Unlike the wide receiver who shares one-third of its cover, All Pro Football 2k8 isn't the G.O.A.T. To be honest, if developer Visual Concepts ever puts out a sequel (at least, one that's given the benefits of a full development cycle), it will probably make this game look just as archaic as their old Deamcast games do today. After all, All Pro Football is little more than a modest retooling of a five-year-old game; but what a game it is! Heck, even the producer of Madden ’09 himself admits that Visual Concepts’ NFL 2K5 is the standard to which his next-gen development team (even with its superior manpower/resources) is still striving to match, much less surpass.
So maybe it’s not such a surprise to find out that, even with its meager budget, tiny development team, and shortened development time (6 months), Visual Concepts’ All Pro Football 2K8 is the closest that any developer has gotten to simulating the sport of football. What does surprise is that, as a competitive multiplayer game, Visual Concepts has surpassed all previous incarnations of the 2K football series, and all other sports games, for that matter, in creating the most varied and balanced title you’ll find anywhere in the wide world of sports gaming.
The variety in All Pro Football stems from a basic design principle: there are no set teams. Instead, you build your own team by picking 11 players from a pool of 280+ NFL retirees, tiered at gold, silver, and bronze skills levels. The big twist is that, unlike most sports leagues, the APL (All Pro League) is built around the concept of total parity, such that every team (except for the pre-built computer teams) is working with the same ratio of talent: 2 gold studs, 3 silver stalwarts, and 6 bronze compliments.
Where games like Madden and NBA 2K tend to be ruined by people only wanting to play as powerhouses teams like the Patriots/Lakers, All Pro Football thrives off the fact that it contains no “powerhouse” teams. Arguably, there are “powerhouse” players at certain positions and certain tiers, but regardless of how you choose to build your team, it will always have some significant weaknesses that your opponents can attack.
Glory Day in Green Bay
Thankfully, the endless strategy of team-building is not restricted to the 280 legends whom 2K was able to sign under contract; if there is a role in your team’s design that can't be filled by an existing NFL legend, or if you simply don't like any of the legend options that are available for that position, you can quickly create a player and add him to the pool of draftees.
The catch is that, because you get to choose exactly what abilities the created players receive, you aren’t allowed to give them the maximum 5 abilities that some of the pre-made legends have. Instead, you get 1 ability for bronze CAPs, 2 for silver CAPs, and 3 for gold CAPs (though you can make 5-ability CAPs after unlocking all 50 of the game’s achievements; a feat that can be accomplished in a few hours by using the right strategies).
While just about every sports game since the dawn of the genre has attempted to distinguish players from each other by giving them numerical ratings in certain categories of performance (speed, agility, strength, etc.), All Pro Football takes all those statistics out of the equation--or at least, it hides them from sight. Instead of the usual mess of numbers, all you have to go by in judging a player is his height/weight, how long his NFL career lasted, what teams he played for, how many Pro Bowls he made, and of course, his abilities.
Abilities are either “active” or “passive.” Some of the active abilities like “strength bonus,” “stamina bonus,” “speed burner,” “quick feet,” “laser arm,” “rocket arm,” “soft hands,” etc. simply boost one of ye olde rating categories. Some of the more interesting abilities, however, have less-orthodox benefits. “Break away burst,” for example, makes the player perform just like any other average runner on the field, until he gets the ball in his hands and he starts getting chased by defenders. At that point, a speed burst kicks in, and he becomes a real devil to chase down. The passive abilities are even more intriguing, sporting names like “clutch” and “Mr. 3rd down,” both of which give the player a ratings boost across the board in certain situations, or the even vaguer “leadership,” which makes all the players on your team play better when they’re on the field with the “leader.”
So yes, ratings are obviously still a part of the game engine, it’s just the 2K has removed your ability to see those ratings. This seems like a decision for the better, as you now spend less time crunching numbers and more time seeing how players perform when they’re actually on the field.
Abilities aren’t the only thing that 2K has done to distinguish the players from each other. As pioneered in their NBA 2K series, Visual Concepts has gone to great lengths to create player-specific animations for about half the players in the game.
All this attention to detail makes All Pro Football the first sports game to date where you can actually feel and see the difference between the players when they’re flying around the field pulverizing each other.
Young vs. Marino
As great as the player customization is, 2K had a tall order in getting the team-building aspect to measure up, and for the most part, it delivers. Teams can be customized by choosing from several thousand combinations of cities, team names, team logos, and home stadiums. Problem is, all the choices are pre-made, which means you’re stuck playing with the Nashville Gladiators in Memorial Coliseum instead of the Tennessee Titans in LP Field.
While you can’t recreate your favorite franchise in name, you can, thanks to an amazingly in-depth uniform editor, recreate their look. And since you can save uniform codes and share them with other people online, playing fashion designer is easy as entering a 30-digit code. In fact, as of today, every NFL team, and many of the major NCAA programs have picture-perfect uniforms created, with their codes just waiting to be entered into the game.
The Autumn Wind
After spending 30 – 45 minutes of effort in All Pro Football’s team builder, you will be free to use your team in any of the games modes, and while there aren't many modes to go around, 2K made sure it got the important stuff in there, namely, online leagues, which support up to 32 teams. Leagues also come equipped with some nifty website tools, full stat tracking, and the now-mandatory “flex scheduling.”
As we are almost a year into the game's lifespan, the online leagues are where All Pro Football continues to thrive, with recreations of real-life leagues like the NCAA and NFL, running strong in their 3rd and 4th seasons, respectively.
Maybe you're not that hardcore, though. Maybe you're just a weekend warrior. Well, All Pro Football has you covered, too, with its traditional online lobbies and feedback system that keeps you from having to deal with douchebags who think that the flea flicker should be called at least once a drive, or that every passing play should begin with the quarterback sprinting 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage and chucking a blind bomb to the team’s star receiver.
Unfortunately, if you are a person without access to some local/online friends whom you can play against, you won’t be getting much replay value out of this game, as 2K only had time to squeeze in a single-season mode, along with the standard exhibition and practice modes.
But if you’ve got friends, an internet connection, or both, All Pro Football is the type of game with enough depth to keep you playing until the next version comes out, whether that be next year, or the 2012 expiration of EA’s current exclusivity deal with the NFL.
