NBA Street V3

Since scheduling conflicts made attending E3 a pipedream this year, I've spent the last week dedicating my gaming life to NBA Street V3 on the recently acquired Xbox. I had never played an NBA Street game despite their success in the previous 2 installments, however I was an NFL Street junky when that was released in January of last year so I kind of had the jist of what I was getting myself into.

NBA Street follows basically about the same format as the NFL game I was familiar with, it's an outlandish, arcadey-style representation of the real thing - and its hella fun. The first night I had it was a drunken night while the wife was out of town and the boys were over to get loud and spout shit - this game was a perfect accommodation to that. Being it was 3 on 3 basketball with 3 of us there, it was only natural that we eventually all joined up on the same squad to start taking over as the kings of the court. Only problem was, there's absolutely no game mode for the 3 of us to play other than exhibition games. Despite the limited options in that respect (and being unable to understand why their wouldn't be), we still played this until 4 in the morning with the same intensity as we started out with.

The game has several modes to choose from. For gameplay you can choose to go in an Exhibition game, the Street Challenge or enter yourself in a Slam Dunk Competition. All 3 play out how you'd expect, and for those frustrated by the difficulty of dunking in NBA Live '05 (I sure as hell was), dunking is much easier in Street. You have several ways to start out your dunk by combining various turbo buttons with your passing button, then catching the ball midair while twitching the "trick stick" (right analog stick on Xbox controllers) to do a variety of dunking moves (windmills, behind the back, under the leg, etc.). The challenge mode prompts you to create your own baller which isn't done too poorly (no Tiger Woods detail, but respectable), and you choose 2 teammates to begin your run thru the challenge. As you win games - I do because I play the easiest difficulty - you gain respect, and increased respect gets you into new venues around the states (including 1 in London).

As you roll thru earning respect, you begin playing against NBA baller-led teams and competing in a bevy of events. You'll have the option to choose what type of game you want to play, whether be a game to 21, game to 12 (dunks only), game to 7, game that only involves trick points whether it be to 250k, 500k or 750k, a 4-team tournament or a slam dunk competition. When my respect got up to a certain point, I was invited to play for the Toronto Raptors - so now I compete with my handpicked team and on certain days I'm required to play a league game - just a huge amount of directions to go once inside the challenge. One of the steps necessary to begin the challenge is to create your own home court, and during the season you have the ability to add items to it and differentiate the landscape to whatever suits your interests - just a real enjoyable mode to play.

Needless to say, I already have my team set up the only way I know how - and that's letting the homer in me put it together. I start out as the G (made myself 6'4 - 205), then I have Jimmy Jackson, Michael Redd, Derek Anderson and Rasheed Wallace. Only reason I still have 'Sheed is because I haven't had a game against Kenyon Martin yet to unlock him, and the only reason I have that traitorous bastard Anderson is because I haven't seen LeBron James or a Danny Fortson, Ruben Patterson, Nick Van Exel or any other player from OSU/UC that I could pick up in his place (LeBron was soooo OSU bound). All in all, the key factor here is you get to basically run a team with whomever you want, which is awesome - I alternate between Jackson & Redd, but I don't dare take out 'Sheed because the man blocks at least 7 shots a game.

The gameplay is pretty deep - but I say this because I haven't learned all the combinations/tricks that you can do yet. In the NFL game I could do everything by the time I finished the challenge, however in this game's case there's still a large amount of things I'm yet to do. While reading the instruction booklet or consulting an online faqs may help me to achieve those dilemmas, I'm far from being a sensible-enough person to do so, and there's just no time for reasonable solutions right now - what with the starving pygmies in New Guinea and midgets dieing over in Cambodia in wrestling matches with lions. The basic controls are fairly easy to pick up, and from there you can basically get away with just trying new moves/button combinations as you go along...and be pleased with the results. The great thing is that you're definitely able to elevate your game above other people's, and that's where the ability to take your skills online comes in handy (which I haven't done).

I'll go online when my guy is 99's across the board, you know, that attitude.

The other day when my friend brought over the Xbox I didn't know these games would suddenly dominate my life. Turns out over at Gamespot that Street got a 9.1, Top Spin got a 9.1 and then the mother-of-all games Halo 2 was the third game. I haven't reconnected the PS2 auxiliary cables since ~