The player's arms are the only visible part of him when he shoots, so it's hard to visually judge how the game is reading your button press. You have to judge how long to hold down the X button to determine how hard you throw the ball. Arcade Shootout puts you in first-person as a player of your choice stands in front of a classic pop-a-shot machine with three hoops to shoot at. You can access Pick Up games with the NBA teams in Quick Play mode, as well as the two mini-games. Navigating Street's many modes is a cinch. It's all school yard fun with Hip-Hop overtones. You don't have to worry about fouling or running out of bounds. But it balances out with the ability to muscle through defenders, swat the hell out of shooters, and blatantly goal tend. This is annoying at times when the opponent is driving to the hole and your teammate across the court isn't bearing down on him like he should. When you're not controlling a given player, the A.I. It's classic 'Street' presentation that exploits the graphical capacity of the PSP well. When the score is made, the screen and the players will celebrate a bit with a few bragging animations. The action itself is highlighted by a cutscene in where the color hues turn pale and dreamy, and the player charges to the hole with a sparkly ball in hand. When all the letters in the word are highlighted, your team is capable of pulling of an unstoppable shot, dunk, or defensive block. Tricking and stringing together whacky combos will build the Gamebreaker meter which is measured by the letters in the word. You can't control the moves during the actual Gamebreaker the way you can in V3. You still accomplish 'Gamebreaker' the same way, but again, it plays out more the way it did in Volume 2. Fortunately, the limited controls aren't devastating because the overall gameplay is sharp and satisfying. The only way this could have been avoided is if there would have been an analog nub on the right side of the PSP. Now you're confined to the square button for initial tricks and the two shoulder buttons for modifying. By moving the stick one of eight directions and pressing the turbo button, your character was capable of pulling off up to 40 moves. All your tricks are accomplished by pressing the square button in Showdown, which is a bit limiting when you compare it to the trick stick in V3 that dedicated the entire right analog stick to fancy move options. In terms of accomplishing tricks, things fall close to the way things worked in NBA Street Volume 2. It's harder to make cuts to shake opponents with the gooey analog nub - the directional pad may be the best way to go. You can move your players around with either the analog nub or the direction pad. When it comes to actually playing the game, things did get a bit watered down for PSP. Showdown is definitely a stylish basketball game. And all of this spills over into the actual gameplay in a graceful way. All the slick and 'streety' menus, fonts, and music are here as well, reminding you of the lineage that this game comes from. Uptown has this cool-looking cage enclosure with visible trees in distance that provide a great sense of depth. Some of the locations you'll hit like Venice Beach and The Cage really push to capture the environments they're based on.

The Showdown's player models, color palette, shadows, and life-like animations are impressive feats for the handheld. But that's OK because there's a ton of background detail that's present, more that I expected. The action is fast, clean, and perhaps most importantly, addicting.Īll those rich lighting effects that were accomplished in NBA Street V3 didn't quite make it into Showdown. Seeing behind-the-back passes or a monster dunk in the middle of heated game is still a heart-stopping moment on the small screen.

If you have a small amount of time to play your PSP, the mini-games here are ideal. What it misses in terms of scale and features, it makes up for in novel ideas like Shot Blocker, a hot mini-game. As a zany three-on-three arcade hoops game that's all about showboating and beating your opponent in the most unsportsmanlike like way possible, Showdown delivers a solid experience worth playing on PSP.

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