Reviewed: April 1, 2001
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Midway
Developer
Eurocom
Released: February, 2001
Genre: Sports
Players: 6
ESRB: Everyone
4
4
3
4
3.2
Supported Features:
Midway has been making electronic games for as long as I can remember. Their basketball titles have reached legendary status and include such arcade and home console hits as NBA Jam, NBA Hangtime, and NBA Showtime. It's no surprise that Midway would eventually bring their own unique vision of hoops to the PlayStation 2. What is surprising is how uninspiring this new game is, especially in light of the power at their disposal and their previous track record.
NBA Hoopz (that's the L33t spelling) doesn't try to complete with the mainstream basketball games currently available. There are no teams or season play like EA's NBA Live 2001, and Hoopz features all the exaggerated gameplay you've come to expect from Midway's version of the roundball. Crazy special effects and impossible airtime make for amusing arcade-like play, but if you are looking for a basketball simulation with realistic AI, rosters, franchise modes, and stats then look elsewhere.
Hoopz offers 3-on-3 basketball action where you pick your three favorite NBA players and go up against the computer or other human opponents. If you have ever played NBA Showtime then you've basically played Hoopz. The games are virtually identically except for that third player who is neither necessary nor helpful. In fact, you will probably find the extra player is more of a hindrance than anything, often getting in the way of an otherwise exciting game of 2-on-2.
For those of you that play hoops at the gym, in the park, or in your driveway, chances are you've played all sorts of variations ranging from 1-on-1 to 3-on-3 or maybe even more, and you know that the strategy changes each time you add a new player to the team. With more players comes greater opportunities for advanced offensive and defensive plays. Player interaction and cooperation allow you to formulate strategies and set-up plays; at least in real basketball. NBA Hoopz abandons this concept and reverts to its NBA Jam/Showtime roots leaving your third player about as useful as a cheerleader.
Even though Midway had the power of the PlayStation 2 at their disposal this game looks and plays like any other game from their NBA line-up. The AI is unrealistic and sometimes overbearing, especially in the defense. If you start to pull ahead in the game the AI goes into overdrive to close any major gaps in the score.
NBA Hoopz offers several mini-games, but these seem to be present only to serve as appetizers to supplement the weak main course. Games such as 2Ball, Around the World, Hoopz School, and 21 may offer a few more hours of gameplay, but it seems these were included more to keep up with the features of other basketball games on the market rather than offering any real substance to this one.
NBA Hoopz uses digital or analog control and playing the game is just as easy as it's always been. The menu system is a bit clumsy and I was very surprised to find that when playing with two humans you cannot setup the game at the same time. The menu is designed to force each person to pick their players before the other person can create their team. Things get even worse when you try to Create-a-Team. Considering that the interface in past Midway NBA games has always been fairly intuitive and easy to navigate one must wonder why they bothered to even change it.
Once nice touch is that you can customize and tweak a variety of settings for each of the players in Hoopz. This allows you to round out your team quite nicely by distributing the skills to the various players to create the perfect team.
If you've seen Hoopz at your local arcade you already know it runs on a Voodoo graphics system so the graphics are pretty impressive. Since the PlayStation 2 easily surpasses the capabilities of a Voodoo you would expect the graphics to at least be on par with the coin-op counterpart.
I was surprised and saddened to find the graphics pretty weak for a next-gen system. Hoopz offers a lot of flashy graphics at the beginning to lure you into a false sense of "Wow - this is cool!" but after you spend some time playing the game you will start to notice lots of minor graphical flaws and even some game-crippling errors due to poor collision detection. While the graphics are certainly better than other Midway NBA games on other platforms, they are nowhere near the quality one would expect for a PS2 title.
Even more surprising is the horrible texture maps for the players. With games like NBA 2K1 on the Dreamcast and NBA Live 2001 on the PS2 featuring photo realistic players and faces you have to wonder why the players in NBA Hoopz look so bad. Some of the players are almost unidentifiable. They also seem to be constructed from far fewer polygons than players in other sports titles giving them a very blocky look.
Sound effects are weak and often very buggy. Players talk smack but there is little emotion in the delivery of the lines. The commentary is weak and often delivered too early, late, or not at all. Even normal game noises seem to be muted or non-existent. This could be a bug related to the camera angle since noises are louder and more plentiful in the instant replays.
The music from previous Midway NBA games has always rocked, but Hoopz doesn't offer one catchy tune. Instead, they opted for some easy-listening pop music that blends into the background and is soon lost and forgotten.
Sports games have the luxury of offering unlimited gameplay opportunity. The career mode and mini-games pad the replay value a bit, and with a multi-tap you can have up to 6-players making NBA Hoopz a possible party game. The bottom line is that the game is just so weak your friends probably won't want to play it anymore than you will.
NBA Hoopz is nothing more than NBA Jam with a PlayStation 2 facelift, and a poor facelift at that. If you already have NBA Showtime, Hangtime, or Jam then stick with those for now and wait for something better to come along to fill this genre void on the PS2. Extreme arcade basketball is fun but NBA Hoopz isn't.