All Pro Football 2K8 Review

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(More customer reviews)...or watching Barry Sanders singlehandedly shred a defense for a 40-yard TD run. I've been glued to this game since I brought it home...
THE GOOD: the graphics and sound are amazing. Much better than the Madden line of games. The game is supposed to be rendered in 1080p, but comes on in 720p for some reason on my TV. I went into the PS3's display settings and turned off 720p, and that fixed the issue. Players retain dirt and scuffs on their uniforms, and celebrations after TD's and sacks are excellent. The game really gets the feel for each individual player. Gone are the ratings based on 0-100 scales. When you choose a player, it tells you exactly what this player does well. You have total control of every single player on the field in pre-snap: hot routes, blocking schemes, formation switches and audibles all before you hike the ball; zone coverage, blitzing, shifting, drop off and pinching on defense...all of this can be tailored for each player one at a time, meaning, for instance, you can blitz your weak side LB ("Will") by hitting 3 buttons. You really have to learn the button layout, though.
The gameplay is fluid and fast, but not too fast. The QB can slide in the pocket, duck under and avoid sacks with the ease of the Left control stick. RB's and WR's have a slew of moves. What's different here? Used to be, players moved on a horizontal axis, making them look and act almost like horses on a merry-go-round, with a pole running up through them. Now, player movement is very fluid, very smooth, and players you would expect to just seem to "glide"...OJ Simpson, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, etc. After years of playing both the Madden games and the 2K games, I'd have to say that this version looks the most realistic--the tackles, the moves, the blocking, players knocked off balance, the ball movement...your QB will even throw a wobbler into the ground (or worse--into the air and up for grabs) when he is hit as he throws.
Also, it's great to be able to build your own team of NFL Legends. Right now, I have 4 teams which I've built, including designing their home and away uniforms, and I compete with each of them. You'll be pleasantly surprised by many of the names included in the game--too many to name here. The CPU teams are made up of legends as well, though, so be prepared to get your butt kicked the first time you play.
Essentially, you pick 11 players from the "legend" database. This field of players is broken down into 3 tiers: Gold, Silver and Bronze. You get to choose 2 gold players, 3 silver players and 6 bronze. The game fills the rest of your roster with random players; suspiciously with familiar names (my back up QB's name is "Archuleta"). True, you don't get to pick anyone beyond the 11 legends, but the random players are pretty darn good, and you do get to choose how the roster is filled: your extra WR's can be balanced, possession or deep threats; your extra RB's can be finesse or power runners; your D-linemen can be run stoppers are pass rushers, etc. I've heard complaints be early reviewers about the uniforms, but as long as no one's in pink, who cares what they are wearing? The uniforms are OK, and you create your own when you make a team from the helmet to the shoes. Also, the stadiums are absolutely over-the-top. One has a huge shark coming through the top of the scoreboard...it's awesome.
THE BAD: there are negatives to this title. You can only play with your created teams. I would love to play with the team called "LEGENDS" as it has 11 gold tier players on it, but it is a CPU only team. The choices for gameplay are very, very thin. You can play a quick game with one of your created teams against a CPU team, or start a season, where you basically play a round-robin against the other CPU teams, then go to a playoff series. If you do win the league championship at the end, it's over. This was a real downer for me. This is also why I created 4 teams, because I really wanted to play with Ditka, Night Train Lane, Eugene Robinson, Reggie White, John Elway, Ronnie Lott, etc. etc. etc., but you can only have 11 legends on your team at a time.
It seems the developers spent way more time on the offense. As fluid as it is, the defensive backfield is still a tad shaky in it's player movement (a la NCAA Football 06 or 07), especially strafing, and potential INT's seem to bounce right off DB's chests and facemasks. Watching a sack unfold is gorgeous, though, and linemen can swim, club, spin and bullrush to gain an advantage over their blocker, which makes rushing the QB the most fun aspect of playing defense.
Kicking is a nightmare. 2K uses the right stick, much like the EA games do, but there's no kick meter. You pull the stick back to start the whole process, and right before the kicker actually makes contact with the ball, you thrust the stick forward. You won't know if you did it right until you see the flight of the ball. A text indicator comes on screen to let you know how well your timing and aiming was, but it's an after thought--if your kick was bad, you'll know as it sails out of bounds.
Online play can't really be reviewed here, as there aren't many players out there yet. I'm sure by next week, it will be jamming. There are quite a few options out there, though, like Tournament play, online seasons, custom play and quick play, and all are separated by difficulty level. I saw one profile player already had a record of 12-1 as of last night (the day the game hit the shelves) but there were only 44 others players online at the time, so wait for later reviews to discuss online play.
ALL IN ALL, I love this game, and it has exceeded my expectations in so many ways, but it falls short in a couple of small but key aspects: the anonymous "extra" players (who have no visible ratings), the thin gameplay options, the frustrating circus that is "kicking," and the dropped INT's. But nowhere else can you find this vast field of NFL Hall of Famers. I can only compare it to last year's games, so it may be unfair, but I will say that this game blows Madden 07 away in nearly every aspect of actual gameplay, but not in it's menu items.

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NBA 2K11 Review

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(More customer reviews)Introduction:
Alright, first of all to put this into perspective: I'm an old-school gamer. I play NBA simulations on the PC since NBA Live 1996 and even before that the arcade NBA Jam on some Sega console. I played nearly all NBA Lives from 1996 to 2008 and after that NBA 2k9, 2k10 and now 2k11. I played NBA 2k11 for about a week now. So I hope my review is able to help old-school gamers like myself, who are in doubt about wether or not this game is worth buying.
Also I have to say I didn't try the Jordan mode yet, because I don't really care about it and I didn't try the online mode, because I didn't get it to work yet.
The main emphasize in this review is the AI, the overall difficulty, the realism, and how much and fun this game is -- playing with and against the CPU. I must say I'm usually very critical, so maybe I'm too harsh on some points, although I really don't think so and try to be as fair as I can be.
General:
I play 10 minute quarters, with the gameplay setting being set to "simulation" and the difficulty being set to All-Star (second highest). After a couple of games I slightly tweaked the gameplay settings so that the CPU wouldn't throw so many ridiculous alley-hoops, and miss (relatively) too many dunks. In the standard "simulation" settings I had the CPU throw 3 or 4 alley-hoops per game, and none of them were fair or plausible, while at the same time missing about 1 dunk per game, which also mostly wasn't plausible. Also of course I tuned the graphics according to my system (medium to high) and disabled commentary because to me it gets annoying after about two games.
Passing:
Another thing I tried to tweak is the lane interception thingy. Because the CPU is intercepting way to many passes in this version. Of course this is generally a good thing, since in all previous NBA simulations you could throw ridiculous passes from one end of the court to the other end, with the ball clipping through 2 or 3 defenders and reach the target without problems. So generally I really like the concept of having to think about the passes you make. But sadly this concept doesn't work out all that great. There are at least 4 problems with passing overall. The first two problems are due to the fact that the passer and the guy receiving the pass often times just don't work together very well.
So problem number one occurs in the following situation: the guy receiving the pass is standing on the court in a position that makes a pass very plausible and possible. However, once you tap the pass button he all of the sudden moves to a different spot while the ball is in mid-air (the pass somehow is designed to land exactly at that new spot) although you of course never intended to pass to that spot, but to his original point where he was standing when you tapped the pass button. The problem now is that while moving to that new undesirable spot, a defender is in the passing lane and easily grabs the pass. There is absolutely nothing you can do about that. You didn't want to pass to that spot, because you knew that the passing lane would be crowded, but the CPU causes you to do it anyway and you turn it over as a result.
The second problem is that the guy you control when making the pass isn't all that bright (even if he is a very capable PG). Instead of throwing a lob pass, that flies above the heads of the defenders making it impossible for them to intercept, he throws a medium height pass that never has a chance to get to the receiving player because the CPU easily snatches it. This is very annoying when you try to pass to your PF or C who is posting up. More often than not you can not get him the ball just like that, because it is intercepted. Although generally this should be an easy and common pass. You have the same problem for example when you try to give the ball to a player who is cutting. It is very difficult to get it right, just because the passer isn't throwing a correct pass. I don't know of any way to control this. Maybe there is one, and I didn't figure it out yet.
The third problem is that the plain direction passing is flawed. I guess only 60% of the passes go to the guy you intended to pass the ball to, even though you of course point LS in the correct direction. The game just doesn't get it right and attempts some weird cross court pass that is easily intercepted because of the reasons above, although a much more plausible pass to a semi open guy was intended. So you should use 'explicit passing', i.e. the method where you press a combination of two buttons to precisely select which player should get the pass. This of course isn't always that easy, because some times the guy usually playing the 3 is currently playing the 4, or because in the heat of the moment you don't exactly know which button to press, to give it to the right guy. So you really have to be good, to get this right -- however of course problems 1 and 2 still occur, even if you are good.
Problem number four is that none of the previous three problems happen for your AI opponent. He can throw ridiculous passes all over the court without much of a problem. He can easily get it to the cutter or lob it in the post. So usually you will have much more turnovers than your AI opponent.
Controls:
The controls are very very difficult to master. Like I said before, I'm an old-school player. I never had problems making super combos on Street Fighter or Tekken or stuff like that, where you have to make some weird 180 degree or 360 degree rotations with your controller and press a number of different buttons to make some special move. But in this game the iso-motion stuff is crazy difficult imho. Even something as trivial as a behind-the-back dribble is really hard. It really is much easier to do nice moves in real life than it is in the game. I think this is because the game is so fast, there is so much going on and you have the 3D perspective and have to think in some weird ways. Breaking your man down off the dribble is nearly impossible. Even below average defenders like Luke Ridnour will stop Chris Paul 1 on 1 most of the time (at least if YOU are Chris Paul). You just run into them and loose your dribble. Doing spin moves is frigging hard (where in the past you just had to press one button). Cross-overs and in-and-outs can be done rather easily but often times won't help too much. Also I always feel like I'm not totally in control over what my player is doing. Even getting to an exact spot on the floor is sometimes not possible because of some animation going on. I know it's very hard to get the balance between having smooth animations and having great control over your player, but this game really has too many animations and therefor is difficult to control.
Also sometimes it feels like you are playing a Hockey game instead of a Basketball game. It's difficult to discribe. You just seem to slide over the floor like a Hockey player. It is much much easier to get an open shot than to get to the basket. Just slide over the floor a couple of times (using the turbo button) and your defender is gone. Getting to the basket is much harder because you constantly run into your super strong defender and lose the dribble. Although sometimes it just magically works, because of some animation.
AI offense:
The CPU opponent plays extremely static with very little player or ball moving. He runs too many sets, and always the same, even if they didn't work the last three times. Basically most of the time the PG waits behind the three point line, three of his teammates are not moving at all, while the other guy cuts and gets a pass (you'll have to defend the cutter, because otherwise he'll nearly always will get an open shot here). Most of the time you'll see the opponents players just standing around until some guy tries a one on one move, once you successfully stopped the set play. Your AI teammates are very slow and stupid and their defense is attrocious. Even though your opponent doesn't play very smart, you will have to do a lot of player switching on defense to not let the opponent get easy looks or cuts, because your teammates just don't get it.
"Basketball is a game of runs":
The developers took this ancient wisdom far too far. I think this problem existed in previous versions, but never was it more obvious than in NBA 2k11. I mean it is really nice to have runs, because that's what happens in the real game. But in this game this stuff is getting out of hand. When your opponent is on a run, you have nearly no chance of stopping him until he somehow finally misses and the game has mercy and allowes you to score. You have to play as hard and concentrated as you possibly can to stop a run. It's really brutal. On the other hand, if YOUR team is on a run, the CPU can not hit anything and looses the ball all the time and the game becomes super easy. The problem is that now it is really important to get off to a good start, because if you don't, you already pretty much lost the game.
If you start the game 2:12, with the opponent being red hot right from the start, you can pretty much end the game. Because you will not be able to come back. Maybe this is because of my difficulty setting, but it really is true. If you don't somehow manage to get back into the game ASAP, you will find yourself behind for the rest of the game, because your team will not be able to make baskets and your opponent will hit 60% of his shots and steal the ball a lot and win by 20 or 30. On the other hand if you yourself start 12:2, you pretty much already won the game. The only time it is fun to play, is if the game starts balanced 8:10 or something like that. I don't think there is a way to control this behaviour via any gameplay settings.
Other stuff:
Fadeaways work. I can't remember another NBA game where...Read more›

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NBA 2K11 is the latest installment in the best selling and highest rated NBA videogame series. NBA 2K11 is the best to plug into NBA culture. It's the most fun, authentic NBA videogame experience and is for any sports fan with that competitive fire who wants to play the best NBA simulation on the market. It's the NBA series that everyone is playing- from the most elite NBA athletes and superstars to the local court gym rats, NBA 2K10 delivered its promise to TAKE OVER, and NBA 2K11 will on build on that momenum by dialing up all of it's features-gameplay, AI presentation, visuals, audio, online and more to deliver the best basketball videogame experience EVER.

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All Pro Football 2K8 Review

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(More customer reviews)First off, I am not a 2K fan boy, and DEFINTELY not a Madden fanboy. Know that this is my FIRST 2K football game ever. I never got a chance to play NFL 2K5 as I was still playing Madden/NCAA 03 at the time. After being disappointed with Madden/NCAA for the 2003 release I skipped over the 04 and 05 editions, and because it was so late in the season I decided to skip NFL 2K5 as well, planning on getting NFL 2K6 the following year, but EA changed that and I was stuck with the EA football titles for the foreseeable future. I decided to give EA one last chance, and they failed again with Madden/NCAA 06. At this point I decided I was done with EASports and since they had the monopoly I figured I was done with football games for good.
Then 3 years later 2K decides to get back in the football gaming market and I was very excited, finally a choice in football gaming again and true football fans wouldn't have to be stuck with EA's monopoly.
I picked this game up recently, in fact a couple of days before I got my XBOX back from Microsoft. I was finally able to play one game last night, and I must say I am pretty impressed.
When you first start up the game, you are instantly prompted to build you own team, there are no predefined teams on this game so every team you use, you have to create them from scratch. You are allowed 2 Gold, 3 silver and 6 bronze rated former NFL players to build you team. The rest of the team is filled by generic players. You have over 240 former NFL players most of them being all-stars during their careers. Some notable names include Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, Steve Young, John Elway, Reggie White, Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, and Williams "Refrigerator" Perry. While you might recognize many of the names included in this years release, you will also notice some missing, some right of the top of my head are Howie Long, Michael Irvin and Jim Kelly. That is not to say the list provided is disappointing, 240 players is plenty especially considering 2K had to individually sign these players.
After you select your players and choose the generic players to fill you team, you are taken to a screen to select your city, team nickname, logo, and stadium and after your done, you then go into actually editing your teams uniforms all the way down to how many stripes the players' socks will have and the color of their shoes, helmets and face masks. You can even change the colors of the team's logo. There are tons and tons of different combinations you can choose and this can be very long and drawn out considering how much you care about how your team uniforms (home and away) look on the field, but the game already has predefined color schemes so if you just want to get to the action, you can skip this all together. If you do decide to edit your team, then just know the menu is very cumbersome and admittedly not very intuitive as it should be. In fact it took me a while to figure out how to change my team's helmet colors from white to black.
After your team is created it is saved and you are ready to go. You are then taken to the game's main screen where you can either choose to play a quick exhibition game against one of the computer created teams or go into season mode. I just wanted a quick game so I just choose a quick match in my home stadium.
The first thing you will notice about the game that these are not truly Next Gen graphics. Even in HD at best they look slightly better than HD regular XBOX games. But believe me there is much more to a game than jaw dropping graphics, and I found that out after the ball was kicked off in my very first game. As soon as the ball was kicked off I knew that this was going to be a football game like none other I have experienced before. First off the players move realistically. I hadn't noticed and robotic like movements of them running like they are trying to make it to the bathroom before they have an accident. The tackling animations are also quite more realistic than I have seen in other games. There is real gang tackling here and not anything like the "hey, I'm going to hold you, while my teammate comes and hits you" crap. There are no sled animations or seeing receivers skate to the ball either. Even the sidelines have animated players that react to plays on the field and attempt to get out of the way if they see a player out of control flying towards them. Other times, they'll step in and grab him to stop his momentum.
The game plays like football is supposed to be played. No longer can you back up 30 yards and throw 80 yard bombs all day, because chances are you will be sacked or more often than not your pass will be knocked down if you're lucky. Your linemen block who they are supposed to block and don't miss an obvious block just so they can go block a free safety 15 yards away who is not even in the play to begin with. On the defensive end of the ball players react well to both the run and pass. Don't expect 20+ yard runs on every single possession, if you do manage to get a long gain you better believe the D will adjust incase you try that crap on the very next play. In the running game you have WORK for your yardage, you have to find the hole and hit it hard. If you just dance around in the back field you WILL get your bell rung. Take a hole and go for it. Passing is also quite realistic and very rewarding when you complete a long pass play on 3rd and long. The defense reacts pretty well to the ball and will knock it down if they can't quite get two hands on it. If you throw in double coverage too often you will pay for it, if your throw is too late or too early the D will knock it down. As good as the AI is on both sides of the ball, I never got the feeling that it was "cheating" like other games I have played in the past. I remember in the said game, I would be running for a first down, clearly beating the defender and all of a sudden he makes a dive for me at the wrong angle and then while in MIDAIR, he body changes direction just so he can stop me; this is not the case in APF2K8, if you have a man beat you have him beat, and the only thing he can hope for is that he has enough foot speed to catch you. Another thing I used to hate on the "other" game is that when my defender had the perfect angle on a guy going towards the end zone and I will dive towards him clearly expecting at least some contact between my defender and the ball carrier only the have the game take over and cause my guy to dive in the complete opposite direction of the ball carrier. I can't tell you how frustrating that was! But that is no longer the case in this game, if you have an angle and time your hit right, you will at least make contact with the ball carrier getting him to go down is another story if you are dealing with the bruiser gold/silver/bronze star RB's.
Another thing I like about the game is that the halftime show shows actual video highlights from the game you are playing and the same is true for the post game show. While the commentators start getting repetitive after a while, its still good to go back and see the big plays of the game without having to rely on your saved replays all the time. Other things I like about the game are the stadium mascots that do various things after the home team makes a big play, if you are the Assassins and score a touch down, the giant hooded "assassin" at the end zone will perform a stabbing motion, if you are the Firebirds the bird will squawk and flap its wings, there is even one team that has two battle ships that shoot off its cannons! In addition to this the crowd always seems to be in the game, you make a big play they respond with ecstatic cheering, if you make a stupid play, then you will get booed....loudly. Another final thing I would like to mention is that if your XBOX is online while you are playing a game, you will get up to date sports tickers from the real world of sports. Even though it really does not add to the game you are playing its still a cool feature. It's nice always being in touch with the real sports world while I'm playing video games.
As much as I like the actual game, there are handful of flaws that are disappointing and one that is downright frustrating. First of all if you already didn't know, there is no franchise mode. So the team you create for offline play can only go through one season and that's it. No continuing to a next season, and no tracking career stats etc. The most you can do is take that same team though the same team again with a slightly different scheduled, or just create another team all together. In addition the Season mode itself is pretty limited. There is not even an ability to "watch" other games that your team is not playing in, and even more, you can only bring ONE of your created teams into season mode. This was a disappointment, especially for someone who primarily plays offline 99% of the time. I've tried online play before with other games, and if you have read my last reviews you will see that I am not a big fan of online play, playing people I don't know, most of who are cheesers, whiners and glitchers. The only time I will play someone online, is if I know them in real life. The lack of franchise mode bothered me, but not enough not to get this game. I have always heard 2K made the best football games, and if APF was anything like the NBA 2K series, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed in the game play. The other limitation is a big one, even bigger than the lack of franchise mode in many ways. You are only limited to creating 8 teams in the game, meaning that at any one time you only have 8 teams to choose from as you can't play with any of the CPU's teams. This is not a big problem in itself, because I would have expected some sort of limitation on the amount of teams you could create. However,...Read more›

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