All-Pro Football 2K8 Review (Xbox 360)

Rarely do I fit into any product's target demographic as well as I do into that of All-Pro Football 2K8, the new historical-superstar-based football game from 2K Sports. First, the game appeals to football lovers with a passion for the game's history. Count me in. (I've always added great players from years past, like John Elway and Walter Payton, to modern NFL games.) Second, it appeals to anyone who wants an alternative to games juggernaut Electronic Arts' Madden NFL series, or is annoyed with the NFL. (Also me.) Finally, the game's aimed squarely at fans of the old NFL 2K series or its pinnacle, ESPN NFL 2K5, which I consider the best football game ever created.

So when I say that I like this game, but I don't love it, that could be all you need to know.

The history
From 1999 to 2004, NFL 2K was a football series with cool innovations like online play and TV-like presentation. In 2003, the game's name became ESPN NFL Football. That game, as in years before, received great reviews. But Madden NFL 2004 sold much better and was given a display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The next year came ESPN NFL 2K5. Desperately seeking market share, and having already invested in most of the game's technology in years past, 2K Sports cut the price of the game to $20.

It didn't topple the market leader, but it helped. Madden 2005 outsold ESPN NFL 2K5 on the PlayStation 2 by a big margin: 4.46 million copies to 2.04 million. On the Xbox, though, it was very close: Madden sold 1.45 million copies to ESPN's 1.41 million. (These numbers are taken from vgchartz.com.)

ESPN NFL 2K5 was only made for the PS2 and Xbox. But EA also published Madden 2005 on five other platforms. So Madden's final margin of victory over NFL 2K5 was well into the millions of sales.

Yet EA still felt threatened enough to procure an exclusive license from the NFL and NFL Players' Association for several years. (Both licenses matter: Tecmo Bowl, the only football game that actually belongs in the Hall of Fame, had just an NFLPA license.) Just to ensure its spot in hell, the company also secured exclusive rights to NCAA football and the Arena League.

2K didn't sit on its thumbs, though, seeking out the only recognizable faces left: old-school superstars. Three made the cover: Jerry Rice, Barry Sanders, and John Elway, but several more of that caliber are in the game (Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Dick Butkus, and Walter Payton, to name a few). The result is All-Pro Football 2K8.

The gameplay
All-Pro Football 2K8 will feel immediately familiar to fans of ESPN NFL 2K5. Like Madden or NFL 2K, it’s a sim game, meaning it seeks to approximate real-life football.

The biggest difference in All-Pro 2K8 from other games is the pace. Plays in 2K8 unfold a bit more slowly than they do in Madden, and probably more slowly than they did in 2K5. It's likely done in the name of realism. As in real football, large chunks of time run off the clock between plays. However, Madden moves briskly between plays not to be unrealistic, but for the sake of fun. At times, I found myself annoyed with 2K8's presentational touches, though you can always just hit "A" a lot to skip them.

Another difference is the addition of legends to the game. In most sports games, despite arcane and specific numerical rankings, it can be hard to tell the rookies from the stars on the field. But the Hall of Famers in this game―especially the gold-level players―really do play like Hall of Famers. With the right pass rusher, for instance, you can put some real heat on the quarterback. (That matters a lot in 2K8, as quarterbacks become wildly inaccurate when they aren't set.) Not only that, some players have specific animations, like Walter Payton's scissors kick in the open field. Good times.

There are some differences from NFL rules, such as the ability to send multiple offensive players in motion, that are small enough to make you wonder why they bothered.

Another difference is All-Pro's disaster of a new kicking system. It uses an analog stick, similar to swinging a club in a Tiger Woods game, except Tiger doesn't make want you want to run a cheese grater along a programmer's eye socket. I don't know what's worse: not knowing when to swing, or having your only feedback being a quick pop-up that says something like "Late" but disappears before you read it the first few times. It's garbage. As a result, I had a lot of short kickoffs and didn't even try a field goal. That's a problem, though I guess I might figure it out eventually.

The presentation
All-Pro Football 2K8, like the Xbox version of its predecessor, has full-video highlights at halftime and the end of games. Unlike ESPN 2K5, there is no really-short studio show or post-game interviews. If you care, you're a dork.

The game also features a real-time news ticker at the bottom of the screen when you're connected to Xbox Live, an idea "borrowed" from Madden. I found it distracting and immediately turned it off. The score is always on the screen during gameplay in the form of a bright red bar. This was also annoying, but I couldn't find a way to turn it off. (It doesn't get in the way of the play ever, but it takes up a lot of space.)

The programmers made some very bizarre interface choices. Expect to get lost in the menus a few times. I lost changes to my created team about three times when I couldn't figure out how to exit the menu system. (Two problems: the button I used to bring up the menu couldn't make it go away, and making a different menu selection brought up not a, "Do you want to save?" box, but an "Are you sure you want to lose your changes?" box. Yes = lose your changes, no = you're still stuck in the menus.)

One major controversy that has emerged with the game's presentation. That is the inclusion of both a) O.J. Simpson and b) a team called the Assassins, whose logo is a large knife. Even worse, the game's fictional stadiums sometimes incorporate celebratory animations. Anyway, there's video on the Internet of someone scoring a touchdown with O.J. Simpson while a member of the Assassins (since you can put any player on any team), followed by a gigantic Assassins mascot behind the end zone making an overhead stabbing motion. I kid you not. 2K is saying they didn't mean for that to happen, obviously. The first thing I thought of when I saw there was an Assassins team was that O.J. was in the game, though, so I don't know how they missed that possibility.

The graphics
All-Pro Football 2K8 has been criticized for its graphics, but I have absolutely no idea why. Well, I sort of do―the game lacks the over-the-top lighting effects common to the current era, Wii nothwithstanding. But it has fine graphics.

The game looks very nice in high-definition, and the animations, while imperfect, are smooth and look pretty realistic. The graphical detail on the players is astounding. Try zooming all the way in on a player's face some time in a replay. I could make out crow's feet on Floyd Little's face. Also, player's helmets and uniforms will get scuffed up over the course of a game, and no, it's not always in the same place. Even crazier, I zoomed in on Little on a play in which he merely stayed back to block. While blocking, his eyes swiveled to follow the play, and he even blinked a few times. Awesome! The one problem is that some legends look more like themselves than others.

If you watch the game in slow-motion replays, you'll also see the ball act in physically improbable ways before a catch, for example, just like in every other football game, but I never noticed it at full-speed.

The sound
Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe, two fictional characters who announced previous NFL 2K games, return for All-Pro Football 2K8. Unfortunately, as in Madden, many of the lines are repeated from years prior, though it sounded like they've been re-recorded. The announcers don't announce legends any differently than they do generic players: Deacon Jones gets the same canned comments as everybody else.

The music in this game sounded all right the first time, but quickly grew annoying. The game's sound effects, though, are fantastic.

One nice touch is frequent cutaways to players talking to each other, on the sideline or in the huddle. I enjoyed one memorable exchange between teammates Rice and Bart Starr:

Rice: I'm gonna be hot today. I can feel it!

Starr: You already hot!

The end
ESPN NFL 2K5 raised the bar higher than any game that had come before it. All-Pro Football 2K8 doesn't improve on that game so much as it revisits it on the new generation of systems. Unfortunately, that brings with it next-gen downsides, such as price-gouging. (The game is $60, and a menu choice for a highlights editor is actually a commercial for a highlights editor you can buy over Xbox Live.)

Personally, I'm a big NFL fan, and the loss of the license was a bigger drawback than I'd thought it would be. If you want to use a specific player, you have to make room for him on your team, and if you want to face a specific player, there's not really a fast way to find which team he's on. I did get to spend one game beating down Archie Manning, though, which is almost as satisfying as cheap-shotting one of his sons in Madden. (One plus, as Patrick Hruby of ESPN noted, is that appearing in this game has helped some old-time players financially, something the actual NFL and NFLPA are loathe to do.)

At first I thought this game would have real staying power, but the lack of any consistent identity on the teams hurts it in the end. It's fun, but I can't recommend it unless you're a 2K loyalist or desperate for a current-gen football fix.

We've all done it, except not

Michael’s Si—I mean Michael Vick—is obviously going to be suspended. The only question is for how long.

In case you think I’m getting ahead of myself, check out this article on ESPN.com.

I can’t really summarize it in a way that will fit here but also capture the story, so do read it. Let’s just put it this way: he was indicted for some kind of involvement (it’s not really clear exactly how involved police think he was) with a merry band of dogfighting enthusiasts who have no souls.

I don’t want to focus on the grisly details and potentially poison the jury pool, not one member of which will ever read this blog. In summary, though, if a run-of-the-mill dogfight isn’t gruesome enough for you, the Vick mansion allegedly had everything you were looking for: post-fight dog drownings, dogs being hanged, and at least one dog which was slammed against the ground until it died.

Vick faces up to six years in prison or $350,000 in fines. I’m sure he’s hoping for the fine.

I’m no legal expert, so I won’t guess how this will play out in the courts. I have been following the NFL for the last quarter-century, though, and it’s clear that the new commissioner doesn’t place a whole lot of value on jury verdicts. I mean, why wait when you can suspend somebody now?

Take Pac-Man Jones. In the famous strip club episode that cost him this season, Pac-Man is said to have known a shooter that paralyzed one person from the waist down and wounded two others. I don’t know the human-to-dog exchange rate, but it’s clear a lot of dogs died here. No one’s ever called me an animal lover—though Michael Vick would—but at the minimum, this crime is at least close to what Pac-Man’s accused of, and many people would say it’s much worse. So what’s the NFL to do?

I think Vick has to miss at least half a season just for the allegations, if Pac-Man can lose a season for the same. I wouldn’t think it was crazy if he lost two years. (Keep in mind, Pac-Man is not guaranteed reinstatement when the year is up, either.) It’ll be interesting to see what happens, though, as Vick is a huge star for the Falcons and the league. At first I thought Nike might lobby heavily for Vick, hoping he can play until something is proven. But the more I think about it, the more sure I am that Nike can get out of their contract with Vick. At this point, I doubt they care if he’s ever in another commercial. As for the Falcons, as a friend of mine pointed out, I’m sure they wish they’d kept Matt Schaub.

All-Pro Football 2K8 first impressions

I picked up the much-anticipated (by me) All-Pro Football 2K8 today for the Xbox 360, and I've had time for two games. Here's what I've noticed so far:

The teams: My first question about this game: does it come with ready-made teams, or are you forced to make your own? Answer: the first thing you do in this game is make your own team, and then the game fills in the rosters of the other squads. I pored over the various inconsequential uniform and logo choices endlessly, eventually annoying myself. You have a ton of options for making teams, and you could probably rip off an NFL team pretty well. But if you're going to do that, why not just buy Madden?

The nice thing is that you don't have to make all these little decisions-the game comes with ready-made team mascots along with matching stadia, and the default options are pretty good. Check that, the default options are impressively good. I don't know about you, but when I see a fictional pro team in a movie or TV show, I almost always think that the uniforms look ridiculous. But these look pretty professional, without being total NFL ripoffs. And they look like they'd work together in a league, if that makes any sense.

The players: All-Pro Football 2K8 lets you assign eleven legends to your team. The players are tiered, though, so you can't actually overload on all-timers. You get to pick two gold players, three silver players, and six bronze players.

Gold players are the absolute best: Joe Montana, Walter Payton, and cover stars Jerry Rice, John Elway, and Barry Sanders. I picked Payton and Elway. These players aren't ranked on the 100-point scale like Madden; instead, they're given a list of attributes, and some lists are longer than others. Elway's, for example, are cadence, fourth-quarter comebacks, scrambler, speed burner, and rocket arm.

Silver players are a step down, but still pretty sweet. Some examples are Randall Cunningham, Ickey Woods, and Roger Craig. I chose Karl Mecklenburg, Jack Youngblood, and Herman Moore.

The bronze level has some nice names, but also some "sure, you can use my likeness for free" guys like Bubby Brister and Andre Ware. My bronze players were The Fridge, Albert Lewis, John Taylor, Joe Jacoby, Jesse Sapolu, and Carl Banks.

I eventually switched Banks for Dexter Manley, since I usually play as a D-lineman and besides, who doesn't love Dexter Manley? It was pretty fun just trying to pick guys, and I'm sure I'll do it again very soon.

One interesting note is that the way players are tiered, you can almost re-create the late-'80s 49ers offense. Montana, Rice, Craig, Tom Rathman, Taylor, and Sapolu can all play on the same team.

Graphics: All-Pro Football 2K8 goes in a different direction from many recent games, and I'm grateful. Instead of aiming for ridiculously nice screenshots but occasionally choppy play, 2K8 looks terrific in motion, with some of the best animations I've ever seen. From a straight staring-at-the-screen standpoint, it doesn't look like a huge leap from ESPN NFL 2K5. However, you're only thinking that if you haven't played 2K5 in a while. (That, and 2K5 was ahead of its time.) 2K8 looks very crisp in high-definition.

That's not to say there aren't those occasional graphical glitches, like guys walking through each other, that we see in every single sports game.

Gameplay: This game plays a lot like ESPN NFL 2K5. A lot. It has a new kicking mechanism, which I'm pretty sure sucks. (You have to swing the stick forward as the kicker swings his leg...but it's tough to time, and not really that fun even when you get it right.) But most everything is the same, which is cool, but may not be the leap you're looking for.

All right, I'm off to play some more. Expect a full review later this week.

All-Star Game misconceptions

1. The All-Star Game should count for something. Wrong! I started paying attention to the All-Star Game in 1997, my first year as a baseball fan. I'm a National League guy, all the way. I don't really know why; I guess it's because the Rockies are in the NL. Oh, and since the pitchers have to bat, they're real men, unlike the pansies in the AL. (I was thinking about that the other day, though...what if the batter got a free swing at the pitcher every time he was beaned? Seems fair. Would we still think of Roger "100% commitment, 20% of the time" Clemens as a tough guy?)

Anyway, I watched just about every game, I think, for the next few years, and the NL lost every time. Just depressing. It's never fun being the only human alive who takes something seriously. So in 2002, the managers used up all their pitchers (see No. 2) and the game went into extra innings, so Bud Selig decided just to end the game with a tie. I was pretty annoyed, but was heartened by the news that it wouldn't happen again, now that home-field advantage in the World Series was on the line.

Well, I don't really watch the games any more, so I guess it didn't matter. And, oh yeah, the NL still never wins.

(As for home field advantage in the World Series, MLB should just grow up and give it to the team with more wins. However, they seem more concerned with giving both teams (both leagues, really) an even shot. If that's the goal, there's an easy solution. Personally, I think the big edge in the postseason isn't home-field; it's getting the chance to line up your pitching staff, especially if the other team doesn't get to do that. So they should just give teams more days off before they start the Series.)

2. Everyone should play. You know, I'm over that 2002 game by now, but why did they have to rush through all the pitchers anyway? Who cares if some reliever from the Pirates gets to throw to one batter? (And on the other hand, if you do have to use everyone for some reason...isn't it cool to watch a game where the shortstop gets to pitch? It's those quirky, really unlikely things that lend baseball so much of its charm, so why ignore them?)

3. Being selected for the game is irrelevant. Also wrong! It is irrelevant for most of the players, yes. But All-Star selections and appearances are one of those easily-recited stats that always get brought up in Hall of Fame debates. Thus, it can be important for a guy whose career makes him a borderline candidate. It probably shouldn't be, but it is, so snub discussions are actually valuable in certain instances.

4. It's a crime that every team has to send a player. Man, what is everyone's problem with this? Baseball makes a slightly-silly rule just so the kids growing up in, I don't know, Denver, can have a rooting interest. Is that really so awful? Besides, it's the lone guy from some crappy team who usually ends up being the spare and not playing. Also, he gets mocked on ESPN for a couple weeks. Like it's his fault his teammates suck!

Tiny things that amuse me

1. Antoine Walker was robbed at gunpoint at his home yesterday. (Fortunately, police say there were no injuries.) Does it amuse me when millionaires get robbed? Though I did root for Robin Hood as a kid, I'm going to have to go with no, I'm not amused by that specifically. Just hang on a sec.

Right now, though, who's got Walker's back? His agent, Mark Bartelstein:

"He's OK," Bartelstein told The Associated Press. "There was a robbery. It's a scary thing. It's a terrible thing. He's trying to get himself back together. Police are there and he's getting it taken care of."

That's thoughtful enough. Walker's team, the Miami Heat, is concerned, too. Um, I think?

The Heat were aware of the incident, a team official said, but had no other comment while they attempted to gather facts.

Good for them! It would be reckless for the Heat to just assume Walker was an innocent victim in the whole robbed-at-gunpoint-in-his-home incident. I know it's nit-picky, but why even have a PR department if they can't throw together a, "Our hearts are with Antoine Walker and his family tonight, and we're grateful no one was hurt," in an evening? That is seriously one of the most heartless things I've ever read.

2. An Associated Press report on SI.com says that Barry Bonds doesn't care whether Bud Selig is at the game when he breaks Hank Aaron's career home run record. That's not really the precise impression I got from the quotes, so I've lifted them:

"Does it matter to me? I think it's just terrible the way it's gone down, that's all," the San Francisco slugger said Monday, a day before the All-Star game.

"That's up to Bud, it's not up to me. I'm going to do my thing anyway. I have to go out and play for my teammates. That's up to Bud. Bud is his own man. And I respect him. Whether Bud shows up or doesn't show up, I'm going to still play baseball that day," he said.

That's a pretty mature way to handle it, to be honest. I don't know how you could be in Bonds' shoes and not be hurt by all the mystery of the commisioner's plans. I'm not losing sleep over it, but I'm just saying.

Anyway, I love the classic "please don't sue me" quote in the story, and I love that people think they still need these, though I'm sure I'd do the same:

Revered in his own ballpark, Bonds is usually booed on the road, with fans suggesting his accomplishments are tainted because of steroids allegations.

I guess it's just funny to read about fan's "suggestions", and also the idea that you can't just say that Bonds used steroids. It's not like his privacy and/or rights weren't already horribly violated with that leaked grand jury testimony or anything. (Bonds reportedly said he didn't know he was using steroids, but then I guess that comment was from the grand jury testimony, too.)

(And Cap, if someone wrote that Bonds used steroids, and Bonds sued that person, could the writer use the widely-reported-but-theoretically-secret grand jury testimony as evidence that Bonds did indeed use steroids? Just curious from a legal perspective.)

I didn't mean to turn this into a Bonds post, since we'll discuss him plenty in the coming weeks, but his comments on Hank Aaron were interesting, too:

"No one can determine when that's going to happen, and Hank has a life, too," Bonds said. "You could go weeks. You expect this man to just travel all over this continent for weeks?

"It's just not fair to him. That's just all it's about. If you can predict what you're going to do and he can get there and like OK, bam, it's going to be this day and this time, that's a different scenario.

"Hank's a great ballplayer. He's the home run king. He will always be the home run king in our hearts. We respect him. We love him. Hank, if you want to stay home, stay home, brother," he said.

Rashard Lewis: One of the Greats

So I really am sorry I don't write, but there's just nothing going on. (Suggestions are always welcome.) I'm considering starting another blog for when there's only baseball. I could talk about the iPhone or the Transformers movie or something. Anyway, with that out of the way...

News flash: NBA teams are still doing the craziest things sometimes. The latest example is in this report from ESPN.com, which says the Orlando Magic are about to offer Seattle SuperSonics forward Rashard Lewis a contract.

Don't know who Lewis is? That's fine. But that's also my point. The team's not offering Lewis just any old contract-they're offering him the max contract possible under the salary cap. That puts Lewis, a lanky 6-10 forward who's a good scorer but not near a great one, in the same salary stratosphere as legends like Tim Duncan and Shaquille O'Neal.

Will he actually get paid exactly as much? I don't think so. The NBA cap has all kinds of weird exceptions and rules to it. But it's still absolutely crazy money for someone who's done little to show he deserves it. If he's not famous, he won't move tickets. Okay, he's not a star, but what kind of player is he?

Lewis scored 22.4 points per game last year, a career high. He's tall, and he's got range out to three-point land, but all he can do is shoot. He's not known for his defense, though he has some skills there, and he's a pretty poor rebounder for his size, grabbing just 6.6 per game last year. (But that was a marked improvement over the two previous seasons, when he'd scored just over twenty per game but grabbed in the area of five boards a night.) It's my opinion that six rebounds will fall into the hands of a 6-10 man who's on the floor as much as Lewis; so he's good for 0.6 rebounds on pure skill night in and night out.

The most bizarre thing about this whole affair is that the Magic are giving a maximum deal to a guy who won't even be the best player on his new team. That's Dwight Howard, an absolute beast of a 21-year-old who's a ferocious rebounder and fast-developing inside scorer. Fortunately for the Magic, Howard seems to be a fantastic guy, and he even helped recruit Lewis to Orlando. So this shouldn't result in chemisty problems, just salary cap problems.

What worries me the most is that this is a perversion of a long-developing trend, where the best player on many teams gets maximum money, even when he's not a maximum player or doesn't even give maximum effort. Now the best two players get that kind of cash? (Howard's still on his rookie deal, technically, but he's due for an extension this summer.)

If you're even going to have a maximum allowable salary, only the greatest players should get it, in my book. Who in the NBA deserves it, and why? Duncan, obviously. You can say Shaq, even though he's old. There's another tier of players who are close, but haven't been as great as those two-guys like Kobe, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James. I'm okay with them getting max dollars, too.

But how many teams can defensibly pay two players with top contracts? I could only think of two for sure. The Miami Heat, with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, are the obvious choice. Though Shaq's on the decline, he still brings a ton of publicity to a team, so he makes sense in business terms. And Wade's a still-rising young star with a ring and a Finals MVP trophy. The Denver Nuggets could sensibly pay two guys in Carmelo Anthony and Iverson. Iverson's one of the league's premier attractions, and Carmelo's good and young enough to command max money, easily, on the open market, even if he hasn't quite cracked the top echelon of stars. The Phoenix Suns are close, with the aging Nash (who I don't think has a max deal) and either the brute force of Amare Stoudemire or the unique versatility of Shawn Marion. Once upon a time, the New Jersey Nets' duo of Vince Carter (as a ticket-seller) and Jason Kidd (as the reputation of a player) could command that kind of cash, but I don't think they deserve it now.

But yeah, it's the Orlando Magic that took a stand and said, "Our next-best guy is just that good." It's tough for fans-you don't want your team to cripple itself with bad moves, but it's better than a team that won't shell out the bucks. The ESPN article tries to make the contract sound dangerous because the team might have to give up rights to Darko Milicic to make it work. Yeah, there's a real loss.

But I'm reminded of the Denver Nuggets a few years ago, when they finally decided to try. Yes, they had a great young piece in Carmelo, but then they started handing out obscene money to Marcus Camby (who's pretty close to deserving it), Andre Miller (no), and Kenyon Martin (ditto). They ended up with a flawed and nigh-unfixable core, though they lucked out when the Sixers decided they needed fewer all-time greats in the locker room. The real test is whether this move lets the Magic compete for a title over the next several years, or whether they can't get over the hump, now that they've siginificantly limited their options. We won't know for a few years, but I can't help but think this move is a mistake.