NBA Street Homecourt Review

Street is back and it is time to show those young punks where your roots are. Homecourt is the first next-gen Street title from EA and a nice addition for sports fans. I played the shit out of NBA Street Vol. 2 and while Homecourt is a solid title, it doesn’t feel like it has progressed very much.

So we start out creating a baller by choosing a pre-set face and blending that with two pro players faces, kinda freaky. For example, I chose the white yokely guy and mixed him with Dirk and AK47. After your baller is ready to hit the court you choose two no-name teammates to round out your team and enter in your homecourt. I loved seeing Vacaville show up every time after pulling off a gamebreaker to represent my citaaaay!! Dominate for a while and you will be able to recruit actual NBA players so don’t worry, just build that reputation.

Street plays like it always does, with a few minor tweaks. There are only two trick buttons now, the X and Y buttons, with the L and R buttons being your modifiers. Not too complicated but enough variety to pull off some great combos. Speaking of, the animations in Homecourt steal the show. Some of the tricks and dunks here are so over the top outrageous but luckily the animations linking them all together are just perfect. For example, build up your trick meter with a seven trick combo, head to the top of the key where your teammate is crouched down, step on his back as he springboards you into the air, complete a few 360’s and land on top of the rim, Spiderman crouch against the backboard and leap into a back flip dunk, grab the ball on its way down with your feet, toss it back up and slam it through for another point. Just another day on the street son! The dunks are the real “wow” factor in Homecourt and you will be saying “wow”, along with some other choice words, quite often. Gamebreakers are cool; players can build up a six-point swing by maxing out the trick gauge for three points and then bustin a triple dunk to knock off three points from the opposing team.


The graphics are next-gen worthy but they were kinda bland in the color department. I understand that EA is trying to play the nostalgic card here and make the visuals feel a bit dated, but in the end the filter used just seemed to make the colors washed out. Plus on replays there is a fisheye lens shader that comes up around the screen. I guess I just want to see some flashier full screen love. There are some WNBA players in Homecourt (why? I don’t know) but I did bounce pass an ally-oop off Lisa Leslie’s dome which I replayed about 30 times laughing my ass off.

Like I said, Homecourt is a fun and solid sports title, but besides unlocking new shoes and jerseys and maxing out your baller, there isn’t much more that captured me. You can take it online; do some challenges, yadda yadda. Pick up Homecourt if you still haven’t gotten into a Street game or are already a huge fan.