocked, gamers can choose the tricks they want by activating them in the trick book menu. The default tricks of every NBA player in the game can be modified once additional chapters are unlocked. Back again from previous NBA Street games is the return of the famous Gamebreaker. As people may have known, pulling off sick moves and tricks build up your Gamebreaker, and once it has reached it's limits, you can pull off insane tricks and other neat things. This time around, there's a little change to the way the Gamebreaker builds up. Now, you can actually increase the level of the Gamebreaker through your own interaction. Using the Trick Stick and trigger modifiers, gamers can pull off additional moves which are a part of the Gamebreaker cut-scene in order to rack up additional points. Instead of just increasing your point total by one point as in NBA Street Volume 2, you can actually increase your points up to four, for a total of a five point swing (your opponent automatically gets deducted one point for a Gamebreaker used against them). The only thing that may be considered a downside to some gamers is that the Double Gamebreaker from last year’s game no longer exists. One new big feature to NBA Street V3 is a Dunk Contest feature, which is also available to play on XBOX Live. With the Dunk Contest, you can pull off just one trick, or even a series of tricks while in the air, and then slam dunk it at the end. NBA Street V3’s contest features trick slots which will fill every time a move is performed. A freeball toss will fill up one of these slots as well, which basically tells how complex the trick is going to be. If most of your trick slots are filled and you finish the dunk, you can expect a pretty high score from the judges. It's a well-done feature that slam dunk fanatics should definitely try out. One of the better modes in NBA Street V3 is a "Create Baller" mode. It allows you to create your own basketball player, and this is really one of the better modes in NBA Street V3. You can just about customize everything on your baller, from the face, down to the feet. Although it's fun experimenting with these elements, it might take a while to actually create the "perfect" baller, since there's so much to choose from. It's up to you whether you consider that a good thing or a bad thing. Other create a modes like create a court and such are good features, but creating the courts is quite a tedious effort and you won't be satisfied with the court if you just slapped it all together in around 5 or 10 minutes. Graphically, NBA Street V3 looks great. The player models look realistic as they can be...definitely the best looking player models from the whole series. The courts look shiny and realistic as well, and almost look like their real life counterparts. The animated crowds on the sides of the court look well-done, and truly adds a realistic feel to the court, and just doesn't feel like a dull court with no one watching the game. Sound-wise, NBA Street V3 does a good job. The sound is pretty crisp and clear, but I had a bit of "muffled" sound encounters, especially with the music. Such things like the glass breaking on the court sounded well-done, and the dribbling of the ball sounded quite realistic. But the real problem like I stated earlier was the audio, more specifically the tracks and music. Sure, most of them are old-school rap songs and hip-hop, but I kind of wasn't pleased with the tracks altogether. The sound effects are the really only big plus sound-wise, because they sounded almost as realistic as it can get. NBA Street V3 offers plenty of modes, and with the ability to play online with XBOX Live is a big treat. Some modes do get a little repetitive, and the only big worthy mode is the Dunk Contest. It's easily one of the best modes for NBA Street V3, and probably one of the best Dunk Contest modes out there, period. In conclusion, NBA Street V3 is easily the best game in the series. Things like the special tricks and moves really make it so it's just not a one on one boring and tedious match. The Dunk Contest is a big, big feature that offers a lot, even to the casual arcade sports gamer. As stated, the tricks in NBA Street V3 will be hard to learn and pull off, which will require a bit more effort. XBOX Live is also enabled with NBA Street V3, but I was really disappointed with the ability to only play against one human, and not being able to play against more. NBA Street V3 is still pretty fun to play online, especially with the Dunk Contest mode. NBA Street V3 looks good graphically, as the player models look pretty realistic. I did have a few problems with the sound/audio, more specifically with the tracks and music, and the one man commentating is pretty weak. But, even at that, NBA Street V3 is still a remarkably well-done basketball game, and whoever is a fan of arcade basketball or a fan of basketball itself might want to pick this one up.
