Now that I’m back into my regular schedule of work and gaming, after a couple weeks traveling, I’ve been spending some time with All-Pro Football 2K8. I was a big fan of the 2K5 football with its online leagues and seasons, and it is nice to have the similar game play again. I’ve been playing Madden since then, but I prefer the 2K football games because I think the running plays are more realistic. In Madden it always feels like I’m playing pinball bouncing of everyone, but in APF 2K8 the runners actually get tackled if they bump into someone. There are a few things I think Madden does better, like using a trigger for the turbo instead of tapping A. It is hard to get your turbo charged up and then do a big dive or shoulder charge in APF 2K8, but then it is probably more realistic that way too.

I really like the way teams are created in APF 2K8. Since 2K can’t use real NFL teams they have they got over 200 players that have retired from the NFL that were great back when they played. The first thing you do when the game starts is pick 11 of them to form your team around. You get 2 that are Gold players, 2 that are Silver, and then 7 that are Bronze. Once you pick these Pros for your team you then get to customize the rest of your team. For each position you can pick if you want the players to be run or pass focussed, or balanced. Then, you can pick your team name, logo, uniforms, stadium, etc. They have preset options for all of that if you don’t care and you just want to play, but I had a lot of fun getting my team just how I like it. I like the approach they took. My team is setup around Walter Payton and I’m running over teams like crazy. I got a Silver blocker for him who hits like a train huge running lanes for me. It is nice that they give me the option to make my Offensive line run focussed which makes my game plan even better.

There are a few things that bug me about APF 2K8 though. None of them are really distracting, but I’m going to point them out and hope they get fixed before next year. First off, the kicking is not very easy. It is somewhat forgiving if you kick poorly, but it is really hard to kick well. Instead of using a power bar to determine how far you kick you have to swing the right thumb down to start the kicking motion and then time the forward swing to correspond with the kicker’s leg. For kickoffs and fiend goals this is not to hard, but punting is pretty hard for me because you have such a quick turn around. I’m getting better at it with practice, but it is pretty rough at first. The other thing that bugs me are that the announcers only have a very small handful of things they say. I’m about half way through a season and I’m to the point where I’m starting to get tired of hearing them say the same thing over and over. I’m pretty sure at least part of the things they say came strait from the NFL 2K5 game because they sound really familiar. The final thing I find irritating is that the computer AI does more spin moves in a quarter than I do in 3 or 4 games. I expect a running back like OJ to spin when appropriate, but not to string 3 or 4 of them back to back into some super cyclone frenzy. Plus, I’ve never seen a no-name safety catch an interception and then try to do a spin move as he is returning it in real life, but it has happened with both of the INTs I’ve thrown where they get a little room to run. Please, keep the moves somewhat realistic. Sure, it is a video game and not all of it will be realistic, but don’t make it unrealistic either.

The graphics in APF 2K8 are just ok in my opinion. There is a lot of cool detail in each player’s faces making them look like their real life counterpart, but there are also a lot of jaggies during cut-scenes. The actual game play looks fine, but it is nothing spectacular. It is cool to see the different stadiums they made. Since they are not real NFL teams they made the stadiums really unique to each team. I did notice that one of the dome stadiums with a closed roof still had rain which clearly is an issue, but I did not really mind playing in the rain so I ignored it. They should have caught that kind of thing in their testing.

I realize it seems like I’m being pretty hard on APF 2K8, but really I am enjoying the game a lot. It is just that these little things would not have been that hard to deal with, I don’t think, and they would have made the game even better. If you’re into football I’d recommend giving APF 2K8 a try. It has better game play than the Madden series the last couple years and the online leagues are a lot of fun. I still plan to check out Madden this year, but if it is just another rehash of the last 4 years I’ll stick with All-Pro Football 2K8.