NBA Street Homecourt (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Sean Garmer on 03.23.2007
Crazy double dunks, gamebreakers, and Street Basketball. What does it all mean? Well let's just say it is a game worth checking out.
Basketball throughout the years has truly become a world game. Now more than ever, European and South American players are drafted into the NBA every year, searching for the next Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash. As evident by last year’s FIBA World Championships in Japan, the United States is no longer the only powerhouse in Basketball. However, those are organized games with great seasoned players on each of those world teams. When it comes to playing on the street’s you see a totally different game. You aren’t given free throws for petty fouls, there are less players, and crazy shots and tricks rule the land. EA Big and EA Canada have finally brought their NBA Street series to the next generation systems. After eclipsing at Volume 2 and then delivering a mixed response with Volume 3. So when this game was announced, the press reception became a mixed bag. Now that we have the end result, does Homecourt live up to the series standards? I would say they have made the best NBA Street game, gameplay wise that is.
Graphics: If there’s one thing you can always say about EA is that they pay attention to detail. Very similar to the approach that EA took with Def Jam: ICON, the players look realistic instead of cartoony, like in previous versions of the game. It does make it a little easier to tell who the ball is being passed to, and it is cool to be able to tell who in fact slammed the ball, but for the most part you won’t have time to worry about facial features. The courts themselves look great and all the backdrops match the courts as well. The game itself has an old look to it, to fit with the mantra of the game that you are playing on NBA player’s old childhood courts. There is one issue with it that I should talk about and it occurs during gamebreakers. When the gamebreaker meter fills up, the screen will change colors as a way to let the player know that one can be activated. Then once you activate it, the screen goes black and white and stays that way throughout the whole thing. It did not bother me, but I have a feeling it could annoy some. Other than the gamebreaker quirk, and the fact that, the lighting used on one or two of the courts are so bright that it makes it hard to see the ball. The graphics are fine. The game even helps out novice players by showing them what buttons to press to perform certain actions. You also have the option of taking them off if you so desire.
Gameplay: This is where the treasure of this game truly lies. EA has taken everything from the past games and either almost perfected it, or overhauled it to make it better.
Firstly, the trick stick is gone and in it’s place is a simpler way to do tricks. You press either X or Y and then a trick can be made more extravagant by using the LB and RB buttons as modifiers for tricks and the crazy dunks. You can still bounce the ball off of your opponents head or the backboard, but the tricks themselves have been dimmed down in favor of giving us amazing dunks. There’s some dunks in here that are a stretch even for the AND 1 guys. Not to mention they have included the ability to use one of your teammates as a launch pad. One of your teammates will randomly hunker down and allow the ball handler to jump off of them. It’s really easy to use too, just press the B button and the player will fly into the air, and you can use the modifiers to make him or her do flips and twists while in the air.
Another thing that makes dunking a flat out joy is the ability to double dunk. This one has a varying degree of difficulty. If you play on Easy or Medium, when going for a dunk, a meter will appear and the longer you hold the B button the more powerful the dunk. If you let off the button at just the right time, the player will dunk the ball, grab it again as he comes down, and put it in again. Playing the game on hard or expert will remove the meter and you have to guess the appropriate amount of time to hold down the button. I like that everything in the game goes up in difficulty level, not just the AI. The double dunks are one of those things that if your friend sees it, they’ll be amazed at the coolness. The worst part is when you lose a game to this delightful piece of innovation. Imagine being up 20 to 19 only to see your opponent dunk the ball twice and beat you. It will bring upright anger into your heart, but that’s the beauty of it, because you can do it to them too. The best part of the game is yet to come, but I’ll give you a hint, it allows you to do a triple dunk.
In case you didn’t guess correctly, I am talking about the gamebreakers. Instead of triggering a cut-scene or the inane way, they had it in Volume 3, where you tried to perform your own gamebreaker in the air, while trying to dunk at the same time. Homecourt takes the FIFA Street 2 approach to gamebreakers, including the way they are triggered as well. If you’ve done enough tricks and combos to gain a gamebreaker. A white circle will appear at center court and you can activate the gamebreaker whenever you please. Once activated, a cut-scene plays, a point is taken away from the opposing team, and then the gamebreaker begins. Then the player remains on the ground, doing tricks and crazy passes to build up the amount of points they wish to gain, that is, if they score before the shot clock runs out. If you run out of time or the opponent takes away possession they now get a chance to perform a gamebreaker of their own, but if they score, you don’t lose any points. Don’t fret though, because if you do lose possession, you can play defense and get the ball back once again. I had one instance where the ball changed sides four times before I finally was able to score on the gamebreaker, and it was so much fun in the process. In my opinion, this is the perfect way to do the gamebreakers. Both teams are given a chance at not only getting gamebreakers but preventing them as well. The key is the fact that only the one that initiates the gamebreaker is the one that causes the other, to lose points. This encourages you to get gamebreakers instead of just waiting for the opponent to get one, and stealing there’s. It really makes the gamebreaker flow smoothly with the rest of the game, and makes them a big deal as they should be, but by the same token they don’t completely dominate the game either. I give EA major props for taking something that worked in another one of their games, and implementing it very well in this game.
I’m sure many are wondering if the game is all about offense, and no it isn’t. In fact, playing defense can be just as much fun. Mainly because fouling (or shoving with the Y button, there are no fouls in this game,) and goaltending are encouraged as part of the game. So as long as the defender doesn’t get behind the backboard if a jump shot goes up, you can pretty much guarantee it is going to be blocked, unless, the defender miss times their jump. Unlike NBA Live and NCAA March Madness this is not a dunk fest. There are ways around the blocking; you can call for picks to be set to knock down other players, do tricks to confuse the defense, or find an alley oop. You can also use the right analog stick to pass the ball but keep control on the player without the ball and “Be the oop” yourself. Using the X button you can steal the ball away from your opponent. I did notice a bit of an unbalance in the stealing; it was way, too easy to steal the ball all around. Also, the only problem I found in the A.I. was that unless you tried to do tricks, they wouldn’t attempt to steal the ball from you.
Something that I noticed that actually exists in NBA Street Homecourt is a sense of rhythm. Your players can get hot and score a few in a row. This has been something I’ve been clamoring for, and it is not present in Live or March Madness. Also there seems to be an attention to releases of certain player types. Players with longer arms such as Joe Johnson or Dirk have a longer release that require you to hold the B button down a little longer to get the best shot. While smaller guards like Steve Nash or Kirk Hinrich have quicker releases that barely require a tap of the button. That’s something else that makes this the best Basketball game EA has.
The main mode of play in NBA Street is the Homecourt Challenge. Very similar to the other career modes in previous NBA Street games. The create process is a little different in making the face. You can use a generic head or use a mixture of two NBA players heads to make the character. It’s kinda weird but it’s not a big deal that you can’t customize much either. After that, you choose the position of the player and their playing style as well. You start out as a nobody on your own Homecourt and pick some no names to play on your team. As you progress you’ll be able to add NBA and WNBA players to the team. Also, your created character will be able to level up and gain new clothes as you go through the different home courts of various NBA players. Eventually, if you level up enough, you will be able to max out any two skills of your choosing, which makes you extremely adept at those skills. For example, I chose to max out stealing and shooting for my character, so he was easily able to steal the ball and made every shot he took from behind the arc and down. There’s an obvious advantage to which skills are maxed and you should assemble the team to accentuate that. The problem is that once you level out your character at level 20 there is not much to do. Sure, there are achievements, but they are all pretty simple to do as well. I’ll talk about the other modes later, but if there is something that hurts this game it's, that it is light on things to do.
Sound: All the sounds on the court are well done as you can hear all the dribbles, clangs, and slams. Also, there is a lot of player chatter that isn’t all trash talk either. To hear the players shout out “That’s off, get that” or “You can’t leave him open” is more refreshing than the annoying DJ Bobbito from NBA Street Vol 3. He was fine in Volume 2 adding just the right flair and crazy verbiage needed for the game. In Volume 3 he was way over-the-top and totally annoying. What do they do in Homecourt? No commentary at all, and that’s works out fine. This is definitely the best soundtrack they’ve had in the NBA Street games too. Going with the retro look, they added old school music from the Jackson 5, Q-Tip, and even Quincy Jones. During gameplay, you hear instrumental versions, which are actually fun to listen to for a little while. Of course, the best thing about the XBOX 360 is the custom soundtracks option. Since this is a game where you don’t need to really listen to anything, I found myself listening to my own music as well. I don’t think I have one complaint about the sound department.
Lasting Appeal: Here’s where the game falters some because it has a severe lack of modes. The Homecourt challenge itself has different ways to play the game. Sometimes you’ll play a regular pick up game to 21, a shots only game, a dunks only game, having to lead by a certain number of points and others. Even those will get rather redundant, but because you are leveling up and making a team there’s a point to playing through that. However, the other modes of play are just variations on the regular pick up game. You can play a game to a certain number of trick points, gamebreakers, or an old school game with nothing spiffy. There is online play and it works rather well, but it has the same modes as offline too. I think even adding an NBA Challenge mode where you must defeat all 30 NBA teams would have added some extra playability to this game, and it’s been done in NBA Street Vol. 2 and was a staple of NBA Jam as well. Aside from the achievements, you can unlock a few courts, but that’s about it. So, unless you want to keep creating players to play with in Homecourt challenge, you may want to find friends or get online quick. There has been talk of adding some online content such as a few different courts, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Fun Factor: This game is so much fun, I found myself playing the Homecourt challenge for hours. Even though, I lost every game, I had fun playing online too. There is four player multiplayer offline as well that makes it a reason to keep this game, but the serious lack of extra modes hurts the game a bit, because I can see most single players leveling up their character and then popping it in to play online every now and then. However, EA has done a lot here to help the franchise and has made this a joy to play.
The 411: I can for sure say this is the best NBA game EA has come out with in 07 series. I don’t know if that’s because NBA Live and NCAA March Madness sucked so much, or it’s because Homecourt is just that good? Either way, this game is tons of fun and online play will help it stay in your system a little longer. I can recommend this to just about anyone looking for a different take on Basketball or looking for a fun game to play with friends. I hope the next game is just as good as this one. The only drawback is the lack of modes, but if you got lots of friends that shouldn’t be a problem.
Graphics
9.0
Players and courts look amazing, the animations are fluid too. Only issue is the retro look and color changes on gamebreakers may annoy some.
Gameplay
9.0
Let's see perfect gamebreaker, double dunks and using teammates as launch pads are just a few things that make this game fun.
Sound
9.5
Sound effects are spot on, Best soundtrack of any NBA Street game and the addition of player chatter instead of commentary helps add to the street feel.
Lasting Appeal
7.5
There's four player multiplayer, online mode, and the vague career mode, that about sums it up. That's not good for a game like this.
Fun Factor
9.0
All the additions make this a joy to play. Career and Online mode are fun enough to last a while, but the lack of extra modes hurt it from having lots of replay.
