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»Harlem Globetrotters: World Tour
"AIR BALL."
Sports games have not been well-received on the DS. The only remotely
playable ones include True Swing Golf, Tiger Woods, Madden '07, Mario
Hoops, and a couple others. The primary reason why sports games don’t
really work on the DS is because they either force the 3D or because
they don’t even bother making it good. Harlem
Globetrotters: World Tour is certainly the latter - it looks, sounds,
and plays like it should have been a Game Boy Advance launch game.
Harlem Globetrotters plays like most GBA sports games do - an over-head
style in two dimensional visuals. Two teams play hoops against each
other, each team sporting two players. Movement is done with the
directional pad, while A is used for jumping/throwing into the basket
and B is used for passing to the other player. It worked alright in the
16-bit era, so logically, it should do fine on something as advanced as
the Nintendo DS (well, in comparison to the SNES/Genesis). But it
turned out pretty disastrous - not only because it’s not very well-made
or well-thought out, but because it seems like a lazy GBA port.
Every time I play this game, be it on Hard, Normal,
or Easy, it more or less amounts to bumping into the opposing player with
the ball until you can eventually take the ball and run away with it.
Assuredly, the only way to get a ball in the hoop is to either throw it
from up close or to slam dunk it. But no matter what, I do not see any
way to throw a basket without having to jump first (because all
basketball players try to avoid making a basket while on the ground,
right?). It’s just an incredibly weak attempt by DSi to make another
crappy licensed game that turned out even worse than one could
anticipate.
The visuals are so incredibly weak. I mean really, there’s nothing
about them that even remotely warrants being on the DS. Poor animation,
a retro-looking audience, and mid-gen GBA quality visuals. It certainly
would have gotten a higher score if it were on the GBA, but that’s not
the case now, is it? I've got to give it a LITTLE credit though, for
the neat scoreboard on the top screen. Just wish it were more varied.
Less than being out-of-date, the sound is simply unmemorable. All you
ever hear are the cheering and cameras in the audience, the screeching
of your shoes, the ball being bounced or passed, and the ball
interacting with the hoop. Would it have killed them to include a song?
Maybe even the Harlem Globetrotters theme song?
The replay value is okay when looked at it without examining the game
itself. Decent number of unlockables, multi-player, etc. This would be
better suited in a game that gets more than a three in gameplay,
however. The low quality of this game ultimately kills most replay this
game could have. Overall, Harlem Globetrotters: World Tour would be
merely looked over as a mid-gen GBA game, but as a mid-gen DS game, it
needs to be reamed to Hell and back.
Article by: Alttp
Posted on: Jun. 20th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Pretty bad. Not intuitive, and even when you figure out how to do everything well, it's still pretty tiresome and lame. |
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Graphics |
| It'd be okay as a mid-gen GBA game. We‘re in the mid-gen DS era, thank you. |
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Sound |
| No music, and all you ever hear are miscellaneous sound effects. |
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Replay Value |
| It may be a sports game, but what incentive is there to come back to this shoddy game? |
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