All-Pro Football 2K8 Hands-On

There was a time a few years back when we thought we'd never write the following phrase: 2K football is back. After releasing the excellent NFL 2K5, then losing the NFL license to EA Sports, it wasn't always clear if 2K would ever make it back to the sport with which it made its name. In January, the return was official with the announcement of All-Pro Football 2K8, a game that would bring the 2K football series into the next generation of game consoles while simultaneously looking back at some of the greatest players to ever play the sport. Today, we got the first look at what All-Pro Football 2K8 is all about and can safely report that it will be a console football experience unlike any you've played before.

2K Sports is set to return to the gridiron with All-Pro Football 2K8.

You've heard the names of the 240 former NFL players that will be playable in APF 2K8; names like Montana, Marino, Elway, Rice, Sanders, Payton, Biletnikoff, and so many more. And if you've ever wondered how a team made up of that kind of talent would play, APF 2K8 is the game for you. That's because the moment you fire up the game for the first time, you'll be building your own personal dream team of football legends. Throughout the rest of the modes in APF 2K8, you'll then be testing that team (and all of its permutations) against the other legends found in the game.

So in a game full of legendary talent, how do you distinguish the skills of one player from another? How does APF 2K8 qualify the differences between top-tier runners like Earl Campbell and Roger Craig? Or between linebacking legends Derrick Thomas and Nick Bouniconti? In fact, the game does so in a couple of different ways. The first method involves splitting players up into three different tiers, indicated in the game by either gold, silver, or bronze. To give you an idea of how the talent breaks down, consider how the game separates the quarterbacks along these three tiers.

Gold: Dan Marino, Joe Montana, John Elway, Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham, Roger Staubach, Sammy Baugh, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon

Silver: Archie Manning, Bart Starr, Joe Theismann, Ken Stabler, Len Dawson, Randall Cunningham

Bronze: Andre Ware, Bernie Kosar, Bill Wade, Bobby Herbert, Bubby Brister, Dave Krieg, Greg Landy, Jeff Hostetler, Jim Harbaugh, Jim Hart, Jim Zorn, John Brodie, Ken O'Brien, Lynn Dickey, Mark Rypien, Neil O'Donnel, Steve Bartkowski, Steve Grogan, Tommy Kramar

When putting your team together, you'll have room on your roster for two gold, three silver, and six bronze-tier players. How you mix up the players on your team by position is completely up to you, which is where part of the fun and the strategy in APF 2K8 comes into play. There's nothing to stop you from spending your two gold picks on Walter Payton and Barry Sanders, lining the pair up in your backfield on every play, as well as and driving your opponent nuts trying to figure which Hall of Famer is going to get the ball next. Or you can load up with Montana and Jerry Rice as your gold picks, then grab a few more silver-tier receivers like Drew Pearson, Herman Moore, or Irving Fryar to give your opponent's secondary a run for its money. 2K Sports producers told us that one popular strategy among QA testers is to actually spend a silver or bronze pick on a kicker like Jan Stenerud or Al Del Greco because you never know when that legendary leg will mean the difference between winning and losing.

Few football fans people are going to argue that field generals like Marino and Elway aren't gold-tier talent, but that doesn't mean they played anything like one another in the NFL. This brings us to the second method 2K is using to differentiate players from one another. Forget arbitrary attribute ratings; the team behind APF 2K8 is looking to define players by what they did on the field game in and game out. To do so, they've used a "special abilities" system that better defines how a player will play on the field. For example, Dan Marino has special abilities like "pocket presence," "quick release," "4th quarter comeback," and "laser arm," while the speedier Elway's special abilities include "cadence," "scrambler," "speed burner," and "rocket arm" among others. All of these different special abilities--of which there are more than 80 spread across all players and positions in the game--will bear out differently once the game begins. For example, the "fourth quarter comeback" ability will give QB's a boost to all abilities once the game enters its fourth and final act.

Football legends look and feel the part once the game gets going.

Once you've got your star players chosen, you'll fill out the rest of your lineup with generic players, though you'll still have some control over what kind of players you get by choosing their tendencies. Each position will have three settings to choose from; you can set receivers to focus on deep threat, a balanced approach, or possession; offensive linemen can be set to pass block, balanced, or run block. How you focus your generic players' abilities will depend on the stars you've chosen for your roster and how you plan to run your game. For example, if you're running Barry and Sweetness in the backfield, you darn well better make sure your O-line is focused on run blocking.