PS2 Review: NBA Street V3 (2005)

I'm not sure that I anticipated the third installment in the NBA Street series as much as the second. I think what happened was that I enjoyed Vol. 2 so much (and for such a long period) that I had exhausted the novelty of the series and required a quite long cooling off period before I could get into it again. However, the time EA allotted was not time enough for me to recover. Even so, I will not hesitate to say that V3 was an improvement over Vol. 2 (though not nearly as large of an improvement that the latter was over the original). Some of the more notable additions was a control scheme that allowed for a greater variety of moves, the ability to customize one's own home court, and a more in-depth make-a-player. Some things, however, were not as good: no Michael Jordan(s) and Bobbito the commentator sounds like he's talking through a tube.

Another problem, and this might be inherent to EA BIG games, is that in constantly trying to make each game "bigger" than the last, you end up creating something that is too far removed from reality. The greatest example of this is the Gamebreaker. In the NBA Street series, as one does tricks and dunks and so forth, they fill up a Gamebreaker meter and when it is filled they can perform a Gamebreaker. Making a Gamebreaker causes the point value of the shot to be worth more and takes points away from the opposing team. Vol. 2 expanded upon this by allowing the player to pocket one Gamebreaker and achieve the unblockable "Gamebreaker 2". What V3 did was change the Gamebreaker to a dunk sequence where the ball handler jumps 30 feet in the air, does tricks, and can alley-oop it to the next player, and repeat for the whole 3 player team. More tricks will lead to more points, but doing a trick as a player reaches the rim will lead to a botched dunk and lost Gamebreaker. Even though in all the NBA Street games players leaped to ridiculous heights, I feel like in V3 it became so mundane that dunks were no longer as cool. It would be like NBA Jam having crazy dunks all the time. It did have outrageous dunks, but they didn't happen every time down the floor; most dunks were pretty routine which kept the high flying dunks special. That being said, it was kind of cool that after completing the Gamebreaker, the dunking player's signature would appear on screen. But this was only the case for a handful of better known players and felt half-hearted because of it.

It was good to have the roster update. I felt the need to ball with my boy, Kirk (no goggles, though).

All in all, if you're familiar with the other NBA Street games, V3 feels like a good expansion pack and roster update. Being that I played the heck out of Vol. 2, I probably didn't enjoy as much as someone new to the series would. It is a solid game, but didn't capture the feeling one got when first playing the original or upgrading to Vol. 2.