NBA 2K25 is one of the most anticipated games of 2024, as NBA 2K fans are hoping this can be a return to the golden days of the franchise.
When it comes to the gameplay, NBA 2K25 will introduce some important new features, while making significant enchantments to existing ones, which is a good step in revitalizing the series.
But will these changes be enough to make NBA 2K the great game it once was? Let's find out!
The Three Pillars of NBA 2K25 Gameplay
The NBA 2K25 gameplay stands on three important pillars, authenticity, customization, and accessibility.
This year's title aims to deliver the most realistic basketball experience in video game history, making the title incredibly immersive but also entertaining to play.
To do that, NBA 2K25 will introduce new gameplay features, while also making improvements to existing ones. These changes will impact, the defense, offense, shooting, dribbling, and the game AI.
A New Drible Engine!
After 15 years, NBA 2K is changing its dribbling engine, making it one of the biggest changes done in the past decade.
The new dribble engine will generate motions from the NBA footage, by using the ProPlay feature, which was also vastly improved. This will make the player's dribble movements incredibly more realistic, and add more authenticity and immersion to the game.
A Significantly Improved ProPlay Feature
As mentioned above, the ProPlay feature is getting a lot of improvements, even if they aren't massive ones.
More than 9k new animations were added to the game, with new dribbling, shooting, rebounding, passes, dunks, and off-ball animations. All of these animations were taken from NBA game footage and then added to the title.
So the ProPlay feature still serves the same purpose, it just includes a plethora of new animations that will make the gameplay feel more realistic, authentic, and immersive.
After all, signature moves are something very important in basketball, be it a shooting move or a dribble one, so having this being as accurate as possible goes a long way towards making the game more enjoyable.
Major Changes to Shooting
In NBA 2K25, there are a lot of new shooting features that will heavily impact the player's experience, and play a huge role in making NBA 2K25 more accessible.
Most players will have a signature shot, which is a signature move players usually do before entering their shooting motion, like the crossover Harden performs before going to his famous step-back.
Players will be able to perform a signature shoot by holding the right stick up, getting a move that goes directly into that player's jump shot. This is yet another feature that makes the gameplay more immersive and adds another layer of authenticity.
NBA 2K25 will also introduce the shot canceled feature, which will allow players to cancel their signature shot or any type of shot mid-animation, and immediately transition to another move.
The shot timing feature is also coming to the game, and it determines how the player's timing will affect shots in-game. This feature allows players to choose the risk-reward that shot-timing has.
There are five different shot-timing options, based, real player %, low risk-reward, normal risk-reward, and high risk-reward. In Real player % shot-timing won't have an impact, as everything is about making smart shots with players who are great at making those types of shots.
Low risk-reward will make your shot-timing have a small impact, meaning that if you release the button too early or too late, it will affect the chances of your shoot going in, even if just a little.
In the Normal risk-reward option your shot-timing will have a bigger effect on the outcome of your shots, while in high risk-reward the window to hit your shot is quite small, but if you hit it the shoot is going in no matter what.
After that, we have the custom visual cues feature, that lets players set their visual cue at any point in the shooting motion, making it way easier for players to know when they have to release their shot. This feature is more geared towards new players.
But that's not all, as we still have the Pro Stick Rhythm shooting, which is yet another feature that aims to make the gameplay more realistic and immersive.
With Pro Stick Rhythm shooting, players will need to hold the pro stick, and once the player reaches its shooting set point, they will need to push the pro stick in rhythm with the player shooting motion, completing it when the ball is just about to leave the player's hand.
This is a high risk-reward shooting option, but it's one that once mastered will become automatic, and help players take their shooting percentages to new levels.
A More Realistic Defense
A new defensive system will be introduced in NBA 2K25, called the defensive cutoff system, which allows players to change the direction their player is moving to quickly slide laterally, and cut off an offensive attack.
If timed perfectly, players can bump into the offensive player, making him fall back or even lose his dribble. Players can choose to quickly attack the ball handler, or even fall back to give him space.
This feature gives the on-ball defenders more tools to deal with dribblers, making defense more dynamic.
NBA 2K25 is also introducing major changes to the contest system, with the height of players impacting shots, making it much harder to shoot over the taller players, and also taking more into consideration the defensive ratings of players.
An AI Revolution!
The AI received some major improvements in NBA 2K25, in all aspects of the game, offense, defense, court spacing, coaching, and AI difficulty.
AI players will be much better at finding an open spot and spacing the floor, as the spacing system was massively improved. The AI will be much faster to react to double teams, rotations, and countering players' game plans, especially on higher levels of difficulty.
Learn 2K
As mentioned further above, accessibility was one of the pillars of NBA 2K25, and that's where Learn 2K enters.
Learn 2K is a new tutorial game mode, that will help players understand the basics of NBA 2K, but also provide advanced tutorials for veteran players. It includes mini-games, practice, a plethora of drills, and much more.
It's very similar to the TopSpin Academy, in TopSpin 2K25, as it helps players get familiar with the game, and is a great way for beginning players to not feel overwhelmed.
These are all the gameplay changes coming to NBA 2K25.
What do you think of these changes, and are they enough to revitalize the franchise? Let us know in the comments below.
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