All-Pro Football 2K8 Retrospective

everyone knows the story of NFL 2k5 it's the greatest football video game ever made the next year Dark Lord of the gaming industry Electronic Arts signed an exclusive deal with the NFL and the rest was history 2k5 was two K's final NFL game and the story ends there or does it after Sega sold 2k to take-two interactive the company wanted to re-enter the football video game market with Madden being the only NFL game allowed to K had to think outside the box what they ended up creating was a football game filled with nearly 250 of the greatest NFL players ever including Jerry Rice Barry Sanders John Elway and more without an NFL license they couldn't create NFL teams so users were given the freedom to create their own teams from scratch choosing a logo uniform and roster by selecting players from the pool of historic greats 2k took the same revered 2k 5 gameplay and improved upon it adding new animations mechanics and graphics while keeping the same foundation that made 2k v great this resulted in the creation of the best playing football game ever made all pro football 2k8 no football game has ever come close to matching the authentic gridiron action of 2k8 while the game was flawed and lacked the depth of 2k v or Madden the gameplay was so good that it didn't matter as time has passed new creation software and tools have prolong the life of this game allowing users to recreate NFL college or any other league inside the game as well as use software to play through a fully fledged franchise mode which wasn't originally possible in the game released this is the story of all pro football 2k8 in 2019 the gameplay footage I'll be demonstrating is from 2k football now who has a youtube channel and a Twitter page linked below he used editing software which I will go over later to create a 1993 NFL roster complete with all players and uniforms one of the first things that might stick out at you from watching this gameplay is the pocket formation and movement the way the quarterback moved up into the pocket to step up and make a tough throw or the way the pocket could collapse in on him and allow a sack was life like the way players moved the fluidity of the animations it all looked better than anything before it and even today looks much nicer than matted let's take a look at Randall Cunningham throwing the ball in to Cade and modern Madden as someone who's always wanted to play quarterback as a kid and where practice throwing the ball over and over and over the way Cunningham shifts his weight winds up in spirals the ball off his fingers is on point in 2k 8 in Madden it just looks awkward the graphics look prettier but when comparing these animations 2k8 looks way more realist in this game is from 2007 to K even today love them or hate them has always had a knack for attention to detail and this game is full of it on drop backs 2k8 has the quarterback step back exactly like he would in real life and you can see his body weight shift to his back foot on the last step of his drop it just looks nice in Madden Cunningham just sort of hops backwards if any quarterbacks drop who looks like that in a real life they would probably become a mean let's look at how the ball is snapped it's not always perfect if you had a bad center or a long snapper he could be inconsistent here the ball was delivered over the head of the punter and into the end zone this does happen in the NFL another realistic animation present in this game is the strip sack animation this animation is not an added a defender grabbing your quarterbacks spinning him around and the ball flying out as he is sacked is not a strip sack in 2k8 like real life the defender can swipe the ball out of the quarterbacks hand without having to tackle ea hasn't yet found a way to introduce this into band as you can see for a game without an NFL license to ke8 sure played like an NFL game more so than its competitor I just made a video about Madden OE which I thought was a great game on previous generation consoles but 2k8 was a much better on the field representation of football than that game while 2k8 doesn't have a deep franchise mode or the many game rooms as mad no it did the gameplay blew it away and while Madden has regressed over the years in the depth Department and not really caught up in the gameplay department at all 2k8 continues to shine the ball was thrown with a perfect arc throwing off of a three or five step drop was important as the ball would come out most accurately at the end of the drop back running backwards and throwing the ball up would result in a wobbly under throw just like in real life you could throw the ball over the defense receivers could actually catch fade routes something I went over in my Madden video receivers could track the ball midair and adjust to it to make the cash offensive Lyman blocks so intelligently that some people felt that the running game was overpowered big hits from defenders were powerful size mattered in this game a large player with heavy weight would play like one and one-on-one situations between two players would be impacted by this by the way to k-8 didn't have player ratings you know how every year Madden types up their game by releasing player ratings on a 1 to 99 scale 2k8 didn't do this instead they used gold silver bronze and generic to distinguish players players who weren't generic would have special abilities which were more in depth than player weapons found in Madinah Wade and Madden is just now implementing a feature like this into their game in Madden 20 every position in 2k 8 has special abilities that a player may or may not have had these include quick release where a quarterback would have a faster release time rocket arm where you could charge up a quarterbacks arm for an extra long throw fourth-quarter comeback quick feet run coverage leadership bonus soft hands ball strip you get it there were so many abilities and they were so spread out amongst the initial 250 players this made every player feel and played differently now despite the game's impressive animations this game has the most physics based feeling of any football game besides maybe backbreaker the gameplay felt free with the player having all the control you never felt like you were getting sucked into a predetermined animation I often see people argue that current Madden isn't as bad as we think saying something along the lines of it's a video game it's not going to be perfect the issue with this excuse is that sookay 8 was able to do all this stuff Madden players have been asking for in 2007 Madden doesn't need to be identical to real-life football but it should be better than 2k age visually the game takes an interesting approach the player models look a bit cartoon-like and while some are turned off by this others such as myself love them they give off a very 1980s look a throwback to a different era of football which is likely what they were going for considering the selling point behind this game was the inclusion of 250 licensed NFL players from an older era it also helped the games stand out and not just be a knockoff Madden the game is also an HD on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 which makes it more graphically impressive than its predecessor 2k 5 which ran at 480p and like I said earlier 2k is one of the best at having attention to detail for an unlicensed game the minor details were crazy the football was very detailed even having visual concepts written on it in the font of Wilson the NFL's official ball as well as an all-pro League logo that looks just like an NFL logo the stadiums were all unique and honestly spectacular you had dynamic field conditions where snow would build up and cover more and more of the field as the game went on as well as dirt coming up from under the grass throughout the game on a clear or rainy day injured players were to hobble mid-play some even attempted to keep playing and would fall as their legs collapsed under them uniforms had a realistic cloth physics which sounds dumb but was pretty advanced for 2007 each position had proper footwork and technique that was sound presentation was as close as they could get the 2k 5 with the same two fictitious announcers of Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe without the ESPN license however the halftime show didn't have Chris Berg but Dan Stevens takes over and the experiences almost as good quarterbacks had their own signature throwing animations which I'm glad Madden has added to Madden 20 but it just goes to show how much care was put into this game a game from over a decade ago an interesting change from 2k5 to 2k8 was the new kicking mechanic this mechanic similar to Madden's vision cone was controversial as it had a learning curve and wasn't easy to master however it's the most realistic kicking experience you could have you need to pull back on the right joystick to snap the ball and as the kicker winds his leg up to kick the ball you have to push up on a stick exactly when the kicker swings his leg the stick emulates a leg and ends up delivering an experience where you actually feel like you're kicking the ball I personally love it and think it's the best kicking mechanic ever in the video game team building was fresh and new experience when playing online every team looked different and had their own set of strengths and weaknesses this was because 2k gave players a budget of two gold players three silver players and six bronze players with the rest being generics this meant players had to pick and choose which positions they wanted to prioritize when building a team for example you probably want to choose skill positions with all your non-generic players right well what if the game came down to a last-second field goal and your generic kicker didn't have a leg to push it through or your star running back has nowhere to run thanks to a generic offensive whine this added strategy and made online games a chess match similar to Ultimate Team which happened to debut in Madden 10 two years later players could play online with their unique team it was unlikely you'd go online against the same roster ever with ultimate team however the concept was built upon but in a worse way teams usually always have a mobile quarterback like Michael Vick and grind or pay for 99s across the board teams don't have weaknesses unless a player was unwilling to grind or spend any money $2.99 over all teams going against each other isn't exactly fun instead it's repetitive a ninety nine overall team playing a free to play players 75 overall team is likely going to win by a landslide which really isn't that fun for either side greed took over these companies allowing in-game purchases in these game modes which ruin the fun in competitive balance originally like we see in 2k8 early version of the mode it was a cool way to build a team with great players who never played together such as Walter Payton or John Elway on the same team today this type of game mode has regressed to cheesing the AI with the same meta roster when creating a team you could edit every little detail of the uniforms designing colors as well as logos the game gave you a large amount of lows at choose from and many of them looked pretty close to NFL logos this creation suite opened the door to turning this game into an NFL game while it wasn't as free as a game like Forza or NBA 2k in terms of what you could do it was good enough to avoid any legal issues with the NFL as well as allow users to creatively put their favorite teams into the game or create a fictitious team with their own imagination sounds like 2k8 was a great game right so why does no one talk about it and instead 2k 5 is considered to be the best football video game ever made well not many people actually played this game the average football fan isn't going to buy an unlicensed game it sold poorly why else no franchise mode the developers didn't think a franchise mode would make sense in this game as there was no way to have the historic players like Jerry Rice or Barry Sanders aged correctly a franchise mode with generic players would have been great for long-term replayability but to be honest it really wouldn't have made sense with the major selling point of the game being the licensed classic players instead 2k included a single season mode where you created a team and played through a 16-game season and then three playoff games before the championship game then it was over despite this lack of depth however the game still managed to include the VIP profiles from 2k 5 as well as have detailed stat tracking in the season meaning unlike Madden today you could see what team a player played on each season when viewing career stats recently however hardcore fans of the game have been able to get more out of it than originally intended with Madden being the way it is most people who played 2k 8 couldn't switch back to Madden without feeling like they graded but without a franchisee mode there really wasn't any solution until King ha vah came around Havel created an editor for 2k8 that gives the player the ability to not only fully customize teams and rosters allowing him to recreate the NFL or n-c-double-a in the game but also adds a fully featured franchise mode to the game that's right this software gives this game a franchise mode I put a link in the description of King Cabos Twitter and his website where you can download the editor I also linked a playlist of his tutorials for using the software Havel was also working on a football game called legend Bowl which looks awesome so far he does great work now despite the low sales in the lack of an NFL license all pro football 2k8 could take the cake as the best football game ever made without a franchise mode in the box however it's hard for me to rank it above NFL 2k5 but 2k8 took 2k fives gameplay and improved upon it and perfected it if you want to emulate what you see on Sundays through a video game 2k 8 is the only way to do that reliably anyone who is a hardcore football fan and wants to see exactly what a football game is capable of needs to play 2k aid with King Havas editor the game can also be a great replacement for Madden as you can download or create your own updated rosters and uniforms also at the time of this video the Xbox 360 version of this game still has working servers meaning you can still play it online due to the poor sales of the game we probably won't ever see another football game from 2k or any other major publisher for a long time I believe there is more of a demand for a game like 2k8 today than there was in 2007 however most companies wouldn't want to take the risk of not breaking even but that's okay we still have two k-8 and with the help of software like Hallows editor the game can last forever uniforms players and stadiums can all be updated each and every year to deliver a fresh experience why buy the newest Madden for $60 when I could buy this game at gamestop for $2.99 and it does a better job of portraying real football despite the age of the game in some faults within it 2k 8 has stood the test of time and will likely continue to until either Matt and learn something from the game or an unlicensed games such as Doug Flutie's an accident football develops into a contender I know I will continue playing this game for a while as I've yet to find any game that can satisfy my itch to replicate what I see on Sundays as well as this game has you will not find a better playing football game than all pro football 2k8 thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: SOFTDRINKTV

Views: 634,934

Keywords: 2k8, apf, apf 2k8, espn nfl 2k5, madden, nfl, football video game, retrospective, softdrinktv, softdrinksports

Id: 2lF9_RIOeCw

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Hoser117]

Literally one of my favorite games all time, and has a pretty active mod scene. Really sad 2k never continued with it.