All-Pro Football 2K8
- August 14, 2007 13:44 PM PST
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After EA and Madden locked up the exclusive NFL license, we all figured it would be a one horse race for the video football game crown. But hang on: there's another contender in the mix. But can 2K Sports overcome the lack of the NFL license and deliver a compelling football experience? The answer is...sort of.
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Did All-Pro Football 2K8 do enough to please this diehard Madden fan? Not really. But it showed some good hustle.
Winner of the ugliest-box-of-the-year award, All-Pro Football 2K8 is developed by Visual Concepts, the same developer responsible for the NFL 2K series, which capably held its own against Madden several years ago.
The opening sequences offer a promising vision of what a football game can be without an official NFL License. You are immediately required to make some entertaining and tense decisions as you assemble the 10 core players of your dream team from hundreds of NFL legends, including Jerry Rice, John Elway, Barry Sanders, and Mike Singletary. The game even includes the ultimate slashing tailback, O.J. Simpson.
The game requires you to draft three different calibers of playersgold, silver, and bronze. The rest of your team's roster is then filled with generic players. You can swap in and out legendary players on your team at any time.
Interestingly, All-Pro Football eschews ratings of any sort. Instead, the game uses a series of special skills and abilities, some of which are latent and some of which can be activated during a play. This is an interesting approach, but ultimately feels disappointing and overly abstract.
Yes he's over 40 years old but we'd still pick Jerry Rice to be on our rec league football team
One other concern I have is that for gamers used to the Madden series, the play-calling depth feels fairly limited. After playing the game for six hours, I felt like I had exhausted all the defensive and offensive possibilities. With this said, the controls are responsive and the on-field action is fast-paced. One final gripe: the season mode is also fairly limited. But at least it's there.
The upside to these caveats, however, is that All-Pro Football is ideally suited for playtime with your friends. The gameplay is less complicated, and the ability to pit your all-time fantasy team against friends via online offers some delicious smack-talking opportunities.
Because they don't have the benefit of the NFL license, All-Pro 2k8 faced a steep uphill challenge. But the game does a surprisingly good job of going up against Madden '08. It isn't going to unseat the king of all video football games this season but that's the beauty of sports: there's always next year.
Pros: Presence of all-time legendary players is very cool.
Cons: Limited depth will disappoint Madden fans; graphics are average
It should be obvious by now that All-Pro Football 2K8 didn't unseat Madden 08 from the throne. Find out the reasons why Madden still reigns supreme in our review! As Abe Simpson would say, "Now, Johnny Unitas ... there's a haircut you could set your watch to! It doesn't matter what uniform he's wearing: John Elway can sling a football Because there's no NFL license, you have to play with made up teams, so get ready to suit up as the Cleveland Fire Chickens
