This is street basketball, one-on-one or two-on-two, except the courts are fantasy locations or cribs as they like to call it in the hood. This is a Midway game that plays like the old NBA Jam arcade, except the controls are more complicated and the trash talking has been raised to a whole new level thanks to online play.

You start by creating a player and then you have to beat other NBA superstars and legends in story mode. Story mode is really just a series on one-on-one games with Chuck D from Public Enemy tying the games together in a video segment. The games have different rules like first to score 10 or 21 points wins, but the end result is the same. If you win, you progress against the next superstar and unlock alot of gear to outfit your character.

Just like the NBA Jam games, there's a great deal of dunking. Try to move around your opponent for the dunk or away from him for the three pointer. Rinse and repeat. There's also a super-meter that you will want to fill for unstoppable moves, which usually result in you winning the game. And if you guess that your supermove gets special treatment by the camera, you're correct. It will be in the highlight reel.

We give Midway plenty of credit for the production values. The players look especially great and have the details that their real life counterparts have. The textures are very nice. Even the basketball has the texture you would expect it to have. The courts are simply gorgeous. The music is the hip hop style, but there's no rap. The audio commentary feels very generic.

You can take your player online to compete in tournaments and acquire new gear. Unfortunately, the game is a little complicated in the controls. It's one of those games that does take time to master, but once done, you can really play basketball that feels very real and not just a run-and-gun game.