NBA Street Vol. 2

"I don't even like Basketball, but this game kicks!"

That is an amazing feat for a game to pull off. Remember when you could have cared no less about skate boarding, then Tony-Hawk came out? To me, that's what this game is in a nutshell.

The game is simple, very very simple. While other BBall games force you through are the management and water tight options like starting roosters, rotating players, and making plays, this game is no rules freeform street ball (as the name implies!). 3 on 3, first to 21, with 2 points more then the other team, wins. No time limit, and no calls for fouls. Think MLB Slugfest or NFL Blitz realism, and you're thinking on the right plane.

One big change over regular BBall is the use of points. Not the basket points, but arcade style points you get from performing special moves. Hitting the Square button, while you have the ball, will cause you to do some tricks with it. If you have ever seen a Nike commercial where they're doing crazy things with basket ballsm, that's what this is. Using the Turbo buttons (shoulder buttons) while doing this causes more complicated moves to be performed, but increasing the risk you make crop the ball. You can also link these to dunks to score much more points, and build up a gamebreaker meter.

When you fill up this meter, you have two options. You can either go up to the net and hit two turbo's and shoot, and your player will perform a GAMEBREAKER. In addition to scoring points, it can also steal points from your opponent. The second option is to pocket it, allowing you to build up a second level. When you build that up, you can pull off a super dunk involving all 3 of your players, in an amazing cinematic moment.

But this game is ocean deep, and in a very good way! While other games will let you customize things like the how your team will move the ball up the court, Street V2 has you earning rewards by going through 2 different Career style modes:

NBA Challenge:

Take one NBA team of 5, or create your own, and have them beat, region by region, every NBA team, making your own way to the top. Every game you beat gets you reward points (I'll get to those later...), and upon beating each regions, you are rewarded with the right to play as 3 NBA old-skoo legends from that region. Perfect for long time NBA fans who miss the days of 'Pistol Pete' (not that I remember, he's just some dude I unlocked...).

Street Legend:

This is a totally different mode altogether. Using a created player, you pick two more of some no-name generic ballers, make your own team, and go across the country picking up new players and reputation. You start off with some crappy players (you'll be lucky to find someone with a 3 in any stat when you start), but as time goes on, your own player will grow with development points you earn from winning, and pick up new players from defeated teams. Ever so often, you get the chance to play a player who is already a legend in a tourney. Beat him, and you get to drop him into your team, and unlock him in the regular game.

Rewards:

Not a game mode, but a great feature. Using reward points won from games in NBA challenge and Pick up games (One round quick matches), you can buy NBA legends, Street Legends, Courts, and old Jerseys. Some of the stuff asks alot of work (You get 100 points from a single game in NBA challenge, '85 MJ costs 5000), but the prices are only as another way to getting this stuff from the other game modes (beat Legend, NBA challenge, and Street School mode (tutorials, will take you less then 15 minutes) and you get '85 MJ anyway). You can also buy more development points for your created player.

Graphics: 8
Nothing revolutionary here. Hardly up-dated from the first. The players move fluidly, and the animations are fun to watch. The game uses replays alot, for things like big dunks (Gamebreakers) and other good move.

Music: 6
Sadly, I'm not much of a hip-hop fan, and I hardly know who most of these people are. I ended up just turning of the music and popping in my Lunar CD...

Sound: 9
Bobbito, also a playable character (in addition to Nelly), provides commentary to each match. It's hard trying to describe this guy. He has a ton of spice to his words, and a huge script for just about everything (Even special lines of special players, like MJ or the Street legends).

Replay: 7.5

Go see the rewards section on what makes this game so deep. It will take you forever to beat both modes, raising players, and unlock everything else. On the other hand, it sometimes feels like you're playing the same game, over and over again. There's hardly any strategy here. You can probably add 30 more hours to your investment if you have a second controller, or an extra two and the multitap you got for Timesplitters.

Save space: 103K

That is right, you get over 10 created players, with their own progress in Legend mode, your own created teams, and everything you've unlocked, all saved into one save file for 103KB of Memory card data. When most sport games take up half of the card, this is called saving money...

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/13/03, Updated 05/13/03