The last edition of NBA 2K had a rather invasive microtransaction model but also the new ProPlay system, which refreshed the game formula and helped generate a complete and exciting basketball simulation. We attended a press presentation dedicated to NBA 2K25 and designed to highlight the new features and changes made to the game recipe.
The guys at Visual Concepts (here is the review of WWE 2K24) have continued their work on the popular ProPlay mechanics, continuing to build on the foundations laid by its predecessor to give fans the kind of sensations that only a basketball game played at the highest levels can offer (here is the review of NBA 2K24).
The ProPlay system expands
Hosted by Gameplay Director Mike Wang, the event opened with a statement from Visual Concepts, who apparently intend to bring NBA 2K25 its biggest update ever in terms of animations, strategic possibilities and expressive freedom, with a view to creating a title that is deeply authentic in its feeling and, above all, highly customizable.
According to Wang, the introduction of ProPLAY radically changed the developers’ approach to creating games in the series, to the point of structuring their entire development process and tools around this new gameplay concept.
This year’s NBA 2K will build on the solid foundations presented last year and expand on them in every direction thanks to the use of a substantial amount of data and video clips from real NBA games. In short, the ProPlay system of NBA 2K25 will bring with it more than 9,000 new animations, including almost 3,000 related to the dribbling phases or movement in the construction of the action and a thousand moves dedicated to the unique shooting styles of the athletes of the most important teams in the American championship. In short, we could be faced with an authentic revolution in the way in which players on the court move, pass the ball and set up their maneuvers in both offensive efforts and in defensive situations.
The real impact of this generous amount of animations both visually and in terms of gameplay will have to be evaluated with the pad in hand, but it is tempting to know that the team has made further progress in this direction. Where the technical sector seems to have enjoyed some substantial improvements (we will talk about it better after a more concrete contact with the production), it is in the skeleton of the game and in its deeper functioning that the major innovations brought by NBA 2K25 are to be found.
The first and most obvious will concern the dribbling dynamics with what Wang himself defines as ‘the biggest change in gameplay in the last 15 years’, something that will significantly change the criteria with which athletes move on the parquet during matches. In essence, if until last year developers necessarily had to acquire the animations, manually insert them into the various potential situations and mix them together to guarantee a fluid and realistic look to the players’ gestures, from this year the new Dribble Engine is able to autonomously determine in real time what type of animations to reproduce in each circumstance, choosing from a library comprising tens of thousands of different parameters.
This completely eliminates the variable of human error in replicating the flow of actions and, thanks to the combined use of the consolidated ProPlay technology, it is possible to infuse the right personality to the NBA superstars. For the first time, according to Wang, it will be possible to instantly recognize the typical movements of basketball players of the caliber of Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, each animated on the basis of their own characteristics and relevant to reality.
We will also find an updated version of the Dribble Breakdown introduced last year that allowed, through sudden operations on the right stick, to perform quick acrobatics to hide the ball from the opponent in defense and project yourself to the basket. Again thanks to the changes made to the ProPlay system, in NBA 2K25 it will be possible to combine this technique with a new option of shooting on the fly in order to seamlessly pass from dribbling situations to more purely scoring ones and further expand your offensive baggage.
As if that wasn’t enough, since these are difficult movements to execute, the ability to cancel the jump shot animation has also been introduced to continue attacking the basket in the area or passing the ball to a better positioned teammate. All of this suggests a fluid and more complex experience than what we’ve seen in the past. Of course, it’s worth repeating, these are still concepts expressed only on paper since we haven’t had the chance to try the title first-hand but, at least judging from the brief tastes of gameplay related to the presentation, the final result seems to be of great impact.
Attack and defense
There are also new features on the shooting front, one of the most discussed areas of last year’s installment. The timing-based shooting system implemented in NBA 2K24 had given rise to a bitter debate due to the apparent gap it opened between newcomers and veterans of the brand: the reduced time window in which to correctly execute the maneuver made the game much more appealing to more experienced users and much less accessible for newcomers.
Instead, thanks to a robust customization menu, NBA 2K25 lets players choose how much help they receive when attempting a shot with a slider that ranges from a ‘Player Percentage’ preset (which bases shot completion percentages solely on the skill of the player being played at the time) to a ‘High Risk-High Reward’ preset that makes timing the shot even more difficult to master, but translates into almost guaranteed points once mastered.
The proverbial icing on the cake is the original ‘ProStick Rhytm Shooting’, a new system that allows you to take direct control of the player during the shot, abandoning the command assigned to one of the front buttons to adopt one linked to the right stick. In this way, it will be possible to charge the shot by pushing the stick downwards and unleash its power at the right moment with a sudden upward dash, in a movement that roughly replicates that performed by athletes on the field. The work done on the defense remains to be discussed, which, in a certain sense, represents the mirror image of what was said about the attacking moments.
The introduction of new options for building offensive maneuvers has pushed the developers to also modify the alternatives offered to users in the defensive and contrasting phases. For example, the mechanism for containing athletes in possession of the ball has been rethought (now assigned to the left trigger and contextual action on the stick) which acts as a counterpoint to the choices guaranteed by the renewed dribbling system and even the moments of contrast are evaluated by the CPU in real time to return more realistic and satisfying results than ever: correctly reading situations and learning the exact timing in contrasting tactics means drastically reducing the opposing team’s chances of scoring.
Even the interactions between the bodies of the players in aerial battles or in the marking moments have been revised, with the aim of making them as faithful as possible to what regularly happens on the NBA courts. The same goes for the artificial intelligence of the teammates, which seems to have been significantly improved to better manage the positioning and strategic decisions in the various moments of the match. Although the real balance of these new player supports is still to be evaluated, it seems that Visual Concepts has listened to the feedback of the fans and is looking for the best way to address an audience as transversal as possible.
In this regard, NBA 2K25 introduces the much-requested Learn2K mode, which through a massive compendium of lessons, mini-games, video clips, on-court tests and so on aims to teach novices all the fundamentals of basketball and gaming experience. This is undoubtedly one of the most desired features by the community that will allow budding basketball players to organically assimilate all the most important notions and veterans to train on specific aspects.
