EA Canada’s overrunning principle for the development of NBA Street: Homecourt was simplification. Fans of NBA Street Volume 3 can probably testify to the fact that the game was a little difficult to pick up at first – that is not such a bad thing, as learning the complex trick system added to the game’s long term value, and gave players some funky tricks to show off to their friends in multiplayer. Homecourt is almost the polar opposite – it is really damn easy to pick up – so easy in fact, you are unlikely to ever lose a single game against the AI. That becomes quite a problem, because unlike previous NBA Street games, most of the meat of the game is found in the single player career mode, Homecourt Challenge.
Must be the shoes
The Homecourt Challenge mode requires the player to create a basketball player using the features of popular NBA players. Ever want to see what a lovechild between Kobe Bryant and Shaq would look like? Here is your chance (you are a sick freak – Ed.). Assign the player a name, a position, a play style, some skills and a hometown, and you are good to go. Once created, it is up to the player to build his baller’s street cred by recruiting a pair of teammates and playing games against local players. After a while players will be able to take on the best of the NBA (and to a lesser extent, the WNBA) on their homecourts, while short featurettes from some of the more popular players (in particular, Carmello Anthony, who just happens to serve as the game’s cover boy) will be unlocked, allowing insight into the experiences they had playing on the street courts before they made it into the big leagues. Each match will have certain modifiers, such as winning by gamebreaker, dunks only, or 3 points only – but that is about as varied as it gets. Exhibition and multiplayer modes can also be played with these modifiers in place. As you win more matches, you get to increase your skills, eventually picking a single freak skill, which makes your player rather awesome at that particular part of the game.
To be perfectly honest, NBA Street: Homecourt’s gameplay is all ‘razzle dazzle’, and offers little in the way of substance or challenge to compliment all of the glitz and glamour. This is largely due to the fact that the game’s most devastating moves are ridiculously easy to pull off. The latest move to be added to the NBA Street repertoire is the Double Dunk. Simply hold the shot button down to the very last second to start a double dunk – get the timing right and you can catch the ball and hit another dunk – it is possible to do upward of four of these in a row. After a couple of matches, players will be able to execute these double dunks without batting an eyelid, and that really destroys any hint of challenge that was in the game.
Rim jamming...didn't we see that in Brendan's DVD collection?
The gamebreakers return once again, and live up to their name – they can now literally break the game. The gamebreaker meter is built up by doing various tricks – though the famed trick stick from Volume 3 has been replaced with a simple combination of shoulder and face buttons. Other fancy moves available include bouncing the ball off an opponent’s head, cross dribbling and getting a teammate to go on all fours so you can use him as a boost to gain more air; the riskier the move, the greater increase on the player’s gamebreaker meter. When the meter is filled and the player triggers it, the aim is to basically rack up as many tricks as you possibly can, which will increase the amount of points your gamebreaker bucket is worth. Now that’s all well and good – but the gamebreaker score can be used in conjunction with a double dunk, which yields a ridiculous amount of points, and makes it far too easy to dispose of any competition.
The other major problem with NBA Street: Homecourt is that it is such a short-lived experience. One can blast through the entire Homecourt challenge in one evening – and that will also net players 840 of the game’s 1000 achievement points in doing so. It is a bit of a stark contrast to the previous NBA Street games, which offered many more hours of content, and featured some actual challenge from the AI opponents. If gamers play halfway through the Homecourt Challenge a second time, and have a few quick matches against friends online, they will have have all 1000 gamerpoints, and very little reason to ever play the game again.
Large sweaty man. Dribbling. Balls.
EA Canada does deserve a bit of credit for NBA Street: Homecourt’s visuals – the game looks quite good, with some impressive animation and a silky smooth 60 frames per second frame rate. The player models are certainly a sight to behold, and the courts themselves look reasonably nice. Of course, there is the usual discrepancy in the quality of digitization of some characters, with all star players such as Carmello Anthony appearing more realistic-looking than say a second string starter. There has been a rather odd decision to apply a filter to the game, giving everything a washed out look in a failed attempt to make it seem retro. The soundtrack consists mainly of hip-hop, both current and retro, as well as some interesting inclusions, such as the Jackson 5. There is a bit of trash talk on the court, but nothing to really get excited about.
In all honesty, NBA Street: Homecourt is not a bad game; it has just been executed the wrong way. EA Canada has obviously gone for the ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ style of gameplay, but the inherent problem here is that Homecourt is not very hard to master at all – anyone and everyone will be busting out gamebreakers combined with multiple double dunks within an hour of picking up the game. With a major shift in focus towards single player, that is just not right. While previous games in the series were just as flashy as Homecourt, it felt much more rewarding having to learn how to do the flashy moves, rather than just being able to do them after a few quick matches. NBA Street: Homecourt is certainly worth a rental for basketball fans, but there is just not enough content here to justify a purchase.
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