With the original NBA Street, EA Big revitalized arcade sports, a genre that had nearly faded into obscurity. NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, while popular in the early nineties, had been rehashed to the point where both of the top selling series had become niche titles, lounging far below popular sports sims on the sales charts. The NBA Street franchise, now entering its third iteration, must remain fresh lest it join the ranks of the arcade sports also-rans. Can the series make enough improvements besides the customary roster updates to warrant a purchase, or has EA Big regressed to the days of the Tournament Edition?

Gameplay:

Like the previous two games in the series, the bulk of the gameplay in NBA Street V3 is 3-on-3 street basketball contests. In the majority of the games, you can garner trick points and build up your Gamebreaker meter by performing eye-catching dunks, blocks, steals, and yes, tricks (damn this outdated thesaurus!). When the meter is full, you can pull off a Gamebreaker, a shot that adds bonus points you your score, while deducting from the opponent. In the two older Street titles, you were better off keeping outside of the three-point line- you’d gain more points and the opponent would occasionally drop more, too. Also, NBA Street 2 made use of an “unbreakable” Gamebreaker (attainable by “pocketing” your previous Gamebreaker) that was basically a short video of you making an incredible shot that was guaranteed to land. In Street V3, the best option is to take it to the hole. When you initiate one in reasonable proximity to the net, you take flight, with a meter tracking how many points you stand to gain (the opponent always loses one). Do nothing, and you get two points. You can, however, continue to do tricks in mid-air, even dishing the ball off to teammates going sky-high. Do enough tricks, and you’ll get four points for your dunk. Get too zealous, though, and you’ll fudge the Gamebreaker and get nothing. While the aspect of pocketing and neutralizing pocketed Gamebreakers added a welcome level of strategy, this new way of attempting the shot of shots has to be the best implementation of the concept yet, as it further emphasizes the extraordinary arcade action.

Aiding in the procurement of these Gamebreakers is another new addition, the trick stick. While you can still use the x button in conjunction with the left analog stick and the turbo buttons, moving the right analog stick in different directions allow you to pull of the same great moves without changing direction. If there’s any problem with the trick stick, it’s that weaning the player off of using face buttons for trick moves also leads to a much lower incidence of doing trick passes and “off the opponent” moves.

While the gameplay has taken great strides forward, the mode selection has become a bit thinner in NBA Street V3. You still have the Street Challenge mode, where you take a created player and try to make a B-Ball legend out of him (this was called “Be a Legend” mode in Street 2). The mode has a bit more meat to it, as you slowly but surely open up new venues, tournaments, and opponents. Once again, you have the option of stealing one of the opposing team’s players if you win. This time, however, you must spend your street points (used primarily to upgrade your created character’s stats, though you can also unlock items with it too) to purchase a player. The better they are, the more they cost. It’s a nice conflict of interest when you pit picking up a pro against boosting your meager game. Even staying away from higher priced talent will run you into another of the game’s problems- the slow progress of your created character’s progress. You’ll run into decent players and even some pros early on in the game whose stats dwarf yours. So unless you forgo other categories to become a one-trick pony, the created character will be the weak link on the team throughout the majority of the Street Challenge mode.

The biggest loss from Street 2 has to be the lack of a co-op mode. While Be a Legend mode was also single player only, it did have the NBA Challenge mode, where you could play though the entire league (alone or with another player), team by team, playing the legends in each division after you’ve bested all the current day teams. Now, you’re basically relegated to having exhibition games with your friends, or playing the other new mode, Dunk Contest. While Dunk Contest is fun, it’s really doesn’t expand much on the Gamebreaker dunks you’ll pull off time after time in other modes. Sure, you can add little things like props to jump over or passes to yourself, but in the end, the Dunk Contest is more novelty extra than fully-fleshed out gameplay mode.

So, while the overall gameplay in NBA Street V3 has been improved, leading to a more enjoyable single player experience, there’s very little co-op fun to be had.