NBA Street V3 is the third installment in the NBA Street series, and this game lives up to the NBA Street title. It's been about two years since we've seen an NBA Street game, and this game is much different than the others. In some ways it is much better than the past NBA street games, but in other ways it is much worse. Well first off this games gameplay is very good, all the player movement is very smooth, the controls are very nice (the controls on the ps2 button are the best because of the 4 turbo buttons it has), and the gameplay is just plain fun. The tricks look very nice, and are very smooth. One new thing to the NBA Street series is the trick stick. The trick stick is nothing more than just using the square button more easily. It has the same use as the square button in the past, except now with the trick stick you are able to do many more tricks. You have to point the trick stick in the direction in which on want to preform a trick, you also have to use the turbo buttons to perform other tricks. The tricks are not hard to do at all, and look very good as I mentioned before. I think the trick stick is a great feature for a few reasons: 1. It allows the game to have more tricks 2. It allows smoother gameplay 3. It's much easier to use than the square button This game also has a new gamebreaker system. It's the same as before in terms of you have to do tricks and fancy stuff in order to fill your bar. But once you fill your bar it is all new. Once your gamebreaker is full, you can do one of two things. You can press atleast two turbo buttons and the O button: 1. Behinde the three point line and go for +2 points for you team and -1 points for them, but this can be easily blocked and not smart to do at all 2. Inside the three point line and start a huge dunk, depending on how well you do in the dunk you will get a certain amount of points for your team. You will have to do tricks in the air and pass to teammates to get a lot of points. You can get anywhere from +2, -1 to +4, -1. And a whole lot of trick points, but if you try too hard you can miss the dunk all together and get nothing. The graphics in this game are very impressive, but at the same time seem not so great. The player models look great, the animations in the background look very good, and the courts look amazing. Sometimes when you are playing the game games though it can be kind of hard to see stuff if you go into the middle of a crowd and the people tend to crowd up. It also looks pretty jagged sometimes and looks like they tried to make the games look too clean. The courts design is great, all the courts are accuratly designed and look just plain very nice. They also have shadows of stuff off the court on the court, that adds a nice touch. The sound in this game is okay. The same annoucer is back from the last NBA Street game and even more annoying and repeative this time. I don't see what is EA deal with these DJs, but whatever. The music in this game is alright, although it has very few tracks and they just play over and over again. They are good for the basketball enviroment though. The crowds sound very good in this game, but nothing special. They seem to be on the ball of getting loud when something good happens, but there isn't all that much sound from them. The value of this game is pretty up and down, it has one solid gameplay mode, other than that is has nothing else, unless you like to play online. This game feature a hella lot of custimization, and it is all great too. The main gameplay mode in NBA Street V3, is a mode called street challenge mode. You have 70 days to get ready for this huge tournament at the end. This mode features about 20 hours of gameplay if you play all the events and stuff. This mode is pretty pointless however. I mean you could beat it in like less than 10 hours if you wanted. Most the point of this mode is just for you to have a point of playing that game. You will build your CAB's rep, skills, and team up from nothing in this mode. In this mode you get most of your SP points which are used for all custimzation. However once the 70 days are over they give you like 60,000 sp so all of that sp getting is pretty pointless. The most thing to brag about is getting your rep high. I didn't care much for the modes pointlessness, however it is very fun. You can choose what type of game you want to play, what court, and basically anything you want to do. This game gives a lot of freedom. You will have rival challenges, this is basically when you gain rivals as you go along they will challenge you to games in which you have to accept or you will lose rep. There is also an underground street league in this mode, which is pretty good. Basically a team will want your CAB to join their team and you have to go through a a few games on there team and try to make the playoffs and then win the whole Street League in the playoffs. None of this is require to do though, which brings back the pointlessness. A large part of this games value comes from the tons of custimzation you can do. You can do the following: One of the custimzations allows you to make your own court. This is really good, and fun to make your own court. I made about 3 courts, they have many ways you can personalize it. You can make it look like a junk heap or a top level street basketball court. It does cost SP points but not many, this is a great feature. Another is the trick book, this is another great feature where you can choose what type of tricks you want to have. This way you can only use the tricks you really want, not the ones the game forces on you. What I like most about the trick book is the very large amount of tricks to choose from. You have to unlock the tricks by do other tricks and scoring though. Another custimization is the create a shoe, this one is pretty good. However it doesn't have very many shoes to choose from, and most the shoes look very ugly. You don't get to do much, just choose the colors for the shoes. It is pretty fun to do and gives you, a unique look for yourself. They have the V3 store in which you can buy lots of stuff for you character and make him have his own unique look. The store seems to be lacking items though. You can also custimize your players apperance here too. They don't have much depth to the creater appearence, but it is quite good. Another custimization is you can create a new team, this is the only way you can get your CAB in pick up games so this is pretty good. When you create a team you can put anyone from the NBA or who you have unlocked on a team with 5 slots. You can build your ultimate dream team this way. You can only use these teams in pick up games though. Lastly they have a place where you can edit your players stats. I feel this is kind of lacking in the amount of skills they have to edit. I mean they have a lot of skills and stuff, but they kind of combined a lot of stuff and could of had a lot more different skills. The gaining level process is quite good though. You just use your sp you earned from games to raise your players stats, at a good pace. All and all, NBA Street V3 is a pretty good game, but is lacking game modes, and quite a few other things. If they had put more into this game it could easily be 9.0 +, but it seems to be missing too much stuff and isn't all there. That doesn't mean it's not a great game though, it is very fun to play. I would reccomend this game to any sports fans, and most other people.
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
