When it comes to street basketball, there aren’t that many competitors in the field. Midway popped up last year with its take on the pastime – NBA Ballers – but even that was more “bling, bling” than it really had any right to be. So, with NBA Street V3, EA are only really taking themselves on. In the UK market, where basketball isn’t as big a deal as it is Stateside, can the uber-publisher really convince non-fans of the series to pick up this latest iteration’
When you first load up the game, the high-quality seventies styling in the menus and the in-game action itself won’t fail to impress. The whole package oozes graphical coolness from every pore., from the solidity of the player models, to the slow-motion replays of your latest spinning, twisting, dancing dunk, there’s no fault to be found. Indeed, if your view is that graphics maketh the game, then this reviewer has to say that he would maketh the score a ten.
In the real world though, graphics don’t make the game. Gameplay does, and despite the fact that NBA Street V3 contains an all new “Dunk Contest” mode, an expanded “Street Challenge” and other improvements too numerous to mention, something is missing. Maybe its just me hankering after ESPN NBA 2k5 again, or maybe this isn’t the must-play sports game of the year that everyone seems to be making out it is. My main issue is with the catch-up logic. I’m not the greatest virtual baller, but when I’ve been beaten down five matches in a row, and I end up leading the sixth by fourteen points, I don’t expect every steal attempt and every move to block the ball to be denied, alongside every single CPU-thrown shot to tickle the twine. I wouldn’t mind, but it only seems to happen until the AI team draws level, then they go back to having a spineless defence and blinkered offense.
If I’m honest, halfway through my first match in the Street Challenge mode, I was praying for the end. It isn’t that the play was that bad, more that the skills required to participate in the game are minimal. At times, it feels like you can just mash the X button at random to steal the ball, and no matter how long you depress the B button for, your shot still has the same chance of going in. Even if I was getting beaten by twenty points in every match, I would still enjoy myself more if my skill affected the play as much as it should. Once you get used to the control system and learn to accept and live with such limitations, NBA Street V3 becomes a different animal. You’ll still only want to play for a couple of matches at a time – mainly due to the fact that even the shortest sounding match can take twenty minutes or so to complete – but after powering off your console for a while, you’ll pick it up again and play on. This is one of the hallmarks of a great game, and despite the problems mentioned so far, V3 really isn’t a million miles away from joining the hall of fame.
I’ve already mentioned the Dunk Contest mode that rears its head here, but given that its such a major addition, more attention is required. The basic premise is that you and a handful of other ballers get the chance to compete against each other to see who can pull of the most stylish, outrageous, dangerous and downright stupid dunk. Three judges sit to the side of the court, and they’ll mark you out of ten – although ten is not a number you’ll see for a while until you can work out how to play properly. Even the manual doesn’t help, since you can’t learn timing from a book. No, this is a long, hard road, and if you can dunk every time in a normal match, success still isn’t guaranteed. One funky feature of this mode is the prop system. Before your dunk, you can move some stage props in front of the basket to leap on or over. This certainly boosts your score, but when getting a successful dunk to fall is so difficult without the table being in the way, you’ll certainly find that practice is required when it is.
NBA Street V3 is a bit of a strange one to call. Graphical flair is measurable in bucket loads, and the longevity of the title is not in question since multiplayer and Xbox Live modes are included (with both working well). What confuses me is how I can play the game for half an hour, and then be so bored with it that I’m desperate for the match to end, so I can save my progress and do something else. Sometimes, you just can’t explain these things and have to put it down to the fact that the game is missing a certain something – I make no apology for doing that here.
