- Title: NBA Street Homecourt
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: EA Sports Big
- Developer: EA Canada
- ESRB: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Arcade basketball
- Pros: Fast, fun, exciting, over the top basketball; nice visuals
- Cons: Gamebreakers are more annoying than impressive; not much to do once you beat Homecourt mode
Homecourt’s mode selection is the only real unimpressive part of the game. You can play quick games and tweak the rules to turn off tricks and Gamebreakers, make only shots or only dunks count, play a game where only Gamebreaker points count, or play a normal, arcade-style game of NBA Street. You can play any of these game types online over Xbox Live, and while real human opponents definitely make things more fun, we found that the standard Street rule set had the most to offer.
The main gameplay mode is the Homecourt Challenge where you create a player, form a team, and take on all comers. The creation mode is surprisingly limited, and other than offering up some laughs since it allows you to combine the heads of two NBA players to make your own, it is hard not to be disappointed by the lack of options. The Homecourt Challenge is pretty straightforward as you can recruit new players at each court you go to and then you play games against everyone else until you are invited to a tournament. Along the way, you earn new shoes and clothes that boost your stats. It is a lot of fun, but ultimately very, very shallow and is rather short. You can completely beat it in just a few hours, which means you run out of things to do with the game very quickly.
Gameplay
Other than that, though, Homecourt is like heaven on a basketball court. New this year is the dunk meter where the longer you hold the B button, the more impressive dunk you can do. Hold it too long, you’ll miss the dunk. Hold it just long enough, and you can do a double dunk. Another addition is that a teammate will occasionally kneel down at the top of the key, at which point you can use them as a stepping stone for some long range, really impressive dunks. The gameplay never really gets old in Homecourt, even after you have done the same dunks a hundred times. It is very, very fun. But it is hard to be motivated to keep playing after you have beaten the Homecourt Challenge and earned all of the achievement points.
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, NBA Street Homecourt is very nice looking. Some folks don’t like the retro look of the game it has from being run through graphical filters, but I think it looks excellent. The player models are amazingly detailed, and the animation is some of the smoothest and most realistic around. I also really like the backgrounds as they are almost photo realistic.The sound is also very good, particularly the soundtrack. Lots of retro, funky tunes that fit the game perfectly. On the court, the sounds are all perfect from the rattle of a rusty backboard on a outdoor court to the clanky “swish” when the ball goes through a chain net.
Bottom Line
