|
It’s understandable if you’ve circled July 16th on your calendar, dubbed that day The Return of the King and started watching the clock, not the calendar, since the last frost of the year.
Next month, 2k Sports will offer up All Pro Football 2K8. It’s their first foray into the world of professional, but unlicensed, football video games. Fans of the last 2k football game, 2k5, may be on board no matter what happens. The rest of the world is waiting to see if a game with no NFL logos, teams or players can compete with the turducken-chomping juggernaut at EA. 2k Sports sat down with GA to dig in a little deeper, beyond what you’re seeing in press releases and on forums, to see what’s coming in APF 2k8. Here’s what we found out after seeing the game in person. Let the Debates on Ranking Football’s Best BEGIN! The first thing you’ll do to start playing is create your custom team. Step one is drafting your first eleven players from the Legends roster, which is broken into three categories: gold, silver and bronze. Passers, runners and receivers dominate the list, but there are plenty of defensive players to choose from, as well. There are also offensive linemen if you’re a lifetime member of the Tony Munoz fan club. The rest of your roster spots are filled in by randomly generated players with fictional names. You can choose their general strengths (run blocking vs. pass blocking, for example), but won’t be creating each player. Legends are marked on the field at all times by a star at their feet, so there’s no mistaking a legend for a newbie. Contrary to popular expectations, you can create custom players from scratch (Viva Ron Mexico!). Created players are placed into the Legends roster and can be selected the same way as other legends, so they take up one of your eleven spots. Created players also have access to the special abilities of legends. Instead of traditional player ratings in various categories (ranked 1-100), APF 2K8 uses a special abilities system to differentiate players. Legends have qualities that fit the player, such as Dan Marino’s quick release, John Elway’s rocket arm and Walter Payton’s unique, and dangerous, stutter step. We didn’t get enough play time in to see how non-legends players are distinguished from each other, but the system is definitely an interesting idea and we’re anxious to put it through its paces. Vegas is LONG Overdue for a Team There are 20 team names, each with a pre-existing logo. Logos can be customized (with color changes, for example) and you can pick letters of the alphabet instead, but you can’t create logo from scratch. Completely custom logo design would have been nice, but with online play and no way to police what images some degenerates might want to put on a helmet, it’s no surprise the options have been limited. Uniform customization is as detailed as any sports game so far. And even without logos, creating reasonable facsimiles of pro teams is a foregone conclusion. Christmas in July Based on what we’ve seen, APF 2K8 looks right at home in HD (great player detail and nice animations, particularly tackling) and offers about as much customization as one could hope for. It will include online leagues and tournaments in game, so you can show off your uniform design skills and take that cheap shot at Ickey Woods you’ve always dreamed about. Real time injuries mean players may come up lame in the middle of a play, which should be interesting. After seeing the game up close and personal, it looks like a blast and we can’t wait to jump into the full version come July. It’s going to be a good summer.
|
