The game is free to play, but once your character gains experience on the court and begins to level up you’ll have to break down and start spending money to remain competitive. The game has two sets of currency, points and bills. Points are earned on the court and are used to purchase clothing and change the look of your baller. Bills are used to upgrade stats and skills and to purchase attribute-enhancing gear. However, bills are not earned in the game, but rather must be purchased using real-world cash. Here’s where the game is designed to make its money. Your baller will reach a point where you’ll be consistently competing against players who’ve twinked their balers by spending some cash. If you want to keep playing and have a chance to actually win a game or two, then you’re going to have to break down and buy some bills.

However, there’s a good chance that you’ll never reach that stage. There aren’t a lot of people playing the game as of the writing of this review, and finding a game can be difficult. This issue is further compounded by the fact that players in the game are almost downright hostile to newbies. You’ll see games for low-level ballers named “no newbies” that will boot you the second you try and join with your new baller. On some evenings you’ll spend some time in the lobbies trying to hook up with a game, only to give up in frustration and move on to play something else. Even starting your own game doesn’t seem to help as players will pop in, see that you’re a level one player who they don’t recognize, and then pop back out … and sometimes you’ll just sit in the game lobby by yourself without seeing another soul drop by. I guess that the game’s few players don’t realize that the game will eventually be killed by a lack of players and that they are shooting themselves in the foot by not being friendlier to new players. Sierra really needs to do something about this situation or one after another new players will be alienated and simply stop playing until there are no more new players left.

With Freestyle Basketball you’ve got a simple and relatively slow-paced street basketball game with cartoony graphics – this is not a game for players looking for over-the-top sports action. It is a game for the collector, the twink who plays simply to show off his or her gear to other players. If you’ve got extra cash to burn to buy the gear to make yourself the coolest kid on the block, then it may be your kind of game – as long as you bring along a few friends so that you’ll have someone to play at the start. Everyone else should just stick to games like NBA Street.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 63%. Freestyle Street Basketball is for those who enjoy outspending their opponents to buy the coolest gear and not so much for gamers just looking for a fun street hoops game.

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