All-Pro Football 2K8

• Draft your dream team from football’s legendary players--over 240 of them.
• Choose your arena and pump up the fan base to create stadium energy you can feel.
• Next Gen Graphics feature thousands of new player animations—games come alive with sweat and steam, rabid fans in the stands and dynamic weather challenges.
• 2K Broadcasting – A new style combining TV broadcast with on-field commentary to put you closer to the action than ever before.
• 2K Beats – Kick it off with original soundtracks, mashups and remixes by an all-pro producer with legendary artists (TBA).

My thoughts after 45 minutes with it

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Sorry mods if this is inappropiate after having my other thread closed. If so, and I COMPLETELY undertsand, then close this one up as well and I won't bring it up again.

After posting this late last night I freaked. I mean, I really panicked. I signed an NDA and while I *probably* won't get busted I am still, for obvious reasons, a little worried about this. With that said, I'll leave this here and keep my fingers crossed. One thing I will add before pasting my original thoughts on this AMAZING game is that I am a diehard football video game junkie. It is what got me into gaming way back when Madden was first released on the Sega Genesis so when I say that this game is absolutely the greatest football game ever, I absolutely mean it! Of course, this is just my opinion but I truly believe that once this game is in everyones hands that, while there will be some folks that don't like the player models, the way the announcers talk or what have you, it will most definitely change the way football is done on consoles/PC's from here on.

Anyways, heres what I posted last night.


Sorry it took so long to get back here folks. I had a monster day and then went out to dinner, etc so sorry to keep everyone waiting.

Okay, first off, it is late and I'm beat. Second, I have an all day long photo shoot tomorrow and need to get to sleep. Having said that i'll get this party started and continue as time permits. Bare with me on this guys. It is busy time for me this time of year and the days ahead are booked solid but i'll give you all the answers I can over the next few days or so.

I only got to play the game for about 45 minutes. Thats because they had several people there and wanted to give some of the employees a chance to play. I imagine you'll start seeing other "reviews" or "previews" pop up. However, we were reminded on more than one occasion that we all signed NDAs and were expected to honor this.

60 FPS. Animations that DESTROY ANYTHING YOU HAVE SEEN IN A SPORTS GAME EVER! Incredible weather effects. A presentation that makes Madden's look like a complete joke (we already knew that 2K5 did this but just WAIT until you see what they have done with APF) Reports from the sidelines, great play by play and color (same guys from the previous games). The presentation makes you feel like you are actually watching a real game of football. 2K5 did this great but APF makes you go ****!

In the 45 minutes I played this game I did not ONE TIME notice ANY repeat animations. Sure, the QB dropping back and maybe the WR catching some times were repeated but everything else was truly remarkable to witness. Over and over again I was floored at what I was seeing. players getting pushed, tripped, slapped, falling over other players with killer collision detection. I did notice some flaws but believe me, it will not take ANYTHING away from the otherwise incredible experience.

When I played PGR on the 360 for the first time I was blown away and thought "This is next gen". Well, PGR now reminds me of PGR one the original xbox now. It seems like LAST gen LOL! APF's graphics, while fantastic (and MUCH better looking than what we saw in GI) it is the animations and tackling, running, the fumbles, gang tackles, refs getting in the way (yeah, this game had REFS ON THE FIELD! SHOCKING HUH) the players emotions (although they do look kinda funky at times) that REALLY are going to freak you out. Did I mention that all of this has dynamic lighting and runs at 60 fps?

It is all here. A TRUE football experience that will FORCE EA to get serious about Madden. Seriously, EA's Madden will get a MAJOR overhaul after they see what 2K has done. I did not, for even a SECOND, think about this game not having official NFL teams, players, stadiums. I immediately got lost in the game play. As corny as that sounds, it was true. It was Madden's first video game that got me into gaming in the first place so it is football that I look forward to every year (except these last few years because of the obvious) and APF has brought back this magic in a way that has to be seen to be believed. All without the NFL license. Imagine that .

The demo only had 2 teams to play ( RHinos and I swear I cannot remember the other team...I was too busy having my mind blown I guess) and only one stadium ( with a GIANT rhino that moved around when you scored) but you could change the time of day and weather. The rain and snow effects were unbelievable. Completely convincing and had a tremendous effect on game play. I had a running back go down with an injury and I watched the replay no less than 10 times. It looked THAT COOL! I mean, you could SEE him get hurt and how it happened. Plays that looked so real me and this guy I was playing were actually getting giddy. I was smiling like a 10 year kid and i'm in my 40's.

I know all of this sounds too good to be true but I don't give a **** at this point. I know that this game will come out and every single video gamer who truly loves the game of football will rejoice in what 2K sports have delivered.

It is 1:00am and thats all for now. Sorry guys but in 7 hours I have to get up and at them : )

Again, I know (and having gone back and read thru this) can understand it seeming a little over the top. And even may come off as a little over zealous (duh) LOL! and i'll be completely honest and admit that I may be *slightly* going overboard (easy to do once you've just played what is,IMO, and soon to be EVERYONES opinion, the GREATEST game of football ever to grace a console! But I can't help it fellas. I am truly STOKED!!!!!!

It is that good. just wait.

I actually feel sorry for EA. This will make the jerks at the NFL who were responsible for the whole "exclusive" BS take notice that they picked the WRONG COMPANY to do their game justice! Oh man. i almost wish I didnt play it. I have no idea how I can wait for this game now. kind of like Cartman when he was waiting for the Wii to be released I guess.

One last thing. I cannot be here everyday and answer a billion questions and don't get to freaked about it. I have way too many responsibilities so be cool. I'll do as much as I can.

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Tomorrow's a big day: I get my first glimpse at All-Pro Football 2K8 (expect a preview by tomorrow night), I meet Jerry Rice, and we tape the new Sports Anomaly Podcast. Spicy hot!

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May 1, 2007 - For some football fans, the pinnacle of video game football was ESPN NFL 2K5. A feature rich title with incredible play and television style presentation, the title that sold for a mere twenty dollars gained critical and consumer acclaim. However, with EA's acquisition of both the NFL and the ESPN licenses, fans worried that they would never see a 2K Sports title again. Well, at a press conference today, Visual Concepts and 2K Sports attempted to put these fears to rest. With a slogan of "Football Resurrected," and a claim that customization would be a large part of the gameplay, Greg Thomas, the president of Visual Concepts, showed off a teaser trailer for the upcoming All-Pro Football 2K8.

With the legendary wide receiver Jerry Rice as the centerpiece of the video, the trailer highlighted some of the features that will be in the game. That includes tip drills between defensive backs resulting in interceptions, one handed catches and balancing acts along the sideline. All-Pro Football 2K8 will ship with over 240 legendary players, including John Elway, Walter Payton, Johnny Unitas and Barry Sanders. The trailer also showed off some of the larger than life stadiums that these stars will play in. Two stood out in particular: one was a western theme, with a silhouetted posse of cowboys literally looming sixty feet tall over the football field. Another was a large number of bald eagle statues perched atop the stadium, as if the game was being played inside a bird's nest. While someone might be tempted to make a connection to the actual NFL teams from that trailer, the visuals of these huge "themed" stadiums went a long way to dismissing these thoughts.

When we asked Thomas how deep the customization of the gameplay would be, he replied that the development team wants to let players define what is going to make their squad a success, and that includes practically every aspect of the game. Gamers will have the opportunity to edit team names, player uniforms and even the cities that their teams will be able to play in. If players don't feel like tweaking a team at all, they can simply select one of the pre-built squads and leap into the game. As for the teams, Thomas mentioned that the squads will be comprised of a mix between legendary athletes that you choose and fictional pro players, although he didn't mention what the specific balance would be on a roster.

While Thomas couldn't release any specific details on the season or the number of teams that you'll play against, he did confirm that instead of a Franchise mode, there will be a Season mode in the game. Part of the reason for doing away with Franchise mode was because there was no specific history with the teams that would be included in the game, and since the players would have the ability to customize so much of the season they play and the teams they play against, it didn't seem to make any sense. He also managed to put to rest a question about player attributes in the game, mentioning that they won't change based on progress over the course of a season. For example, a fictional athlete won't get a better hands attribute if he catches a lot of passes, and the legends won't improve their stats either (They're legendary players anyway, which already makes them better than most of the guys on the field in that particular position).

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"This is about respecting and celebrating the sport of football." So says Greg Thomas, the president of 2K Sports development studio Visual Concepts and the man behind the studio's upcoming return to football, All Pro Football 2K8. Today, at a press event in San Francisco, 2K took the wraps off the game that football gamers have been speculating about for months with the help of one of the game's biggest stars, legendary NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice.
Before Thomas and Rice spoke about the game and their respective involvement with it, 2K showed a brief trailer featuring a sneak peek at just what to expect from the game when it's released later this year. As you might expect, practically all of the action in the trailer revolved around the play on the field. Passes thrown and caught, big-hit tackles, juke moves, and big runs--the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a first glimpse of a new football game. What set the trailer apart, then, was the settings and the players taking the field.
First, let's talk stadiums and uniforms. The stadiums look to feature some bold designs--we noticed at least three distinctive stadiums in the trailer. One featured huge fighter jets on display near the scoreboard and painted in the end zone; another had a massive bald eagle at one end of the stadium; and a third featured a number of cowboys in silhouette behind the scoreboard. From these examples, it's safe to assume that there will be teams in the game that have similar logos to real-life NFL clubs, though we should mention the trailer gave no hint as to where these particular teams were located.
Similarly, in terms of uniforms, there were a few familiar color schemes shown in the trailer--most notably, a virtual Barry Sanders playing in a blue jersey and silver helmet similar to his old Detroit Lions getup and Walter Payton playing in a red, white, and black uniform that was reminiscent of the Atlanta Falcons' uniform. Another player, legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas, was shown in a uniform that was very reminiscent of the Nebraska Cornhusker's home uniform--a plain red jersey, white helmet with a red stripe down the middle, and white pants.
As you might have guessed from the famous names already mentioned, despite the lack of the NFL license, APF 2K8 is teaming up with some of the biggest names to ever play the sport. Names like Elway, Montana, Marino, Campbell, Butkus, Biletnikoff, and Aikman are just a handful of the more than 240 legends that will make their way into the game. And, of course, there's Jerry Rice, who's widely regarded as the greatest wide receiver to ever play the game. He's in the game, naturally, and wasn't shy during the post-press-conference interviews about lobbying on his own behalf to end up as the cover athlete of 2K8. Rice, who retired last season after signing a one-day contract to end his career with his San Francisco 49ers, was the only player shown in the game without his helmet--and, indeed, it was easy to recognize his famous face in the gameplay footage. Here's hoping the rest of the legends in the game are rendered just as accurately.
Details are still scarce on how all these legends will add up, or how you will use all this talent to your advantage, but Thomas would say that your goal will be to draft as many of these legends as you can to build the best team possible from an admittedly deep talent pool. As a result of players drafting different legends for their team, each person's experience with the game will be different.
"There are no set teams if you don't want them," Thomas said. At one point in the trailer, for example, it seemed like Elway and Barry Sanders were playing for the same team. And while Thomas said you can play with a preset team in the game's season mode, the focus of the game will be on building a team from the ground up and then putting your dream team up against all comers, whether in the single player game, or via offline or online multiplayer. Just how you will go about building that team, what kind of restrictions you'll have, what players will be available from the get-go, and how you will go about recruiting the best players of all time--well, we don't know yet. All we know is that the focus will be on creating a team of incredible talent and then going out and decimating the competition.
But with so much stellar talent in the game, how does Visual Concepts go about differentiating players from one another, especially when it comes to attribute ratings, which would normally be sky-high across the board? Again, Thomas wasn't willing to spill the beans, but he did give a hint as to his team's approach: "We're not looking at attributes as 0 to 100, as have games in the past. We're really looking at it in a different way. I don't want to say too much--but it's basically there's so many great players, there's a wide range of talent in very specific categories. There's fast players, there's strong players. We're taking all those attributes… and what makes those players great in this game."
When it comes to controls, Thomas said to expect a game that will be familiar to fans of the NFL 2K series. "We're not looking to make this crazy new football game that no one's ever 'controlled' before; we're looking to add a lot to the genre of football and to the games--We want it to be familiar but have a number of new things."
What about elaborate celebrations, nasty injuries, and other things the No Fun League has attempted to filter out of video games (and the sport)? Thomas has said that kind of thing will be in 2K8, but not to the degree you might expect. Yes you can expect to see celebrations in the game, but as Thomas puts it, "We're not trying to put our nose up at the league or anyone else."
Now, about the customization thing. Fans might have heard a rumor in the past couple of weeks that APF 2K8 will be light on customization, despite earlier reports to the contrary. Even though he wasn't willing to talk details yet, Thomas wants to set the record straight when it comes to customizing the game: "When I say 'customization,' I mean you will be able to customize everything. There's going to be a full customization engine in the game. That really is something that we also haven't seen before in a football game." Sounds like a good start, and we're looking to see just how that can be taken.
As 2K puts it, All Pro Football 2K8 is "football resurrected." We're looking forward to seeing more details on the game's resurrection and eventual return in the coming weeks, as we approach its summer release.
-GameSpot

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The NFL Draft may have ended Sunday, but that didn't stop 2K from creating its own fake one-player draft Tuesday to promote the upcoming All-Pro Football 2K8. And shock of all shocks, Jerry Rice -- who happened to be in attendance -- was chosen as the first overall pick!
The future Hall of Famer and 20-year NFL vet is one of the featured ex-NFLers in 2K8, and was the first legendary player signed to become part of the game. "I went number one, man, that's amazing," said an exuberant Rice. "In '85 I went in the first round, but I was the 16th player taken. Now with 2K Sports and All-Pro Football 2K8 I'm the number one player taken. And that's with over 200 legends!"
At the event, we saw a short video clip that showed some of the game's homerun moments: a defensive back tipped a ball and his teammate slid to catch it before it hit the ground; Jerry Rice tip-toed to stay in bounds after he ran an out pattern; Barry Sanders confused defenders with some wicked shake and bake; Walter Payton slipped past defenders; and John Elway stepped back to deliver a bullet. While the player movements looked sharp, the graphics didn't blow our wigs off (yes, we wear wigs) in the non-HD video on display.
We were certainly struck by the impact of not having the NFL license -- seeing Elway in a Rhinos jersey or Unitas in non-Colts colors was jarring. But Greg Thomas, sports game pioneer and Visual Concepts bigwig (again with the wigs!), doesn't think the lack of an NFL license will matter once people play the game.
"We've gotten so many e-mails and so many of our fans talk to us and say, 'I'm still playing 2K5. I don't want to play anything else. I keep updating the rosters, but it's not enough anymore -- I want a new game,'" says Thomas. "So bringing the greatest players that have ever played the game together into one game, and bringing back the game engine that people have really come to love is what it's all about."
If players can get over the lack of an NFL license, will this game be able to compete with Madden on the presentation side? Thomas certainly thinks so. "I think that Madden does a great job graphically," he says. "But I think graphics are about a ticket to admission: you have to be at a certain level. I think we're doing some things that we haven't seen anyone else do, like we always do. Our guys work really hard to make these games look and play great -- but it's not just about looks, and it's not just about how it plays. It's about creating the whole package. Our game, graphically, is going to meet that price of admission, and it'll meet our own standards, which is a pretty high bar." The high bar standard is why the allegiance to 2K's sports games has been so strong for so long. And as games like Blitz have proven, football titles can certainly sell well without having the NFL license attached, so it'll be very interesting to see how well All-Pro 2K8 does compared to Madden when it ships later this year.

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NaturalMotion, the creators of breakthrough Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) 3D character animation products such as Endorphin, Euphoria, and Morpheme, announced a partnership in February of 2006 with Rockstar games, best known for the Grand Theft Auto Series.

Take 2 Games is the parent company of both Rockstar and the 2kSports label. So what does all that mean? Well, in a recent interview regarding the application of NaturalMotion one of the employees was asked about technology and hinted that tests had been done using football situations such as tackling, catching, running, etc. When asked to elaborate he reinforced that both 2kSports and Rockstar are under the same umbrella company.

We followed up with them again last week via a telephone call to a sales rep. When asked about the possibility that 2kSports is using NaturalMotion in their soon to be released All-Pro Football he laughed and said “maybe”

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• LEGENDS - Over 240 NFL legends make their return to the gridiron, including Hall of Famers such as Johnny Unitas, **** Butkus, Joe Montana, Mike Singletary, Reggie White and Walter Payton.
• SIGNATURE STYLE - Legends have their own signature moves in the game - Barry's spin, Walter's scissors kick, Jerry's one-handed grabÑthey're all there.
• 2K SPORTS LEGACY - For the first time ever 2K Sports, the developers of top selling football games, will bring their critically acclaimed gameplay & graphics to the next generation platforms.
• ALL-NEW PLAYER ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM - Gone are the 0-100 ratings so common for players in a simulation game. In APF the players have unique attributes that give them specialized skills. There are over a hundred distinct attributes available.
• REACH TACKLE SYSTEM - Revolutionary new tackling scheme utilizes the right analog stick to allow you to make those last grasp tackles and stop a runner in his tracks.
• INCREDIBLE CUSTOMIZATION - Build your roster, edit your team logo, uniforms, and choose your own celebrations after touchdowns, sacks and big plays.
• CREATE-A-PLAYER - Build any player from the ground up including equipment, uniform and all of his physical attributes.
• ADVANCED PLAY CALLING - Modify your playbook, set your coach tendencies, and have the coach call in the plays over a headset.
• 2K SPORTS ONLINE - Full league and tournament support, league and schedule customization options.
• 2K BROADCAST STYLE - New presentation style will combine TV broadcast with on field commentary bringing you closer to the action.
• 2K Broadcasting – A new style combining TV broadcast with on-field commentary to put you closer to the action than ever before.
• 2K BEATS – The All-Pro Football Soundtrack features originals, remixes and mashups produced by Z-Trip and featuring: Rakim, Dead Prez, Charli 2na, Slug, Aceyalone, Casual, Pep Love, Lateef, Gift of Gab, Keno 1, DJ Faust, Chevelle, Clutch, Dub Trio, Natural Self, Backyard Bangers, Deftones and Rush.