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Ubisoft is ready to make its mark on streetball games. After EA Sports’ NBA Street series showed gamers that streetball could be done right, and Midway Sports enjoyed success with its NBA Ballers series, it was only a matter of time before other publishers started adding their two cents in. Though And1’s gameplay can’t quite compete with the more established franchises, it does add some new and interesting wrinkles to the subgenre.
The game includes both half-court and full-court play. In half-court, you can play one-on-one or three-on-three, while full court ditches one-on-one for five-on-five. The story mode has you starting off as a no-name from New Jersey. You eventually earn your way to the tour bus but you need to perform to stay on it. The story has you going from Philadelphia to Paris. Playing through the story mode helps you unlock additional juke moves, gear, or stats for your ballers. Sometimes, you’ll have to fulfill a secondary objective in addition to winning.
And1 Streetball includes nearly all of the And1 players. This means that you’ll not only get their likeness but you’ll also find their signature modes in the game. Newer balers like Spyda are faithfully recreated, alongside more established names like Main Event.
And1 Streetball ditches the button combinations of other games for an analog stick-based system. This gives you eight possible inputs for juke moves, which are grouped into three types. Level-one moves are dribbles where the ball handler tries to make his opponent juke himself, while level-two moves are more interesting and complex. Third-level moves are finisher moves to try and break your opponent’s ankles, in streetball speak. If you manage to pull this off, the game zooms in on this and plays it in slow motion, making the move feel even grander than it is. Borrowing from NBA Street, these moves will fill up the equivalent of a “Gamebreaker” meter, which once full will earn you a mic. You can use these mics to get your team on fire to make them play better or pull off a three-to-five point dunk. Although this generally works well, the input system isn’t as tight as you would expect from a game based around them.
Though the one-on-one gameplay is enjoyable, it seemed to have been the focus of the developers. The players aren’t very good at shooting from the outside, even though they are all skilled in real life. Defense in the game is also a bit spotty due to the sometimes unreliable collision detection system. The game was clearly focused on pulling off moves and going for a dunk, and when you try to deviate from that, it doesn’t always work out so well.
The game’s visuals are decent. The player models look pretty good since you’ll be able to tell which baller is which. The animations, on their own, look amazing but the transition between them leaves much to be desired. The collision detection is a factor in this since sometimes you’ll notice players clip through each other. Because of the animations, simple things like passing sometimes look eerily unrealistic.
The audio doesn’t do much better. The commentary sounds good at first but becomes very repetitive very quickly. After a while, it’s more than a simple annoyance. The sound effects are decent but don’t do anything out of the ordinary. The soundtrack is your typical hip-hop fare which may or may not be your cup of tea.
And1 Streetball has some good ideas like the pulling off juke moves with the analog stick but unfortunately some technical errors are too much to ignore. There are a bunch of little errors in too many places, which makes it difficult to recommend the game. You’re probably better off just waiting for the next NBA Street game. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Jun 27, 2006
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