Do you desire to be a baller? A shot caller, perhaps? Are your dreams hamstringed because you live in a place where the phrase “I wanna go to Rucker” elicits the response “But you barely know her!”? EA feels your pain, believe me. To help out, the monolith of the gaming industry has a third installment in their popular NBA Street franchise on the way. Fans of NBA Street Vol. 2, though, better be ready for a serious swap in styles.

In Vol. 2, the overall feel of the game was rooted in a 1970’s throwback mood – from the fonts to the environments, everything was put out there as a simpler time for basketball – a time before And1, Kobe-Shaq, the large refusal of veteran names to show up for the Olympics, and all that junk. A time when pride was an end in and of itself, not a springboard to something else. And it was good.

It ain’t “Days Go By”, Kobe, just take the friggin’ ball. Ya can’t, can ya? Heh. Goon.

For V3, the boys and girls at EA have jumped headfirst into the 21st century. The game revolves around the Street Challenge mode, a seventy-day quest through the world of street ball, during which the player must build up their character’s look, skills, team, wallet, and reputation. The feel of the game has moved completely into the modern-day, immersed in the harsh braggadocio of urban culture. Throwback jerseys, ice, tattoos, and custom-created kicks are the tools of the trade this time around. Further, while the game is still three-on-three with two alternates on the bench, instead of being able to front your best three and not have the other two give any lip, the game’s become far more focused on the individual. As you go through the Challenge mode, increasing your rep and wallet, you’ll begin to attract top names in the game to your team. The only problem is, they won’t necessarily get along together. Example: You show a little favoritism to Marbury, pretty soon Kobe’s giving you lip, demanding game time and some more green. Since you’re clearly not me, you toss Marbury and shell out what it takes to keep Kobe around. Later on, Kobe takes a walk, with your cash. Way to go, loser.

As you go through the Challenge, you’ll get a list of events to compete in on a given day. The trick is, you can only pick one, and you may not have all the information you would want before you enter into an event. Case in point, you could drop money to get your people into a tournament only to learn later that a serious-name player is running a game on another court. If you go ahead with the tournament, you could never see that guy again and lose the potential boost to your rep beating him would earn. If you ditch the tournament, you forfeit the cash you’ve laid down and run the risk of pissing off your teammates that could care less about your reputation. That’s the core challenge in the game – juggling personal gain and team morale. A shorter, thirty-five day version of the challenge is available as well; if you beat the full seventy and find a friend unlocked something you didn’t, you can go back through and check it out.

Gameplay is far more out there than in Vol. 2. The C-stick is now a “Trick Stick”. Before, the X, Y, and Z buttons, or combinations thereof were all you could do for tricks. Now, each forty-five-degree angle of the stick is mapped to a different trick move. Hold down one or more of the X, Y, or Z buttons while hitting the stick, and you get even more tricks. That works out to about sixty different moves you can pull. “How you like me now?” is a phrase players should get used to.

One time, a friend told me about an acid trip he had. Looking at this…I’m starting to understand what he felt like.

Of course, what’s an EA “Street” game without the Gamebreaker? The more tricks and combos you pull off, the faster the Gamebreaker meter fills, which is when the fun begins. Instead of going through a preprogrammed FMV sequence after activating the Gamebreaker, everything is now player-controllable. When you trigger the Breaker, the character will jump into the air and, while airborne, you can work the C-stick to make up to four tricks en route to the bucket. If you feel up to it, after making those four, you can dish the ball out to a teammate, who will then leap up behind you and give you another chance to pull four more tricks, then drop it off to your third teammate to do it all over again and get the basket. Make this three-man circus, and you can pull down four points for your score. The downside? It’s not easy at all. The more players you involve, the larger a chance you’ll lose the ball and hand the other team a breakaway. Between this, and the elimination of the double Gamebreaker from Vol. 2, maybe – now just maybe – the EA programmers might be coming off of their Kurosawa high.

Graphically, the game is phenomenal. Character models are far more realistic and detailed than before, and the environments are more responsive to gameplay actions (Dunks shake the backboard like a horrible, horrible reference that even I can’t believe I was about to make, so let’s forget the rest of the examples and all just back away). The courts have been shown far more love than before, and stretch from coast to coast and even up into a couple spots in Canada. In fact, there’s even one particular court to the GameCube version of V3 – a Nintendo-themed court. Why? Mario, Luigi, and Peach are all playable characters in the GameCube version. I don’t know exactly what Nintendo had over EA to get that kind of benefit, but it’s a damn freaky thing to behold. Well...don’t take my word for it. Check it out.

NBA Street V3 hits stores February 8th, 2005.

Mike Twomey