|
|
             |
|
|
|
||
|
Platform: Xbox Genre: Sports Publisher: Activision Developer: Black Ops ESRB: T (Teen) Released: Q3 2002 Support AE! Buy Games Here:
Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly. Enter E-Mail Address Below: |
Street Hoops
Score: 6.3 / 10 |
||
|
Pros: -
Animations, especially on the variety of dunks, is excellent -
Trash-talking gestures after baskets - Some current real-life b-ball court legends get their props
|
Cons: -
Too easy to steal the ball, too hard to block it -
CPU almost never misses a shot -
Collision detection takes a vacation
|
Related Links: Review: NBA Inside Drive 2003 (XBox) Review: Street Hoops (Playstation 2)
|
|
|
"This could have been the ultimate street basketball title."
|
|||
|
No
multi-million-dollar contracts, fancy quarter-million dollar cars,
supermodel girlfriends, television interviews, packed NBA arenas with
thousands cheering them on. Street ballers play for the love of the game
on the paved courts and urban playgrounds of America, not the love of
the almighty dollar and adoration of the masses. Many have mad skills
that few professional players own in their repertoire. This is the game
of basketball that Activision is hoping to capture with Street Hoops for
the Xbox, a title similar in spirit but not in its execution to the
excellent EA Big Sports’ NBA Street.
I
actually had big hopes for this game. Taking its cue from NBA Street,
Street Hoops attempts to re-create the street basketball scene
faithfully in video game form. The NBA’s finest and fabricated
hoopsters from NBA Street are replaced by authentic current playground
b-ball legends like my hometown’s AO, who plays at Philly’s 11th and
Lombard, and Brooklyn’s Rucker Park duo of 1/2 Man 1/2 Amazing and
Headache. There are players from famous courts sprawled across the US of
A, from East Coast to West, including the barnyard backyard court of the
naughty-sounding French Lick, Indiana, the original stomping grounds of
NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird. You can even create your own player if you
want.
In addition to having a true representation of playground players and locales, there is the inclusion of lines of clothing and sporting accessories and sneakers including And 1, G.O.A.T. Gear, Sean John, and Rocawear to outfit your players that can be purchased at Footaction with money won betting on your team’s performance. It’s one advertising logo after another thrown in your face.
As
in the movie “White Men Can’t Jump”, you place wagers (with the
local bookie) from a straight-up bet on who wins the game to which team
makes the most dunks. You can also tattoo your team, buy some flashy
gold wear, or give them a new ‘do. If you lose and are strapped for
some Benjamins, there’s even a pawnshop where you can sell some of
that jewelry for some cold, hard cash. The money also is needed to
unlock new players and courts.
There
are a few different game settings to select from in either a timed or
score limit setting on a full or half court in two main game modes:
World Tournament (I don’t know why they call it “World”
Tournament, because you only play on courts located within the United
States) and Lord of the Court. Street Hoops has a lot of little extras
that could have made it the Jordan-era Bulls of video game basketball.
But
when it comes down to Street Hoop’s actual gameplay on the court,
you’ll find out the game more resembles the awful post-Jordan Bulls.
The developers seemed to never be sure if they were looking to create an
arcadish NBA Jam-type title or one with a little more realistic
simulation involved, but they at no time really successfully mesh a
definitive style of play into the game.
The
worst atrocity of the gameplay is the terrible defensive and collision
detection physics. You can bump into players at will with little worry
of being impeded in your progress to the basket and trying to box out on
defense is a joke. In fact, there’s almost no need to try to play
defense at all or attempt to block a shot once the other team gets past
half court into the offensive zone, because you rarely ever come up with
a block and the CPU-controlled team comes down with the offensive
rebound 99% of the time.
Not
that there’s too many of those to go around anyway, because the CPU
has an almost perfect shooting percentage every game. The only way you
can get the ball away from the CPU team is by stealing it. Stealing is
made ridiculously easy, just by pushing the corresponding steal button
over and over you will wind up eventually stripping the ball away at
least half the time.
There
are a ton of specialized “ankle breaking” moves for each player that
help gets a player to the basket quicker for a dunk. Dunking for almost
every point is the easiest way to win. It’s not too hard to dunk, even
with the smallest player on the court. You only have to be wary of the
CPU shoving your players into turnovers.
Graphically,
Street Hoops isn’t bad, especially the animations of the players on
the court. From dribbling and shooting to the vast array of dunks, the
players look and perform very true-to-life. I love the little trash-talk
gestures that both you and your opponent show each other after a big
dunk. The courts themselves and the rendered backgrounds are done nicely
too. But the onlookers surrounding the action are plain ugly in their
flat and 2D demeanor. Street Hoops’ soundtrack employs the sounds of a
lot of today’s rap and urban music stars, including Method Man and
Redman, DMX, Master P, Cypress Hill, Xzibit, and Ludacris. If you like
the game’s tunes, then you’ll be disappointed with Street Hoops,
because most of the time the music is so low in the background you
can’t even hear it. Also, the banter from the unseen “announcer”
is too repetitive and annoying to add any flavor to the action on the
court.
Too
bad the developers didn’t spend as much time working out the gameplay
as much as they did securing the clothing and sneaker licenses and
honing the extra-curricular elements of the game not related to the
authentic game of street ball. This could have been a great title but
instead its nowhere near the quality of NBA Street, even though Street
Hoops does away with NBA ballhoggers and fictitious characters and
replaces them with the playground legends of today’s American hoop
scene. Sadly, the only time I really enjoyed the game experience was
when I teamed up with my son to see how many sweet dunks and alley-oops
we could pull off.
This
could have been the ultimate street basketball title. But with the bad
defensive AI and awful collision detection problems and the unrealistic
every-shot-is-good offensive abilities of the CPU opposition, the only
ones who may be interested in buying Street Hoops are players that have
actually hooped it up on some of the real-world courts contained in the
game. For serious basketball video gamers, Street Hoops is best as a
rental to tide you over until you can go out and buy NBA2K3.
—Lee
Cieniawa
(October 10, 2002)
Search for Related Topics:
...More Sports Game Reviews...
...More Reviews of Games Developed by Black Ops...
|
|||
