NBA 2K games have always packed in a ridiculous amount of animations, but shots tended to play out the same regardless of contact.Visual Concepts producer Rob Jones says that after playing a handful of games you should get the hang of it. In my short time with the game, I was still accidentally making a dribbling move instead of hoisting up the rock when I saw an opportunity to shoot. For players who developed muscle reflexes for the Shot Stick, getting used to the Control Stick is going to require an adjustment period.This year when you see an opportunity for a quick basket at the rim, you can mash the A and X buttons to throw it up. Visual Concepts also changed the alley-oop controls.Since players no longer need to master a different minigame when posting up, it should be much easier for players to transition between attacking the basket and playing with your back to the rim. Twirling the right analog stick to spin works in both states. For the first time in the series, the controls for a dribbler and a player in the post mimic one another.This should inject more variety into the pass catching animations and hopefully make some balls more susceptible to interception. The game makes the appropriate pass at the time you press the button, and the intended receiver makes the appropriate catch based on when the ball is arriving. In NBA 2K13, Visual Concepts has separated these systems. This made it hard to jump the lane and cause a turnover on defense because if you weren’t in the passing lane at the time of the pass the system wouldn’t register you as a factor. Previous NBA 2K games married the passing and catching systems, which meant that the moment you made the pass, the catch was determined as well.If you want to guarantee your player throws a bounce pass, you can hold the left trigger and press the pass button. This year if you take the ball down the middle on the fast break and see a guy filling the lane you will make a nice bounce pass instead of an overhead pass that is easy for the defender to pick off. Visual Concepts revamped the passing so players are smarter about which passes they make.Holding down the left trigger turns the Control Stick back into the Shot Stick from last year.This allows you to set up a guy up the way you would on a real court. Now you can cross over, go behind the back, or between the legs.
Isomotion didn't allow players to do anything standing because it was tied to your movement stick.Visual Concepts says this new control scheme opens up a plethora of new moves they didn’t have before. Dubbed the Control Stick, the right analog stick now works for dribbling, shooting, post play, and passing.This year NBA 2K takes one of the few good pages out of the Live playbook by revamping its right analog controls to include dribbling moves. It turns out gameplay producer Mike Wang may have learned a thing or two while working on the NBA Live franchise for EA Sports after all.These replays only trigger if the player making the dunk is wearing Nike+ Basketball shoes. This year Visual Concepts has added a few new flourishes, like Nike+ Basketball integration that shows you how high a player jumps during a slam-dunk replay. The broadcast replays are also unrivaled in sports games.The conversations flow seamlessly, they discuss off-court activity and statistics like real-life commentators, and their cadence rises and falls with the intensity of the action. The dynamic commentary I heard between Steve Kerr, Clark Kellogg, and Kevin Harlan proves they are still the premier virtual broadcast team.In NBA 2K13, the team made an effort to seamlessly integrate ambient actions to make sure that players are doing things they would actually do in real life during dead ball situations. The transition of seeing LeBron James make one of his signature dunks, but then stumble aimlessly around the court like a zombie as a quarter came to a close was jarring.
In past games Visual Concepts felt that after the whistle blew the presentation would often break the sense of immersion with flaws in the way players acted and reacted.Here are 25 things we learned during our meeting: NBA 2K13 is building off a solid gameplay foundation, but that isn’t preventing Visual Concepts from shaking things up. We’ll touch on all of this at later dates, but first and foremost we’re sharing details on our hands-on gameplay session.
At a recent visit to the Game Informer offices, Visual Concepts spilled the beans about everything NBA 2K13 has to offer, including My Player, Association, online plans, and a few new surprises.