Freestyle Street Basketball is not your typical basketball videogame. First of all, outside of a scant few practice modes the game is online only. Secondly, while most basketball games strive to be simulations of the sport or provide fast-paced over-the-top action, Freestyle’s gameplay is more akin to that found in basketball videogames twenty years ago. In fact, the gameplay is pretty much secondary to acquiring new gear and skills for your persistent character. It’s almost like an MMORPG game in that regard, with the battles with monsters replaced with 1-on-1, 2-on-2, or 3-on-3 games of street hoops. However, we live in a world where the action on the court is the most important thing to video ballers, so it’s questionable whether or not unlocking a new pair of sneakers is enough to keep you going… especially when you need to start putting up real cash to score your upgrades.

Let’s start by looking at the action on the court, because when you get down to it if the game doesn’t deliver there you’re not going to want to spend the time it takes to earn the cool gear. The first step is to create your character and select a position. There aren’t a lot of options for your look and clothing at this point, so you’re sure to find plenty of long lost twins on the courts. This is probably one of the game’s little motivating factors to make you crave new gear. There are three positions in the game, guard, forward, and center. Centers are more proficient at rebounding and short shots, guards are good ball-handlers and long range shooters, while forwards fall somewhere in between. Pick your position and it’s off to the tutorials.

The game provides you with some pretty basic training before sending you onto the courts, but then again the game’s controls are pretty basic. The entire game is played with the A, S, D, and F keys with your left hand and the arrow keys with your right. The arrow keys are for movement, so, yes, you’re constrained to moving in one of the eight primary directions. The letter keys are for your other actions such as shooting, passing, and blocking. There are some more advanced moves in the game, but they all use the same basic keys. For example, you may have to double-tap a key or hold an arrow down while hitting a key. If you’re serious about doing well in the game, though, you better have a gamepad that allows you to map key presses to the buttons as controlling a sports game with the keyboard just doesn’t seem to work quite right.

To give you a little chance to try out the basic moves after you’re introduced to them the game provides a series of challenge mini-games. These are poorly designed, though, and you’ll probably just rather take your chances out on the court. There’s no way to select the mini-game that you want to play – you’ll always have to start out at the first one and if you fail you won’t be able to advance. The goals of these games are pretty basic, but you may find them difficult due to the game’s controls. For example, the first game has you using the shot block button. A single player stands at the top of the key and shoots several balls in succession which you must try and block. However, the controls aren’t really responsive enough for you to get into a consistent groove and there’s no feedback as to why you missed a block. All of this doesn’t really help you on the court where you simply have to hit the same key over and over again while your opponent stands in one place. An offline game mode is really necessary here to get you used to finding all of the right keys in a game situation, but that’s completely missing from this game.

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