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| The Entertainment Review |
| Genre: Sport Developer: Visual Concepts Publisher: 2K Sports Reviewed By: Dale Kulas |
licensing agreements since they are no longer active players) as possible to appear in their game. In total, over 200 players appear
who are divided into three rating tiers (Gold, Silver, Bronze). Some of the many names go from way back yonder like Johnny Unitas,
Walter Payton and Bart Starr to legends of recent decades like John Elway, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Emmit Smith, Barry Sanders and
Troy Aikman.
You customize your team with 11 star players, and the rest of your team is filled out with artificial players. There is an in-depth team
editor where you can trick out your team's uniforms and logos and pick from a wide variety of interactive arenas to compete in. You can
create players, but star players only who take up one of the eleven star slots. It is a bummer there isn't even a name editor if you want to
try and name a team to get them to match their NFL counterpart, but apparently 2K wants to keep the nostalgia feel going in full motion
for All-Pro 2K8.
Since this is 2K's next-gen debut, there aren't a whole lot of extra features. There is a practice mode, quick exhibition game, and a
season mode. There is no franchise mode, which could have been awkward to pull off when playing with already-retired players, but a
story mode or some other type of fleshed out single player mode is what 2K8 needed. The awesome Crib unlock system from the old
games is completely absent, along with First Person Football.
There are only a couple minor extras to be found, like a celebration editor and a Highlight reel creator, however when selecting to
activate the Highlight Reel, an Xbox Live marketplace menu pops up asking you to actually pay $5 for the feature. I was appalled at the
notion of paying $60 for this game and when trying to access one of the in game features it asked me to pay for more money. I could
understand if this feature was released as downloadable content 2-3 months after the game came out, but this is just going way too far.
As far as game play, 2K8 plays very similar to NFL 2K5. If you liked that game play a lot, than have no fears since game play runs almost
exactly the same. There are a few small tweaks, but for the most part this is the same great 2K football game play I grew up with.
Graphics don't look all that upgraded either, which is disappointing since the developers had three years to step up the visuals. There
are a few small things I noticed that stood out like rain bouncing off helmets and rainy and snowy fields getting especially torn up
throughout the game. Not to say that the graphics are bad, because 2K5's graphics were definitely a couple years ahead of their time, I
was just expecting a bit more of a next-gen leap in visuals.
Aurally, there is nothing too remarkable, a bunch of random rap and hip-hop tracks compensate the soundtrack (plus an awesome
Rush remix!), and the stellar duo we know as Dan Stevens and Peter 'O Keefe return to commentary to call the action (and recycle many
lines from previous games).
Overall, All-Pro Football 2K8 is a solid first entry from 2K Sports, but it comes a year too late as the Madden series is already plowing
away at full stride on the 360 and PS3. Considering it arrived with a bare feature set and asking for the full $60 retail price, I just cannot
recommend a purchase. If you really missed your 2K football, I'd recommend renting this one just to get your 2K football fill, and holding
out on the purchase until next year's version when they flesh out the overall game a bit more.
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