All_Pro 2K8

I picked up All-Pro 2K8 for the 360 last night. I can give limited impressions at the moment since I only played a couple of games last night and spent a little bit of time in practice mode (since I lost my first game 24-7).

Right now, the thing that jumps out the most about the game is the animation and the POTENTIAL for it to offer a very realistic, sim-like football experience. I say potential, because it is impossible to tell from my extremely limited playtime.

The biggest negative for me right now, aside from the immediate thought of it not looking like a "true" next game visually, is that you can ONLY play this game with teams you create. I believe you can create a total of 8 teams. But even if you go to Quick Play, you can only control teams you yourself have created. You can make your opponent any team in the game (from whatever default teams have been generated by the CPU, with random legends in them), but you cannot choose to play as them. I find this very odd and needlessly restrictive. If I just want to jump into a quick game with two randomly created teams to just have a change of pace from my created team, I can't do that. Again, I do not know why, but it has the potential to get annoying down the line. If my friend comes over to play the game, we can only play against each other with the teams I have created and if I only have one, he will need to create one before we can play. That is pretty weak.

Some quick impressions:

- Player faces for legends are hit and miss. Jerry Rice looks great. Shannon Sharpe does as well. Dan Marino sort of looks like himself . . . sometimes. Player models are a bit lean, but I'll take lean over too muscular or fat.

- Stadiums also seem to be hit and miss. It appears that the developers definitely spent extra time on some more than others. My created team are the Miami Sharks, and the Sharks default stadium (the one that goes with the Shark theme) looks decent, with a big shark model in the end-zone and a water fall, but it does not look anywhere near as polished as say, the Firebird's stadium, which looks really, really good. I've only really seen these two for now, but the difference in quality, detail and atmosphere was immediately noticeable.

- My initial reaction when I started my first game was that it did not look as great as I hoped. That might be also attributed to the fact that I played my first game in my Sharks home stadium, if I would have played in the Firebird one I would have been far more impressed initially. Once I got the game started I still was not sure what to think. After playing Madden for 3 years and being away from the 2K series, everything was just so different. Player models looked weird at first, the gameplay felt foreign (yet distantly familiar) and I did not feel comfortable with the controls (I kept trying to play like Madden, using the right-trigger for speed burst, etc.). By the 2nd half of the game, I began to adapt and the experience started coming together and was very enjoyable. I never felt completely comfortable the entire game (didn't know how to do hot routes, offensive or defensive adjustments, and I had a tough time reading the defense), but that will all come with time.

- I do not like "Field Pass", which periodically shows you "on the field" cut-scenes of your players and you can hear them talking. I do not like the player voices (especially when Dan Marino speaks, since I know what Dan sounds like and this generic voice does nothing but kill the illusion of Dan being on my team, since it sounds nothing like him). I think I am going to turn player voices down to zero in the options screen.

- I saw many awesome animations. QB animations are just fantastic. Their dropback and follow through looks great. Depending on how far they are throwing you get different wind-ups. Marino even drops back and while scanning his receivers, he taps the ball with his left hand. And he has a quick release!! Awesome to see. I tried throwing on the run with Marino and he threw up a duck! That was great as well. Some of the best animations are of the WR's running their routes. No game has shown WRs running their routes as realistic as this game. They plant their foot to make cuts, shift their momentum and it looks fantastic!! Running animations are also great. In 2K5 players ran too upright and it looked odd. 2K8's running animations are probably the best I have seen.

- Sidelines are very busy with players, referees, coaches, cheerleaders, stadium staff and media. Looks great from a distance. Up close, a lot of those media personnel and stadium staff look absolutely awful. That's to be expected since normally you do not really see them up close, but during a coaches challenge last night they showed the referee in the review booth and close to the booth was a media person and he looked worse than a PS1 games. I am serious. They should not have used than angle because it looked really, really bad. Referees in general look a little odd in cutscenes and come off a bit robotic. I like that they are on the field though and can get involved in the play.

- Gang tackles are back and make a huge difference in the game. Seeing them put a smile to my face, after 3 years of single-man tackles in Madden.

- The game plays similar to 2K5, but a lot more solid. In 2K5 I used to play as a DE on defense because I felt like I did not have much control over my linebacker (what I usually like to play on D). In 2K8 I can definitely see myself playing as a LB again. Controls are solid. Running game is great, with fantastic o-line/d-line interaction. RB's "get skinny" to fit through small holes and defensive players engaged in blocks can reach out and try to bring a runner down.

- I saw many animations recycled from 2K5. There are still PLENTY of completely new animations, but everytime I would see an old one I would wish that this game was running on a completely new engine, instead of a tweaked 2K5 engine. Those old animations still look great, but I guess I just wanted to see ALL new animations. Too much to ask for, I know. I'm just getting greedy.

- The half-time show and post-game show is back and is very similar to 2K5's only without the ESPN presentation and the "virtual" Chris Berman. I still love watching highlights of the game I am playing.

- One of my biggest problem with the game is the commentary. Dan and Peter from 2K5 are back. They were pretty good in that game (mostly because I had never heard them before, since 2K5 was my first 2K football game). But now, I really do not like their commentary. They do not sound "real". They sound like actors, and unfortunately, that is what they are. They try to be funny, but it does not sound like real football commentary. It does not help that I have been playing MLB: The Show on the PS3 and that game's commentary is just light years ahead of all other sports games. Oh well, they are still better than Madden's crappy radio announcer. I know Dan and Peter have MANY fans, so I'm going to hear it from them . . . sorry. :\

That's what I have for now. I've only played a couple of games and spent some time in practice mode. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this one, since my enjoyment of the game goes up the more I play it.