Backyard Basketball 2007 as with other games in the sports line comes with an updated roster of all star players and courts. The game is popular with children because it features some of the greatest basketball stars as kids themselves who go in an all out season to claim the number one spot in the backyard basketball tournament.

My first impression of this game was; wow the graphics suck. The opening movie seems to be highly compressed making the colors fade and pixilated - probably because the developers were running low on memory for the PS2 DVD and playing this game on an HDTV doesn’t help.

Although the graphics are bad the gameplay is relatively addictive and I found myself playing for hours without notice. My favorite part of the game is that you get to choose the team logo and your teammates'. I am a Clippers Fan so I chose Shaq, Dewayne Wayde, LeBron James and Yao Ming as my team.

As there are only so many NBA stars in this game it surprised me that there’s a season mode. Players will be placed at random in each team you face - chances are you will probably face all the NBA players featured at least 3 times in season mode.

The controls feel heavy when playing this game as the players don’t move as fast as they should, even when running. Also while dunking the characters take their time and executing the right button combination for special moves seems to fail most of the time.

The only sound effects are the kids talking during the game the announcer and a couple of sound effects in the background. A lack of music during gameplay makes it somewhat dull, with the only music found during the menu selection in the opening screen.

Every time you beat a team in season mode you will unlock a cheat code that will let you give the players big heads, big feet, etc. This hardly seems worth the effort as you cannot customize your characters or unlock new characters in the game. There are a couple of mini-games but they only consist of HORSE and Practice. Since when is Practice a Mini-game?

The biggest drawback of this game is the AI. When players loose the ball they just seem to stand there until the ball reaches someone. There a few bugs in the game but the major one that I found is when you take the ball away from someone at a certain angle, the ball disappears for at least 10 seconds and the players just stand around.

Closing Comments:
Backyard basketball is the #1 kids sports franchise in the nation. The game features sluggish controls and bad graphics but I guess we can’t blame the developers because the PS2 cannot handle much. Although the game play is addictive it can be dull without music in the background.

Game Play: Addictive and easy to get used to for both Kids and Adults. 10/10

Graphics: Bad if playing on an HDTV, OK if you’re playing on a standard TV. Either way it still looks pixilated and blurry in most parts. 3/10

Sound: Ok voice-over from the announcer but very few sound effects and no music. 4/10

Controls: Sluggish controls and very difficult to execute the special moves. 4/10

Life Span: Basketball never gets boring especially when you can customize your favorite team. Go Clippers. 8/10