OUR RATING: 9.3 EXCELLENT About our ratings

TANGIBLES: Gameplay: 10 Visuals: 9 Audio: 7 Value: 9 Quality: 10

Why you should buy it: Not Available Why you should rent it: Not Available

UNIQUE RATING: 9.3 SUGGESTION: N/A

Basketball is quite possibly one of the coolest sports in today's pop culture, and for very good reason. You can do more tricks in basketball than any other ball-based sport there is. With that distinction, it's no surprise that EA Sports Big had something going when they released their NBA Street franchise. The game combined the coolness of street ball with the best ballers from the NBA to create an arcade-style masterpiece. The second entry to the series was more of the same stuff, but the third entry'V3'takes arcade basketball gaming to a whole new level.

The rules of the street are pretty straightforward'the coolest and most skilled players will be known to own every court in every city you play in. Every city has their all-star dunkers, and it's up to you to be the better baller everywhere you go. As you make your way through the main single player mode, there'll be loads of gameplay modes to choose from. The game will require you to make up your own team of ballers. One guy will be the big dunker, one smaller guy will be the shooter, and the fast guy will be there to juke all over the place. The more games you win, the most customization points you'll earn to build up the attributes of your squad.

For those unfamiliar with any of the NBA Street games, each competitive match up will be a 3-on-3, full-court affair. Since you can only make use of a few players, only a selective group of players will be in each NBA roster. It doesn't matter, though, as the point is to be as slick as you can with the ball and to do that you need as much open court as possible. Not only do you gain points for your style of play, but you earn points to fill up your GameBreaker meter if you continue to shoot baskets and make the opponent look silly with your tricks. Once the GameBreaker meter is full, you can execute a GameBreaker shot or dunk which obviously defies every law of gravity possible to make sure your baller looks extremely sweet dunking the ball. Not only does a GameBreaker make you look sweet, but you have a slight advantage, and when it comes time to make your shot'not only will you gain points, but your opponent will lose points.

The game follows a very basic control scheme. On either side of the ball, you can move your man with the left analog stick. On offense, two buttons control the passing and shooting, while the analog stick is used for tricks. On defense, the controls are largely the same, with blocking and stealing being your main focus. Though it sounds like nothing happened with the control scheme, there have been quite a few changes. When you pass the ball, you can use any of the turbo triggers to vary the power of your pass. When close to a hoop, you can hold any turbo button while passing to bounce the ball from the backboard to another one of your players just to catch the defense off guard in order for you to pull a fast basket on them. These passes count as tricks, and they can be used to fill up your GameBreaker meter.