
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p6"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="1, 140, 83, 150" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/thearmchairem-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x150.gif" width="120" height="150" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p6" alt="Shop at Amazon.com">	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Sports Publisher Activision Developer Black Ops ESRB T (Teen) Released Q3 2002

- Easy to get into the game

- Drab visuals - Repetitive Sound - Too Easy - Some control issues

Review: Street Hoops (Gamecube) Review: Street Hoops (XBox) Review: NBA Live 2003 (PC)
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Street Hoops

Score: 6/10

Let’s face it, there’s a small army of basketball games being released for the different consoles out there year in and year out, so developers have to work extremely hard just to get noticed in the highly lucrative world of sports videogames. Unfortunately for Street Hoops it just doesn’t have anything noteworthy to make it a title fans of the sport would want in their collection. Lackluster visuals, a lack of challenge, and some control issues go a long way to hamper this already ho-hum experience.

In an effort to stand out from the crowd, Activision’s Street Hoops takes basketball to, well, the streets with playground rivalries complete with real life street ball legends who were unable to make it into the NBA for this or that reason. While this is a novel approach it’s only superficial at the end of the day. The requisite trash talk is annoying at the best of times and infuriatingly repetitive at its worst. It’s all well and good to try and approach the sport in a manner that doesn’t embrace the pro ball level, but it really feels like it’s being done for the sake of doing it here.

Even more disappointing is the game’s presentation. The visuals don’t exactly jump off the screen, as they have a definite blandness to them. Drab colors and a lack of detail are a sure fire way to keep the graphics from grabbing players’ attention. The players look like the character models out of the Tony Hawk games only tuned down a few notches. To the game’s credit, the frame rate is pretty respectable. Other than that, though, there just isn’t all that much to look at in Street Hoops.

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Making matters worse is that the sound picks up where the visuals left off. There just isn’t anything noteworthy about the audio properties of the game. Hip hop music that falls flat, canned sound effects that feel mashed into the background, and irritating trash talk that will have you leaping for the mute button in no time, there’s nothing worth listening to in Street Hoops.

But it’s the gameplay, where things really fall apart. First and foremost, after a few

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hours of playing it becomes quite easy to beat the computer in matches. Doesn’t matter what mode you’re on, what team you use, whether or not you’re wearing your favorite underwear, or how much cereal you had for breakfast, the AI isn’t going to magically become better. You’ll learn good and quick how to pressure your opponents, force turnovers, and rack up huge leads. The only thing that will slow you down is the sometimes-buggy controls of the game. There’s also the choice to play one on one or a full team game, with the usual mix of hot dogging, fancy pants moves to take the ball to the hole, which are nice when you want to make a friend look bad, but nothing to get terribly excited over.

The problem with Street Hoops is that it is surrounded in such a thick haze of drabness. Weak visuals, a lack of challenge, and problematic controls do not an exciting game make. If you want a fun, engaging basketball game, this is not the title for you, look to one of the more established franchises, they just handle the sport so much better.

- Mr. Nash

(October 5, 2002)