With the basketball season only a month away, we sat down with Visual Concepts to talk about the new features coming to its hit basketball series.

In addition to getting my hands on the current-generation version of NBA 2K14, we chatted with Visual Concepts executive vice president Jeff Thomas and producer Rob Jones about the changes coming to presentation, gameplay, online, and Association mode. Here is what we found out:

PRESENTATION

GAMEPLAY

Last year the studio overhauled its right analog stick control by migrating the dribbling moves to the stick and hiding the shot stick options behind a left trigger modifier. In the quest to make the controls as intuitive as possible, NBA 2K14 removes the need of holding a modifier button to take a shot.

With this newly dubbed Pro Stick controls, the full suite of dribbling moves are still at your disposal just like last year, but if you hold the thumbstick in a particular direction it activates the shot stick. It takes a few games to learn the boundaries between shooting and dribbling, but after fooling around with a player in practice mode I grew more comfortable with this approach. I'm curious to see if this leads to accidental shots in the heat of the moment, however.

Holding down the left trigger now activates a suite of flashy no-look and bounce passes for skilled point guards like Chris Paul and Ricky Rubio. Simply push the direction of the player you want to pass to on the right analog stick while holding down the trigger and your skilled point guard will deliver a stylish dish worthy of a highlight reel. If you try using the Pass Stick with a less-talented passer don't expect the same results.

On the defensive side of the ball Visual Concepts added a deny system that improves player positioning as well as ride and holding. If you really want to stay between a player and the ball as he moves through the key you can hold the left trigger, which makes your defender really get up on top of him.

The "call for pick and roll" button has moved from the left bumper back to the B/circle button, where it started a long time ago.

While researching player data, Visual Concepts discovered many of its users aren't using the play system. Since plays allow you to be more successful, the developers wanted to expose them in a new way. In NBA 2K14, pressing the left bumper automatically selects a new play for you to run. If you want to page through play options, you can still do this with the d-pad.

In previous NBA 2K games, plays were normally run off of scripts. Veteran users could often see the play unfold early, anticipate what a player is trying to do, and take it away before it developed. The AI within the play system now has options and picks the right one based off what the user is doing. For example, if Ray Allen is supposed to curl off a double screen and you go over the top of that screen to try and intercept the pass, he'll either flare lower to get open or cut back door on you.

NBA 2K games never previously had a good system for rotating off pick and rolls. This year the dev team met with an unnamed coach to create a rotation system that reacts differently if a player is driving either strong side or weak side and pays more attention to the roller. Now defense helps to the guy that's rolling, not to the ball. This should open up the drive and kick game.

NBA 2K14 features a reworked blocking system that allows defenders to choose where to swat the ball instead of just going for the first place the defender's hand could intercept the ball. This allows players who perfectly time their blocks to deny dunks.

The defending animations feature a renewed sense of urgency, and overall the game feels much faster than NBA 2K13.