Regarding NBA Street Homecourt. Bought one used (based on my experiences with the playable demo) just recently because I passed on it earlier. Here are my thoughts -
First of all, the good news. The graphics are simply amazing. The courts, the players, everything ... it looks absolutely lifelike and gorgeus in 1080p, and no slowdowns or glitches anywhere.
Then the bad news...yes, so soon.
EA Big has basically made the game way WORSE. I don't know if you're familiar with the NBA Street series, but I've been a huge fan and still have both NBA Street 2 and V3 for PS2.
- You can't customize your player. Not his skills, not his dunks, not even his appearance. You can only choose from a limited selection of faces, then combining that with "morphing" it into two NBA players' faces. In the earlier games you could customize everything from the size of your players to his tattoos, to facial hair to the size of the player's afro, you could even DESIGN your own SHOE.
- You can only have two other players in your team besides you, the earlier games had five.
- No slam dunk contest anymore.
- The Gamebreaker isn't interactive anymore like it was in V3, it's just a fancy dunk animation that gets old FAST. Also, the power has been lost somewhat, the other team loses maybe 2 points from it ... big deal.
- The out of the box version didn't even include Rucker Park ... how unbelievable is that. You can download it for free though.
- Team Jordan is included, but it's just a team of Brand Jordan affiliated players like Melo, no MJ ... They've supposedly included all the Air Jordan shoes though, plus some Nikes.
- The single player mode is an unbelievable disappointment. Gone are the fancy maps of various courts you play (like in Street 2), you just pick (boring) challenges from a few crude text menus (!).
- Playing Live isn't that mindblowing either. Most people just seem to interested in pushing your player to the ground. And the gameplay isn't nearly as intuitive as it was in the previous games. Also, basically the ONLY way you can score is by DUNKING, because jump shots can be blocked EVERY SINGLE TIME by just putting a player under the basket and pressing "block".
---
Overall, a big disappointment in all aspects. It seems they rushed the product out when they did, and focused mainly on the graphics update, which is amazing. I think the best game in the series is still on the older consoles, either V3 or Street vol 2. Street Vol 2 because it had Michael Jordan in all three configurations, and V3 because it improved on customization, gameplay etc.
Linear Mode
