Street Basketball

Genre: Sports (Basketball)

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Street Basketball is a simple, cartoony, side-scrolling version of the sport that was released on the Nintendo Switch in 2019. Games are one-on-one and feature a simplified version of the game’s rules.

The visuals here shout out “mobile” game with their cartoony “paper doll” 2D art style. Characters’ hands, feet, and head are detached from their body in a way that doesn’t hamper the gameplay but certainly doesn’t impress. This is paired with a repetitive “hip-hop inspired” soundtrack and whistle, ball-bouncing, and net noises, but not much beyond that in terms of sound. Suffice it to say, this game’s presentation isn’t likely to win anyone over.

Having said that, and making sure to include the caveat that this is about as far from a simulation of the sport as you can get… the gameplay here isn’t bad. Players can shoot, jump to block, steal, feint to get past the other player, dodge backwards, and if approaching the hoop can make a dunk. It’s simple, but effectively boils the game down to core strategy and positioning. On a fundamental level, this works.

There is one hitch here though beyond the simplicity of the game, and it’s a choice that’s inexplicable, and I’m not sure i understand why the game does this. When players face off, the player with the ball can either shoot or try to feint and dodge through the player – that’s really their two main options. Shooting is done simply by holding down the button and releasing at the optimal moment, which is fine. However, feinting to a dodge requires a three button combination for some reason, and what’s more it’s not always clear when it has succeeded. Because of this, a fundamental element of the game’s strategy is unnecessarily overly-complicated.

Despite this flaw, despite the poor presentation, Street Basketball manages to be a decent simplified version of the sport. Don’t go into this game with high expectations, but for what it is, this is a game that fans of basketball looking for something simple and cartoony will find worthwhile to try.

tl;dr – Street Basketball is a simplified, cartoony representation of the sport, but one that has some decent core gameplay, although elements of that gameplay are made unnecessarily complicated. Still, for a simple game of B-Ball, this game largely succeeds in what it sets out to do.

Grade: C

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