Since my penchant for all things basketball (which means, of course, excluding the WNBA) has been openly declared here multiples times already, I think can skip all personal anecdotes, and just say that I'm enjoying the basketball game scene right now. Visual Concepts is putting out an incredible product every year, and since the guys at EA are being blown out of the water on the simulation front (and since the NBA told EA to "get that weak exclusionary contract outta my house"!) they're now having to settle for trying stay atop the throne as King of the street market, and fend off Midway's NBA Ballers for the title of best "street" basketball game on the market.
New Game, Different Curse Victim
Who is the unfortunate soul on the cover of the game this year? Baron Davis. Poor Baron's probably going to end up missing just about half the games this season. Disgruntled, grumpy, injured, and then dissed by his coach, he was dealt at the trading deadline, leaving the worst team in the Western Conference to the greener pastures of...the second worst team in the Western Conference at the time.
Mechanics
The game has made some minor changes this year, besides just the target of their cursed cursing. Not only do you get to create your baller this year, you have to create a custom home court, and if you so desire, you can customize your shoes, too. Also, not all the games are straight to 21 by 2s and 3s this year. You can play at a number of different venues that progressively get unlocked as you build up your rep, but you have to abide by their arbitrary rules for the day. Sometimes every shot is 1 point, or the Parks Department declares no Gamebreakers and Trick Points, only dunks up to 7, NBA scoring, etc, etc.
The method of control has also changed. Now you use the right analog stick to help give you a larger arsenal of tricks. You are freed from the bonds of the 15 trick combinations the shoulder buttons allowed you to use, and now are able to slap the right analog stick in 8 different directions to modify the dribble moves. If you are one of the NBA Street purists from Volumes 1 and 2, you are able to select the old trick input system if you so desire.
Gamebreakers are now more over the top than ever. Your player will take off in the air like he's wearing anti-grav boots, and has about 3 seconds to use the right stick to perform moves midair. If you have a teammate in the area, he'll launch into the air as your first player is about to land. You can lob the ball to him to have him continue the aerial shenanigans. Instead of the previous games where you had the potential for a 4 point swing, if you execute enough tricks in the air in Vol. 3, a 5 point swing (-1 to their score, +4 to yours) is now possible.
Aside from that, and the cheesy dunk contest challenges that pop up the rest of the game is pretty much the same as is has been for the past 2 versions, so it shouldn't be all that difficult for newcomers to pick up.
Gameplay
The gameplay is surprisingly lackluster. You'd figure that after having pretty solid for two versions, EA would know how to put this game together right. But it's not there. Things that I used to think were little quirks in NBA Street 1-2 have now mutated into endemic plagues that eat at the core of the gameplay.
The core gameplay itself just feels bland. You have to play a TON of games in the season before you've developed your character to the point where you're comfortable with them shooting or defending; by the time you actually get to that point you're ready to call it a game.
One of the main reasons for this is the way "Earning your Rep" is set up. One of the two changes EA made for this year were the different challenges that would present themselves to you as you tried to rise through the ranks. I guess this was in response to Midway's NBA Ballers, but this gets tiresome after a while, as you either end up just looking for the "First Gamebreaker Wins" or "First to 250,000 Trick Points Wins" challenges because they're the shortest games. I liked just winning a couple games to take the court method that they had in the past...this new way just makes development and progression a real drag. As a result, you get tired of playing Street 3 way before you've beaten it. I'm struggling trying to stay interested long enough to get to the end of the Street Challenge mode, whereas Vol. 2 I beat, and still enjoyed playing with my friends afterwards.
Graphics
The courts look nice. You're able to do a pretty decent level of customization to your court after you get the skills points to do so, but once it's done, it's really good looking. The daytime and nighttime effects are a nice touch, too. The players on the other hand, are too small to see any detail, except for when they get the replay treatment. You get no real detail at all on any of the people, and the only real way to tell who is who, is by what clothes they have on, and what size they are.
Audio
Bobbito Garcia, a.k.a. DJ Cucumber Slice is back, and he still gets tiresome after Game 2. That's not because he runs out of things to say, it's just because he's bad. Although, I don't honestly know what "good" announcing in a video game would sound like since pretty much all of it is crap, especially the NBA Live stuff. To give Bobbito a little credit, the "over the top" announcing gets old and repetitive in real life anyway (if the guy from the And 1 Mixtape tour is any indicator). Turning off Bobbito is a problem, though. The EA wisenheimers got it in their heads that there was no way that someone wouldn't want to hear DJ Cucumber Slice, unless you were one of those people that liked playing the game with all the voices off. So, no Cucumber, no lyrics to the songs. What a bunch of morons.
It's not like there's all that much listenable anyway. There's a really weak remix of De La Soul's "Me, Myself and I" included...why didn't they just go with "The Magic Number"?! The lyrics are perfect for remixing into a basketball tune..."3...that's the magic number." it's off the SAME album, 3 Feet High and Rising! The Beastie Boys have a really boring track about the New York boroughs, and Shells' track- he apologizes for keeping you waiting; he was lost in the world. Everything is "eh" or worse.
Speaking of the music, half of House of Pain's "Jump Around (Pete Rock Remix)" is muted. The second verse should be 12 lines, but it's cut to 8. The third verse is chopped up even worse, as they don't even try and keep the flow going by cutting the words anymore, they just leave long gaps of silence as they delete entire lines of the song again, and censor "Sega", but not "Dawn of the Dead".
This isn't just true for House of Pain, though. The only track I really dig on the Street, Vol. 3 soundtrack is a track called, "Ladies and Gentlemen" by Shells, and just when you start getting into it...it's like, wait, where'd the lyrics go?! If I was Shells, I'd be screaming bloody murder at someone. Especially since I can't find any information on him except that he got broken down in a battle contest in Puerto Rico by Jin and how he got chumped on HBO by some kid named Eyedea. (I actually remember seeing that one.) This is supposed to be his big shot at selling some records, and they don't provide any info on him then cut his song up all whack so nobody cares about it. Brilliant.
More importantly, this brings up an important question. Why, as an artist, would you EVER want to give any music over to EA for a game? At this point, if you choose to, you are unequivocally, unquestionably, 100% SELLING OUT. Not just because of the EA Spouse and the overtime stuff...but why are letting someone pay to license your music and letting them take away your message and rework your art? They only want you for your urban feel, you're just a name to them. They grab you, your beats and your music for the rep only...why are you letting them play you like a chump? Tell them to shove their crappy restrictions or pick a song that they don't feel the need to censor. I don't want to sound overly PC, but this is almost racism. Street basketball has a demographic that is overwhelmingly comprised of minorities/African-Americans. Rap is the same way. So they bring in rap to make the street ball experience more legit, but then go and clean it up...but for who? I mean, didn't the public vilify Pat Boone for doing the same thing? Maybe racism is taking it a bit too far, but at the very least, it's completely bastardizing the artist's work. If you're an artist being asked about giving up a song for EA TraxTM you may want to think long and hard on what that choice says about you.
Gripes
I'd like to make one thing bold, underscored and embossed. I should NOT have to be dealing with the amount of defects in this finished product. People keep talking about how game prices need to go up. You need to put more pride into your freaking work before I give you a red cent more! It is quickly becoming apparent that rushed, crappy products are one of the Hallmarks of EA Quality. "If you clip through the backboard, that's just being extreme EA BigTM Style! Be sure to Challenge Everything."
What's up with the effing shot clock? In a real game, you have 24 seconds to shoot. In NBA Street V. 3 you have an unknown number of seconds to be in the act of shooting. Mid-air on a dunk? Still counts...sometimes. Alley-oop? Still counts...sometimes. Then, sometimes blocking a shot means that the shot clock resets. Other times it doesn't. I've even had the ball hit the rim on an off-the-board dunk attempt, and the shot clock didn't reset! Another time the ball was still in mid-air and I got a shot clock violation called! It's completely freaking inconsistent, and that is absolutely unacceptable.
Passing is a complete mess. I have to throw the ball around 4 or 5 times just to get it to the guy closest to me...and this is a game of 3 on 3! Dunking is also botched. I'll be holding down Turbo and get a layup out of a player on a while they've run out on a fast break, and the very next time down the court have them put the ball behind their back and windmill it home. There's also the fun of having a player with a 90 in Dunks slam two simple breakaway dunks off the back of the rim in the same game. Then there's the glitch where EA Big lets a player got from 0-60 in .1 seconds. Someone will be at the corner of the arc standing still, get a pass, and BAM! Instantly jumps from the 3 point line for the dunk, standing broad jump-style. I've personally had it happen while controlling Latrell Sprewell, and I wasn't even using any Turbo! What the hell, guys?! Then you have people dunking through the board, or jumping from the free throw line, slamming the ball against the overhanging side of the board, then changing direction in midair and dunking the ball. Game over. I'm guessing an EA designed "Hello World" wouldn't compile with under 10 errors. I find myself cursing at the level of shoddy work in the game...not when I'm losing...just because I can't believe someone let this crap ship out to the public, and then charged them $50 for it!
EA Big still doesn't know crap about basketball legends, either. A lot of the stills they put up showing old players and their respective handles either have them wrong, or not at all. They don't know Walt Frazier's nicknake is "Clyde", and that Dominique Wilkins is "The Human Highlight Film", or that "Pistol Pete" Maravich's best seasons were with the New Orleans/Utah Jazz and NOT the Atlanta Hawks. They also apparently don't know what the older players look like, because I couldn't recognize Isaiah Thomas OR Magic Johnson, and I grew up watching these guys duke it out every year. Kobe looks like someone gave him Sam Cassell's facial structure, and some of the players aren't even treated THAT kindly...like poor Yao Ming. (Whose nickname is NOT "The Dynasty".)
Overall
It seems like every EA Big sequel nowadays is just the previous version of the game with more ads, different licensed music/MCs, and a new "skin" slapped onto the game. This is getting really, really, really OLD.
NBA Street, Vol. 3 has done what I thought to be impossible. It has taken something as entertaining and dynamic as street basketball, and made it BORING. By not fixing any of the problems and by just "going bigger" while not innovating one iota, it's taken everything good about street ball and watered it down to the point that it has become a by-the-numbers yawnfest.
The only reason I stuck with this game as long as I did, was that my roommate got TiVo. I looked through the programs it had recorded for him one day after we gave NBA Basketball positive marks, and I saw episodes of Streetball that were playing on ESPN 2 at 3am. They were showing the 3rd season of the And 1 Mixtape Tour. At the beginning the guys were talking about how they worked in the off-season to come up with new moves to get the crowd into it, because doing the same tricks over and over is boring. Seeing some of the stuff those guys pulled off, spur of the moment, with defenders was mind-blowing. I decided to try compared that to EA Big experience, seeing as they had over 2 years to come up with some new moves, and this how the comparison came out:
And 1 Crew's Idea of a New Alley-Oop:
Aaron "AO" Owens spins into the lane in traffic from the wing, goes airborne, spikes the ball off the ground, and Waliyy "Main Event" Dixon comes in from the top of the key, and finishes the jam.
EA Big's Idea of a New Alley-Oop:
Anyone with any level of Dunk can jump 15 feet in the air, instead of 10, and then you can pass to teammates after using the Trick Stick.
EA Big...take your ball and get the hell off the court. I'm sorry readers for not getting to this earlier...it could have possibly avoided a lot of senseless purchasing of this game.
