NFL Street 3

by Ouroboros
November 28, 2006 00:00 AM PST

As you can presumably tell from the leering gold-toothed stooge on the cover, NFL Street 3 puts style on a level field with skill, and strategic smarts are secondary to arcade reflexes.

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If Madden NFL 07 is a football work week, then this is the Saturday pool party. No pads, no referees, no kicking, just full-tilt football action.

Weekend Warriors

PROTIP: They can't tackle what they can't touch. Don't just sprint; master the timing of your jukes and strong arms.

That's the theory, anyway, and it works well enough to be an enjoyable, if remarkably cavalier, approach to the game. Players can jump like they're on springs, the debris that litters each field is fair game, and large sections of wall turn out-of-bounds stumbles into wall-running feats of athletic insanity, with even the largest players lurching through airborne somersaults with apparent ease. What's more, style and gamebreaker triggers let you add flair and power to any movement, from jukes and strong-arms to passing and tackling. Taunt an ineffectual defense with the ball, high-step it to the end zone, slam a bullet pass through interseption attempts, or unleash a super-human rib-cracking tackle.

Pigskin Powers

Fans of the previous games will be happy to hear that gamebreaker stunts remain powerful, but no longer reduce plays to foregone conclusions at the push of a button. Some are still a bit strong, like lock-on insta-blitz quarterback sacks, but the whole is more even than it used to be. Unfortunately, the AI is permanently out to lunch, and since games are played to a score rather than a clock, most solo matches wind up feeling abbreviated, sucking life from the standard issue respect-obsessed career mode. How excited can you get about upgrading your team when there's not much challenge to begin with?

PROTIP: Grab the icons scattered about to find footballs, credits, gear and more.

So, like just about every other sports title, the real fun comes from playing against a pal, and the variety of modes go a long way to growing the game some legs. In particular, the Playbook Elimination mode demands real thought to excel at, since any time a play doesn't result in gained yards it'll disappear from your available options.

Ain't No Beauty Queen

For all its scattershot inventiveness, NFL Street 3's graphics don't keep pace. There's a decent array of street arenas, from parking lots to weed-choked back alleys, with collectibles and bonuses scattered around, but most look grainy and hastily constructed. At least the players look alright, even if they do have a penchant for intersecting each other, and appear to have had their pads surgically implanted under the skin. Aurally, NFL Streets 3 is pretty shoddy, with barely intelligible mealy-mouthed plain read voice-overs and some godawful tunes.

Taken in small does, NFL Street 3 is fun enough, but despite comic book flourishes and interesting interactive field ideas, it just can't hold a candle to Blitz's polish in it's current form. Fans of the series will dig it, but this is one footballer that's unlikely to score any conversions