Street basketball is an entirely different beast than the ball dunking sport you might see on television. The rules are more relaxed and generally there are fewer players on the court. That doesn’t mean the matches are any less adrenaline filled though. High speed passes, long range shots and loads of swearing are present every single time, as are some of the most impressive dunks ever performed on the face of earth. NBA Street Homecourt takes the essence of that and multiplies it by ten – the end result being a basketball game like no other.

Perfecting the formula

Since its debut back in 2001 the NBA Street series has always focused on 10 feet jumps into the air and dunks that could break the blackboard in half. But as with all similar arcade-ish over the top basketball games, the series lost its initial appeal fairly quickly, no thanks to the repetitive action. Trying to counter that the developers kept adding new features, making the last installment very difficult to pick up, although in all fairness the game was probably the best in the series. Homecourt could have easily copied the formula, only bringing minor upgrades to the series. Instead the developers opted to mix things up a bit.

The first thing that went under the knife was all the extra ballast. Trick control which was handled via the right analog stick has been moved to the square and triangle buttons. You might think that having only two buttons to perform tricks would hurt the depth of gameplay, but in practice the contrary is true. With the help of the left and right shoulder buttons you can perform virtually any trick you can imagine. Since the buttons are context sensitive you can throw the ball into your opponents face by hitting the triangle button or dance past him, humiliating him in the process, by pushing the stick in his direction while pressing the button. Holding either of the two shoulder buttons down while doing this will result in a different trick. The combinations are near limitless, especially because tapping the button has a different result than pressing it normally or holding it down. The rest of the changes are not as drastic and are mostly limited to minor tweaks of things that were proven to work.

On the court

Before starting a match for the first time you have to wrap your mind around the fact that this is not the basketball you might be used to. There are no referees, fouls are a viable method of stopping the opposing players and whether you like it or not, superhuman jumps are the kings of any match. Once you accept that fact you are good to start dunking like madman. And a madman you’ll be, for except the occasional throw you’ll be performing dunks every few seconds, occasionally even double dunks. If you wonder how that is possible picture this: your player jumps high into the air, lands on the blackboard, throws the ball with full force down the hoop, swings himself behind it, catches it and slams it down the hoop once again. Technically speaking everything except the 10 foot jump should be more or less possible in real life, but only if some of the laws of physics are ignored or seriously bent. The insanity doesn’t end there though. Some of the tricks the players perform to dribble the opponents or to score trick points border on pure fantasy.

Speaking of trick points, you’d probably like to hear in detail how they work. When your team has the ball you can perform tricks with the help of the two afore mentioned buttons. The harder the trick (different combinations of presses) the more points you score. There is a catch however. You are only rewarded the points if you score after performing them. Losing the ball resets your timer of course. Because of that matches between pros look very different than a game between two beginners – the first 20 seconds of an attack are spent performing tricks and trying to avoid having the ball stolen. The other team in the mean time tries frantically to steal the ball, as every second you perform tricks signifies impending doom on them. Why? Because when either team fills up their trick point gauge they can initiate a gamebreaker.

Gamebreakers – the gist of Street Homecourt. When initiated the team who has the ball can perform mad tricks, humiliating the opponents by bouncing the ball off their faces or by pulling their leg (literally). Each trick performed fill the gamebreaker gauge, but this time the end result is extra points when scoring. With enough skill and some luck it is possible to score up to 6 points in a single dunk! That’s why it is imperative that the defending team somehow prevent the attackers from scoring! Fouls and steals are the perfect means, although it can be somewhat difficult to steal the ball from a guy who is doing break-dance moves as he moves about. When or rather if the ball somehow switches team the gamebreaker doesn’t end – an ideal chance to turn the “tide of battle” and win back the point lost by default when the opposing team started the gamebreaker.

Lack of substance

So far so good, but doing the same thing all the time gets old regardless of how fun and innovative that thing is. Unfortunately Homecourt falls a bit short of delivering enough in terms of content. The meat of the singleplayer experience is the Homecourt challenge. This mode is you basic career where you first create your own baller and then take it to the street. Every once in a while you get the chance to move to a new basketball court, but other than the occasional tournament nothing special happens here.

You’ll get to play your fair share of pick-up games with different rules in place to help spice things up a bit. Other than playing for 5, 7, 11, 21 or 30 points you can play matches where the first team to lead by X points win or matches where only dunks/shots count towards the score. Last but not least are the matches where only points gained during gamebreakers count – since usually it is enough to get 3 or 5 points in such matches a perfect gamebreaker is often all that it takes to win a match.

Outside of the career mode you can play all of the listed gamemodes as well as classic street basketball where gamebrakers and trick points are disabled. Don’t expect a lifelike experience though – the players will still be dancing around the hoop as if it was a ballroom. Online is limited as well. You still have all the gamemodes available and you can even unlock some extra online-only awards, but since there is no tournament support and there is a distinct lack of players online I doubt the online portion will have a long and healthy life.

Washed out

The visuals in the game have their fair share of problems. The most annoying one was actually a design decision – the authors decided to use a sepia filter throughout the entire game. I won’t deny that it does its job well, but I would have preferred to have an option to turn the damn thing off. The rest of the issues are less noticeable and include some strange cloth simulation issues when the ballers pants or shirt get distorted during some falls and such. Other than that the graphics are nice and do a good job of presenting the street culture of basketball. The framerates never drop either, unless you are playing at 1080p (which isn’t even officially supported). Thanks to some in game cinematics you actually feel like a rising street basketball star.

One area the game absolutely shines at are the player animations. There is not a single bad thing that I can say about them without being a total ass. Even better, the animations clip so well together it is near impossible to tell where one animation ended and the next one began. I really do hope that the developers will share the code with the rest of EA, as I’d love to see it implemented in the other EA basketball games.
The music in Homecourt is some of the best I’ve heard recently. The funk, jazz and hiphop tunes fit in perfectly, both in the menus and in the background of all the matches. The sound effects and smack talk are surprisingly good as well, and they’ll often bring a smile to your face if you listen carefully.

Conclusion

Rather than slapping some makeup on the previous NBA Street game and calling it a new game EA decided to do some major surgery for this installment. This is not something we are used to from EA, but I have to hand it to them, they did an excellent job of rejuvenating the somewhat stale concept of over-the-top street basketball. If only they included more playmodes and polished the engine a bit to avoid some of the issues that pop up here and there. As it is NBA Street Homecourt won’t win any GOTY awards, but every sports lovers should still have it in his/her game library.

Gameplay	18/20	It’s a completely different experience than the one found in NBA Live! Depending on your game preference you might find it a tad too extreme in some aspects.
Graphics	17/20	The ballers look great and their animation is beyond reproach. Too bad their clothes tend to act up and that the darned sepia filter does more damage than it helps.
Sound	18/20	The perfect mix of street music puts you in the right element to start dribbling and dunking right there in your living room.
Value	15/20	The game’s biggest shortcoming – you’ll run out of fresh things to do way before you’ll get through the career mode. Online doesn’t offer much either.
Preference	16/20	If you think basketball is boring you’ll probably be persuaded to change your opinion with this game. Just don’t expect a simulation!
Overall	84/100	NBA Street Homecourt manages to deliver an adrenaline filled experience that lasts longer than usual. You might want to take a few breaks in-between the matches though; least you realize that all you are doing is trying to push a ball through a hoop.

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