NBA Street Homecourt

NBA Street: Homecourt

Every sport it seems has a "street" variant released for it, which adds a hip, pick-up-and-play variant - usually spawned from a quarter-pounding arcade cabinet - that works to varying degrees. The NBA Street franchise has a solid pedigree, and EA Big went all out on their first next generation Street offering, NBA Street Homecourt. The results are nothing short of fantastic.

Rendered in full 1080i, Homecourt was one of the first true HD titles, and the extra work spent on character models shows through. With a game like basketball, where the players always play in full view of the crowds, with no headgear at all, minute details are immediately discernable if they are missing. Homecourt doesn't miss, though - every aspect of each NBA and WNBA star, as well as the unique local characters, hit every note, sport every tattoo and braid every hair just right.

The Create-a-Player story mode features the classic "pick up a player from the losing team" that we all remember from street ball, as well as hilarious RPG-like addition of "team discord," if you feed 'Melo the rock too much, eventually Rip Hamilton will complain and if you don't address his wants, quit the team! The sound effects and voices are breezy and forgettable, but the soundtrack is great. '80s breakbeats will have you busting out the refridgerator boxes, and entering the Gamebreaker mode triggers Herbie Hancock's seminal "Rockin' It."

The create-a-trick mode is perhaps ill-named, but you do use the face buttons in combination with the four shoulder buttons to individually direct your jukes and fakeouts, as well as (during Gamebreaker mode, filled up when you do enough tricks and reversals) breakdancing moves like up-rocks and UFO's. And of course, the jams. Oh dear, the double (and triple) jams, slam dunks that laugh at things like physics and world records for high jumps. The game playfull ignores all that nasty 'reality' stuff and offers over-the-top gaiden dunks if you've got the gamebreaker for it.

There is a very exploitable strategy when playing online, which only supports 1v1, that basically boils down to "camp Shaq under the hoop and goaltend like a motherfucker," and while doing so makes you win, it absolutely killed the online community for this game, and so unless you have a local buddy to co-op or VS with, the game's 8-hour long single-player career won't hold your interest as well as a fully-realized multiplayer like NHL 2k9's vaunted 5v5 season mode. Still, the beautiful character models, fluid animations and throwback soundtrack will make any time you spend on the blacktop with Homecourt worthwhile.

Graphics: Stellar character models in beautiful 1080i. 4.
Sound: Nothing crazy in the sound design, but the soundtrack is a fantastic throwback. 4.
Controls: The create-a-combo system is fun and rarely gets old. Context-sensitive AI directions mapped to the D-Pad are a welcome addition. 5.
Tilt: In co-op or VS this game is great; solo play is fun but limited with no online community. 3.
Overall: (not an average) 4.