Publisher: Activision: www.activision.com
Ages: seven and up.
Parental
Advisory:
Rough sports action
with bad sportmanship.
If you're tired of playing with pampered NBA rich boys, Activision's Street Hoops, which was developed by Black Ops Entertainment, lets you get down and dirty by controlling players on gritty blacktop courts. While the game comes with the right attitude that includes an urban sound track, recreations of street-style basketball courts, players, and moves, and even clothing, in the end, the game falls a bit short, particularly in its single player mode. The game doesn't toss up a complete brick, but overall, the title could be stronger.
As the name implies, the title lets you play virtual hoop on street courts in nine U.S. cites. The courts include such notables as NYC's The Cage and Rucker Park, and more. Since this is street ball, you can bet on games, and talk trash and push other players. You'll also find a number of fun, freestyle basketball moves and dunks. I found the game's controls to be adequate and fairly intuitive.
The game offers multiple modes of play that include World Tournament and Lord of the Court, and multi-player Full Court and Half-court games. The world championship mode is the title's main activity. Here you pick a team and travel to different cities to compete against other teams, and earn money, which you may use to customize the look of players. For this, the game offers various clothing lines, a pawn shop that sells jewelry, and a barber shop.
The game serves standard five-on-five and three-on-three games on a full-court, and three-on-three to one-on-one games on half-courts. And if you execute a fancy set of moves, the game rewards you with improved stats and a temporary turbo mode.
Unfortunately, the game's artificial intelligence isn't all that challenging-it's got too little game. It wasn't long before I could, virtually at will, perform a fast move and consistently shake off the defense. For this reason, the game's multiple-player modes, which lets you compete against others, is far more entertaining. I had a blast playing against friends.
The players move well on screen and look good, but graphically, I've seen more detailed athletes in other sports games. The game features a hip-hop soundtrack with tracks from artists such as Cypress Hill, Method Man and Redman, Xzibit, DMX, Master P, Ludacris, and more. There's authentic gear and clothing, which adds little to the game, but was probably a major marketing and licensing coup for the publisher. There's also street-wise commentary. This version offers DTS audio for discreet surround sound.
Street Hoops can definitely use some improvements, particularly in its single-play mode. In look and feel, Street Hoops is somewhat like EA's NBA Street. But put these titles head to head, and NBA Street is the better title.
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