And 1 Street Basketball

We Brits aren't really suited to a street basketball game. Consider the evidence: we grew up using jumpers for goalposts, not string vests for baskets. Nobody ever slam dunked a pig's bladder in mediaeval times (they preferred to dunk witches in those days). And crucially, we're rubbish at trash-talking.

Now, if someone invented a mobile game that involved string-vest-wearing peasants insulting each others' mums while chucking a pig's bladder around, that'd be cool.

But street basketball? We'll pass. Inaccurately.

Gameloft won't be too worried about that: And 1 Street Basketball is clearly aimed squarely at the US market. But the publisher is putting it out here too for those of us who do like a bit of hoop-shooting fun.

And as you'd expect from the maker of Real Football, the game is a polished product with great presentation, and lots of thought put into making the gameplay work for mobile.

And 1 is a two-on-two basketball game that's strongly reminiscent of the NBA Jam and NBA Street series on console. You choose your two players from a parade of colourful characters, each with their own strength and weakness (examples: dunking, handles, defence, rescuing cats from trees without needing a ladder), and you unlock new characters by beating them in the Challenge mode, which is a neat touch.

Also good is the TV-style presentation, complete with pre-game player intros, slick replays, and commentators who pop up every now and again to praise your play – in fluent street-slang, naturally.

So how does it play? Pretty well. It's arguable that mobile phones aren't well suited to sports games, which by their nature tend to require four buttons for directional movement, and another two for actions (in And 1's case, passing/stealing and shooting/blocking). On a mobile keypad, that's often too fiddly.

And 1 suffers to some extent from this problem, but you can tell Gameloft has put some thought into getting around this. For example, you can chase down the opposing ball-carrier and try to steal simply by holding down the '5' key, rather than fannying about with multiple buttons. It doesn't always work – sometimes they push you over and leg it up the court – but it's very helpful when you're getting to grips with the game.

You do still have to play the game two-handed, which isn't ideal if you're playing on, say, a bumpy standing-room-only bus ride. But as mobile sports games go, And 1 does a pretty good job of avoiding the controls-rage that blights many titles (FIFA, for example) in this genre.

What else to say? There's three courts to unlock, each with their own distinct look, and the array of dunks, alley-oops and tricks provides plenty of chances to be flashy. The tricks have a useful purpose too, as they can help you get away from an opponent who's pressuring you. Of course, you can also just try to shove them to the ground if you'd rather play rough.

Bad points: the cripplingly slow loading times between games can be a drag, and I found it a bit easy to accidentally shoot from miles away, if you steal the ball suddenly and have already committed to pressing the '0' key to block.

But, all in all, this is a proficient b-ball sim that, though it may be mining a niche in the UK, is mining it very well.