It's been almost two years since the last iteration of the NBA Street franchise, Volume 2. While still a great game overall, NBA Street Vol. 2 wasn't quite the revelation its predecessor was. But now, with the release of NBA Street V3, it's clear that the developers at EA Sports Big clearly haven't been loafing in the off-season. The addition of online play (on the PS2 and Xbox) and a compelling single-player career mode, as well as improvements to the basic game mechanics, make NBA Street V3 the new gold standard of arcade-style basketball games.

NBA Street V3 is about the improvisation of blacktop basketball, not running set plays.

For those not as familiar with the series, the core game mode in NBA Street V3 is three-on-three, full-court, street basketball. Although every NBA team is represented by a partial roster of players, make no mistake--this is blacktop basketball. You won't be running any high pick 'n' rolls or making backdoor Princeton cuts for layups. Instead, you'll be using your slickest ball handlers to break ankles and drop dimes off to your finishers for rim-rattling dunks. You'll need to string together a combination of jukes and shakes, punctuated with a made basket or an alley-oop slam in order to rack up trick points and build up your gamebreaker meter. Once you've got that meter filled, you can execute a "gamebreaker" shot or dunk, which will add points to your score and also take away from the opposing team's score.

The developers have made some core changes to the basic gameplay. The most significant tweak is the introduction of the "trick stick." You can execute a different kind of juke move with the ball by tapping the right analog stick in any of eight directions. You'll have access to more-powerful jukes and shakes when you use the trick stick in combination with the turbo buttons on the controller. You have to be careful with your jukes though; if you try to do some of the fancier moves with a player who has a weak handle, you may end up tripping over yourself and turning over the ball. The trick stick is a vast improvement over past NBA Street games, wherein you were required to press one or two trick buttons in order to execute a juke. Using the right analog stick not only allows you quick access to a larger array of tricks, but also makes the game feel smoother and less robotic than the previous trick system. It's worth noting that the PS2 version of the game uses the four shoulder buttons for turbo, whereas the Xbox and GameCube versions of the game only use three, making these versions of the game slightly less complex. Their placement also makes playing the game on these platforms a bit more awkward than on the PS2.

There's a helpful display at the top of the screen that shows you how many special moves you've got strung together. Once you're satisfied that you've built a long enough string, you can wait for a teammate to pop high into the air for an alley-oop or you can take your own shot to finish off the combo. The combos that garner the most points are the ones that actually manage to fake out your opponents, as opposed to the maneuvers you do just for show.

There are other nifty tricks you can pull off that involve passes. By combining turbo buttons and the pass button, you can humiliate defenders by throwing the ball off the backboard and back to yourself or to a teammate. You can even toss the ball off an opponent's foot, chest, or face. These special passes can also be strung into your combos for maximum trick points and for building up your gamebreaker.

Three-man gamebreaker dunks are new to the NBA Street series.

Gamebreakers have also been changed, to make them a more skill-based affair. Instead of simply toggling the gamebreaker on once you've built up your meter, as in past NBA Street games, NBA Street V3 lets you head to the rim and attempt two- or three-man combination dunks. You can use turbo buttons and your trick stick to execute midair moves on the men as they pop up into the air, including switching the ball between your legs, covering your eyes, or tossing the ball over your shoulder. Just before the first player dunks the ball, you can pass it off to a teammate popping up behind you, who can then execute more moves before he passes it off to the last teammate for more tricks. If you can build up enough points with your airborne acrobatics, you can make the gamebreaker worth more points to your team. The standard gamebreaker is worth just two points to your team while it subtracts one point from your opponents. With practice, however, you'll be pulling off breathtaking three- and four-point gamebreaker dunks. Yet it's very possible to get too greedy with your gamebreaker and fail the dunk entirely, which means no points and usually a turnover.

Aside from the major changes with the trick stick and gamebreaker, everything else that made the NBA Street series so much fun remains intact in V3. You can still get up high in the air on defense to reject dunks and jump shots using shot blockers like Shaq and KG. The juke moves, while powerful, are not unbeatable, as a well-timed trick countermove will allow you to steal the ball away. The underlying strategic balance remains: you need to weigh the benefits of scoring quickly against trying to string together a long, difficult combination of tricks to build for a gamebreaker. There haven't been many tweaks with defense, although you can now attempt steals and blocks with the right analog stick. Those who prefer the old style can still press specific buttons to do those things also.