NBA Street Homecourt Preview

System: Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Canada
Release: February 20, 2007

NBA Street makes its fourth season appearance in NBA Street Homecourt. Ever since we saw it being played early last August, we’ve been chomping at the bit to be able to tell you about it, but the Spin Doctors at EA are very strong in The Force indeed. We headed back up to EA Canada recently to sit down with the team once again to see how the game has progressed since then.

NBA Street Homecourt is different from it’s predecessors in a number of ways. The theme this time around is about where the great ballers come from. Although every street court isn’t as well known as Ruckers, every NBA great picked up his game from his local court. Likewise, your own character will be out to perfect his game and ultimately put his own hometown on the map.

Perhaps the biggest change to the series is that this title is a next gen exclusive. Meaning, if you want some of this, you’re gonna have to step your game up to the Xbox 360 or the PS3. This decision to pass up on the current generation of hardware is paying off big dividends on both the graphical and gameplay fronts.

The graphics and animations in NBA Street Homecourt are ace. The environments are expansive and highly detailed. If you imagine the amount of real world detail found in Project Gotham Racing 3 and applied it to a street hoops game, you’d begin to be able to understand the scope of it. If you’re playing in Venice Beach for example, you’ll see and be able to play on all four courts on the blacktop with each of the courts properly mimicking their real life counterparts in both size and detail. Not only are all the objects and buildings properly conveyed in game, but the devs even went back and changed details as small as the angles some of the trees were standing to make sure everything was as perfect as possible. All the hometown courts have this level of detail. For the first time, the backgrounds are rendered in a full 360 degrees instead of the simple sideline camera used in the previous titles.

The detail extends to the ballers themselves. Just look at Ben Wallace’s hair, or check out the Puerto Rican flag tat that Melo has by his thumb to see exactly what the team has been able to do with such high resolution textures.

The animation system is flawless to such an extent that you’ll ask yourself “Is this the same studio that made NBA Live 07?” What’s even more impressive is that the team only has four animators, but what they’ve accomplished here is more than commendable. Not only are the animations complex and perfectly blended with each other, but you can stop, transition or do anything with them at any time that you want. The reason is that NBA Street Homecourt gives you full control of each and every single move and trick that you pull off. You’re no longer relegated to pushing on the trick buttons and having them randomly cycle through moves. You now have the freedom to put together any sort of combination that you feel like making on the fly. This new system is called the Trick Remixer. The system is so refined, that some animations are as quick as a tenth of a second long. That’s how quick and responsive the control mechanic is. You’ll be able to pull off varied and extensive combination moves with the press of only one button.

The main thing that will dictate the different moves that you perform with the trick button is the timing at which you press the buttons. Tap the X button and you’ll change your dribbling hand. Nothing fancy here. Keep tapping it and you’ll switch the ball back and forth in perfect timing and rhythm to your button presses. If you tap the button really quickly, your baller will drop down to his knees so that he can dribble and change up hands just that fast. Pressing and releasing the button will make your baller bounce the ball up, hesitate for a moment, jump in the air while he bounces the ball under his feet and catch the ball with the other hand. This isn’t even taking into account the modifiers you can put on all those animations using the bumper buttons. Again, all these moves are just based on moving the ball from one hand to another and will form the basis of you making your own crossover moves when you have a defender checking you. You’ll be able to use this same mechanic with the Y button, which will have you doing various moves with putting the ball on the ground and doing different tricks that way.

The system is really easy to control and you’ll have a lot of fun just getting acclimated to being able to do exactly what moves you want to do when you want to do them. I was able to put together a 61 move combination string the first time I picked up the controller without even thinking about it. Trust me; people are going to be talking about this when the game comes out.

When people think of NBA Street Homecourt, they think of the Gamebreakers. This year, the Gamebreaker mode has undergone a makeover. When you fill up your Gamebreaker meter, you’ll be able to activate a mode that will give you all new abilities. The soundtrack changes to ‘Rockit’ by ‘The Son of the Cool’ (Herbie Hancock for the uninitiated) and your player is given a money ball. All the animations and moves at your disposal will be different in this mode and even more over the top. By over the top, we really mean over the top. As if the double dunks you can perform in the normal mode (yup, you read that right, DOUBLE dunks) weren’t enough, the Gamebreaker mode will allow the skilled players to be able to pull off an insane triple dunk. The mode will let you string together crazier combos and rack up even more points while it also introduces an element of danger. The longer you keep the ball and the higher your tally is, the more likely it is that your opponent will be able to strip the ball from you and sink a bucket taking it all for himself. This is going to be the ultimate punk out move on Xbox Live.

NBA Street Homecourt is shaping up to be a real winner. What we came away with was an extensive amount of hands on time with what could turn out to be one of the more enjoyable hoops experiences EA has put out in years. We’ll be back with more on NBA Street Homecourt as it approaches the February 20th release date.