All Pro Football 2K8 First Look

"This is about respecting and celebrating the sport of football." So says Greg Thomas, the president of 2K Sports development studio Visual Concepts and the man behind the studio's upcoming return to football, All Pro Football 2K8. Today, at a press event in San Francisco, 2K took the wraps off the game that football gamers have been speculating about for months with the help of one of the game's biggest stars, legendary NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice.

Before Thomas and Rice spoke about the game and their respective involvement with it, 2K showed a brief trailer featuring a sneak peek at just what to expect from the game when it's released later this year. As you might expect, practically all of the action in the trailer revolved around the play on the field. Passes thrown and caught, big-hit tackles, juke moves, and big runs--the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a first glimpse of a new football game. What set the trailer apart, then, was the settings and the players taking the field.

First, let's talk stadiums and uniforms. The stadiums look to feature some bold designs--we noticed at least three distinctive stadiums in the trailer. One featured huge fighter jets on display near the scoreboard and painted in the end zone; another had a massive bald eagle at one end of the stadium; and a third featured a number of cowboys in silhouette behind the scoreboard. From these examples, it's safe to assume that there will be teams in the game that have similar logos to real-life NFL clubs, though we should mention the trailer gave no hint as to where these particular teams were located.

Similarly, in terms of uniforms, there were a few familiar color schemes shown in the trailer--most notably, a virtual Barry Sanders playing in a blue jersey and silver helmet similar to his old Detroit Lions getup and Walter Payton playing in a red, white, and black uniform that was reminiscent of the Atlanta Falcons' uniform. Another player, legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas, was shown in a uniform that was very reminiscent of the Nebraska Cornhusker's home uniform--a plain red jersey, white helmet with a red stripe down the middle, and white pants.

As you might have guessed from the famous names already mentioned, despite the lack of the NFL license, APF 2K8 is teaming up with some of the biggest names to ever play the sport. Names like Elway, Montana, Marino, Campbell, Butkus, Biletnikoff, and Aikman are just a handful of the more than 240 legends that will make their way into the game. And, of course, there's Jerry Rice, who's widely regarded as the greatest wide receiver to ever play the game. He's in the game, naturally, and wasn't shy during the post-press-conference interviews about lobbying on his own behalf to end up as the cover athlete of 2K8. Rice, who retired last season after signing a one-day contract to end his career with his San Francisco 49ers, was the only player shown in the game without his helmet--and, indeed, it was easy to recognize his famous face in the gameplay footage. Here's hoping the rest of the legends in the game are rendered just as accurately.

Details are still scarce on how all these legends will add up, or how you will use all this talent to your advantage, but Thomas would say that your goal will be to draft as many of these legends as you can to build the best team possible from an admittedly deep talent pool. As a result of players drafting different legends for their team, each person's experience with the game will be different.

"There are no set teams if you don't want them," Thomas said. At one point in the trailer, for example, it seemed like Elway and Barry Sanders were playing for the same team. And while Thomas said you can play with a preset team in the game's season mode, the focus of the game will be on building a team from the ground up and then putting your dream team up against all comers, whether in the single player game, or via offline or online multiplayer. Just how you will go about building that team, what kind of restrictions you'll have, what players will be available from the get-go, and how you will go about recruiting the best players of all time--well, we don't know yet. All we know is that the focus will be on creating a team of incredible talent and then going out and decimating the competition.

But with so much stellar talent in the game, how does Visual Concepts go about differentiating players from one another, especially when it comes to attribute ratings, which would normally be sky-high across the board? Again, Thomas wasn't willing to spill the beans, but he did give a hint as to his team's approach: "We're not looking at attributes as 0 to 100, as have games in the past. We're really looking at it in a different way. I don't want to say too much--but it's basically there's so many great players, there's a wide range of talent in very specific categories. There's fast players, there's strong players. We're taking all those attributes… and what makes those players great in this game."

When it comes to controls, Thomas said to expect a game that will be familiar to fans of the NFL 2K series. "We're not looking to make this crazy new football game that no one's ever 'controlled' before; we're looking to add a lot to the genre of football and to the games--We want it to be familiar but have a number of new things."

What about elaborate celebrations, nasty injuries, and other things the No Fun League has attempted to filter out of video games (and the sport)? Thomas has said that kind of thing will be in 2K8, but not to the degree you might expect. Yes you can expect to see celebrations in the game, but as Thomas puts it, "We're not trying to put our nose up at the league or anyone else."

Now, about the customization thing. Fans might have heard a rumor in the past couple of weeks that APF 2K8 will be light on customization, despite earlier reports to the contrary. Even though he wasn't willing to talk details yet, Thomas wants to set the record straight when it comes to customizing the game: "When I say 'customization,' I mean you will be able to customize everything. There's going to be a full customization engine in the game. That really is something that we also haven't seen before in a football game." Sounds like a good start, and we're looking to see just how that can be taken.

As 2K puts it, All Pro Football 2K8 is "football resurrected." We're looking forward to seeing more details on the game's resurrection and eventual return in the coming weeks, as we approach its summer release.