And 1 Streetball PlayStation 2

And 1 Streetball PlayStation 2

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 26, 2006 | 1 out of 1 found this And 1 Streetball review helpful

Pros: Features most of your favorite And1 players; i-ball controls are unique.

Cons: Core gameplay feels dated; animation looks and feels stilted; gameplay design doesn't reward team play; defense feels like an afterthought; voice work gets repetitive.

And1 Streetball's primary strength is actually in its unique ball-handling design, which is entirely appropriate for a genre of basketball that promotes its exciting brand of jukes and fakes. Instead of relying on buttons or combinations of butto...n presses, And1 Streetball's "I-ball" system requires you to use the analog stick to execute your fakes. The game is sensitive to eight degrees of input from the sticks, and the jukes are separated into three tiers. Level-one fakes are setup dribbles, where the ball handler dribbles in place to try and lull the defender into complacency. Second-level fakes are more dramatic and abrupt, which then lead to the tier three finisher moves, which you can use to break your opponents' ankles. Not literally, of course--you just make them fall down--but the game shows this off dramatically as it goes into slow motion. The more jukes you work in, the more respect points you earn, which will fill up a meter that eventually earns you a "mic." You can consume these mics at any time to either unleash a canned, animated "breakdown" dunk worth three to five points, or to get your whole team on fire, which increases all of their general abilities. Sounds good so far, but the execution of the I-ball is flawed in that you must chain together moves in a specific way for maximum effectiveness--the game attempts to show you visually how to time your transitions from setup dribble, to fake, to finisher. That's fine on paper, but in practice, the inputs from the controller are not usually responsive in the way you'd expect. At times it feels like mashing around on the sticks and hoping for the best can be almost as effective as trying to play in the way the designers intended. What's more, the act of breaking the defender's ankles is tied in to an ankle-breaking meter that fills whenever the on-ball defender is close. Since it requires proximity to make it work, the defender can simply back up off you to shut off your ankle-breaker meter. You can do the same to your opponents, as well. Read more Less