Handling Tricks

The STREET franchise has always been just as much about showmanship as generic B-ball skills. If you find yourself trotting down the court, hitting a single uninteresting crossover leading to a set-shot fifteen footer, you'll not only be demonstrating your stunted creative growth, but you'll also be rewarded with a paltry sum of trick points, which you need in order to earn a Gamebreaker. Crazy tricks and jukes and dunks so poetic you want to cry are literally just as important to winning the game as simply making those baskets.

The move from the original NBA Street to NBA Street Vol. 2included a whole host of new tricks and abilities and really pushed the envelope further towards the edge of style. The sheer volume of added tricks was a worthy spectacle to behold, and while the same can be said about NBA STREET V3, it's less about the gross number of tricks added in this new version as it is about the way that they are handled and implemented in the game. Confused? Allow me to elaborate.

Got to put in those practice hours.

The Trick Stick
Dumping loads and loads of new tricks into the game is fine and dandy, but being able to actually use more of them at any given time is really where it's at, and this is exactly the purpose of the Right Thumbstick's inclusion into the V3 control scheme. The way it breaks down is this: The Left Trigger, Right Trigger, and Left Thumbstick (by clicking down on it) represent your turbo buttons. Press any one of these, or any of them in tandem along with any direction on the Right Thumbstick (including diagonal directions) lets you perform another trick. The sheer roster of moves available to each character is enormous, though I'll let you do the math to figure out exactly how many.

Naming Convention
You can just never have enough personal touches, and while I must give props to whoever at Electronic Arts names the different tricks—names like Immobilize, Through the Basement, and Farmer's Market definitely have their own style—it's even more satisfying to take those tricks and make them your own by naming them yourself. Even better than that, though, is seeing your custom-named trick pop up when you perform them against a live opponent (even online). For example, I just played someone who performed the Dinner is Served dunk (throwing it off the backboard to themselves), and instead of the familiar name I saw "You be Funkdefied" instead. There's something even that much more humiliating about being on the short end of a personalized trick.

Court's got quiet dignity.

Freelancing your Dunk
NBA STREET V3 introduces an entire new game mode in the form of the Dunk Contest, which contains its very own set of controls. While the controls are unique, they are similar enough to regular trick controls for you to maintain a comfortable sense of familiarity. It works like this: You perform tricks while you're in the air, so as you jump to perform your dunk, you perform trick moves like you normally would by pressing the turbo buttons and different directions with the Right Thumbstick. The tricks are all different, though, since they're all midair dunk tricks, so you'll find yourself rolling the ball down one arm to the next, slipping it between the legs, passing it around your back, etc. Just as important as the tricks themselves is the variety with which you perform them. If you pass it around your back three times and dunk, you won't get much in the way of creativity points, which are necessary for high scores.

Aside from the in-air antics, you can also pass the ball to yourself in creative ways (e.g. bounce it off the backboard, bounce it high in the air between your legs, toss it up high towards the rim, etc.), and these are performed by pressing any of the turbo buttons and the A button. The trick with the self-pass is grabbing it in midair (you need to press the B button to go get the ball and start your dunk).

NBA yoga.

If that's not enough, you can also place props in front of you (e.g. a table) to jump over, and you can combine the props with a self-pass that leads to the dunk. Imagine throwing the ball high into the air, and then jumping over a prop to grab the ball, and then finally starting your dunk tricks before slamming the ball home. There's a lot of creativity and replay value here.

Also of note is that the Gamebreakers in-game have now been changed to reflect the new Dunk Contest mechanics. When you perform a Gamebreaker, it's up to you to create the craziest dunk possible just like in the Dunk Contest (sans the props and self-passing, though the Gamebreaker does include possible alley-oop opportunities as your teammates launch themselves around/above you). The better the dunk, the more possible points you can score, so a well-executed Gamebreaker dunk can really swing the game back in your direction or further distance yourself from the competition, while a busted Gamebreaker (you can easily miss the dunk by getting too trick-happy) is a huge lost opportunity.

Again, it's not so much how many new tricks there are, though you're likely to see all sorts of things you haven't seen in either of the two previous STREET games, but it's more how the trick system itself has been changed to further engross you in the game. Tricks are not only easy to perform now, but they're more plentiful and more original (especially with personalized names), while the special tricks in the Dunk Contests and Gamebreakers add a whole new level to master and appreciate. Now go get to it!

By Alex McLain