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The Legend and Tragedy of All Pro Football 2K8 – And What Could Have Been

In our office/spare room there is a secondary TV with my XBox 360 hooked up just in case some gaming needs to happen and the PS4/Big TV aren’t available. I had about an hour of free time where I found myself looking at my old 360 games and saw All Pro Football 2K8 shining in it’s nostalgic glory. Having just finished another season of Madden 19 Franchise Mode with the same stale feeling that I keep thinking will go away – I decided to boot up 2K8 for a random game. As I expected, I somehow emerged from this game happy with the 2K8 but annoyed by the current (on-going) situation that is the Madden Monopoly.

The Original ‘Legends Game’ can be had for cheap. You will be amazed with the gameplay and animations that might not even be in Madden this year… or ever.

What a game it was at the time for those of us that had only too recently seen the decline of quality in NFL football games after the Madden monopoly happened in 2004/2005. We will start with some of the basics that Madden didn’t flesh out until years later (if at all).

Double-Team Blocking was something that we had never seen carried out in the way that 2K8 introduced it. Add in reach tackles, kickers slipping, long snaps going off course and even late hits on defense (that would result in a penalty). Also, let’s not forget the interactive players on the sideline and injuries that occurred in real time – and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Sure, the wonky Field Pass and player models were the typical hilarious mess that we especially see in retrospect. “Let’s get out there and crack some heads!” was something that got old pretty fast every game you had to hear (and see) a player say it. That’s also one of the smallest aspects of the game that would have been removed in future iterations.

The best part about All Pro Football was and remains the one thing that can’t be denied – it was real football. The weight and motion of the players when you controlled them from quarterback to linebacker felt real and it still does. The tackles on nearly every play looked like their real-life counterparts – and some of the tackles were downright wonderfully brutal. Add in the running mechanics that would make your jaw drop when Barry Sanders turned a juke into a double spin and was off to the races. Also, the way in which Okoye and Campbell would truck defenders was simply nasty.

All Pro Football 2K8 was ahead of it’s time and basically gave Madden the blueprint for what would eventually destroy sports games in general – using all time great players to build dream teams must have stuck because only three years later Madden 10 introduced Madden Ultimate Team and the rest is micro-transaction history. Say what you will, but ultimate team modes have completely gutted the dreams of many sports gamers that have no desire to play online modes with other people that pour money into their teams or pick exploit plays at every turn – sports gaming has died and gone to a fiery hell reserved for all corporate hacks.

There are two reasons All Pro Football 2K8 failed in terms of sales and as a game. The first reason it failed from a sales perspective was that it didn’t have any of the rights to NFL teams. This was an obvious downer, but it should have been fully expected as EA and the NFL decided to wreck things with the monopoly as mentioned above. The second reason APF 2K8 failed was because it was such a stripped down game to begin with. The options for customizing your team uniforms and building a squad with a limited amount of real players were cool, but hardly worth bragging about as a ‘back of the box feature’.

I believe to this day that had 2K Sports continued their football development after 2K8 with fictional rosters and a full-fledged franchise mode they would have challenged Madden in terms of game quality and eventually surpassed them. If you see what 2K was able to do with the gameplay of NBA 2K it makes a football fan look up to the sky and say ‘Why, God… Why must we only have Madden?’.

As we enter the last five days until Christmas I want to once again share my one gaming wish with the wonderful people at 2K Sports.

Please… I beg you. Bring back 2K Football with the following features.

A fully fictional roster of 32 teams with players of different ages, etc. would be a nice start. Couple that with a franchise mode that can be played for 30+ seasons. Give us an experience for scouting players that involves more depth than pressing an unlock button for three attributes. Give us real football that we can enjoy – with late hits, concussions, broken bones and real time injuries in general. Give us an improved football experience based on the great start that 2K8 had in gameplay (which I can only imagine how great it would be after 10 years of development…).

Release the game on a 2 or 3 year development rotation with fixes and patches for gameplay and exploit issues as you won’t ever have to worry about roster updates.

Please, just give us a sign that you haven’t forgotten about 2K Football fans. We are still out here and we are still waiting for a decent football game.

Madden 18 – Hiding Behind A Bad Movie

Everything is falling into place as we prepare to enter August. The Dallas Cowboys have another problem with a star player just as the season is getting ready to start and they might have to place all of their hopes and dreams on the back of their one year wonder at quarterback. NFL Camps will start very soon, and with that excitement blowing in the soon to come autumn wind – we have another year of Madden NFL only a few weeks away.

The crazy part about this is that up until this point there hasn’t been any gameplay footage released by EA. With the fans clamoring for some proof of life in that regard it is hard to have a lot of pity for them. They should know what the game looks like by now. EA is trying their best to market their version of NBA 2K’s My Player Mode with The Longshot. I wish I could say that this was going to be some sort of huge jump in sports gaming – but it quite simply won’t be anything close to that. According to some of the tweets and interviews, this mode has been in development for around three years. To think they have been working on this for three years and we still don’t have functional Challenges, sideline detection, real-time injuries, and many other simple football gameplay needs… Longshot had better be a masterpiece with zero bugs.

The problems that Madden NFL has faced for over a decade involves more than not measuring up to 2K’s basketball story mode experience. It is everything that 2K would have done if EA didn’t have the monopoly on NFL Football. It’s hard for me to think about how great an NFL 2K18 would be and by how much it would most likely outsell Madden 18. Madden has made some strides in recent years, no doubt… but, compared to where either game could be had there been competition? We would have seen gameplay footage by E3, if not sooner.

Madden continues to push the line that they are leading with their new Longshot Mode for marketing. I find it interesting that this is their strategy. This is mostly because I can see through their thin veil of BS. They aren’t showing gameplay footage because, frankly… they don’t have to show anything and the game will still sell. Madden hasn’t changed in any major way since Madden 10. Now that we have come to the point where they don’t even have to market the game itself with any actual gameplay footage it does beg one to ask yourself as part of the Madden horde… why are any of you pre-ordering this game?

One Step Forward – Madden 17’s Franchise Mode Takes Two Steps Back

It has been a rough ride being an NFL fan and having one option for video game representation.

Madden NFL has had a bit of a roller coaster existence since becoming the monopoly that it is. Franchise Mode has been the primary victim when it comes to changes to the game. It has also been the elephant in the room when fans are asked for feedback from EA Tiburon. It seems that the Franchise Mode/CFM/CCM team has finally realized (for Madden 17 at least) that customized rosters and real world features are key to people enjoying Franchise Mode. There are a couple changes new to Madden in general but the real changes seem to be the things that have been featured before or needed since the monopoly took effect.

Coaches Are The Least Important Aspect of Madden Franchise Mode - This isn't a big decision... it's a non-decision. — Coaches Are The Least Important Aspect of Madden Franchise Mode – This isn’t a big decision… it’s a non-decision.

First, the things that truly matter the most when it comes to Franchise Mode improvements.

Full Player Editing – This isn’t new as they might want people to believe. It existed in Madden 12 and provided much needed customization for rosters. The fact that this is available to online leagues is also a nice touch. To add that any changes will be shown in the Transactions is a nice and necessary perk for league members as well. The biggest curiosity for me is whether or not we will be able to edit Draft Classes before the draft or if we will have to draft players that are once again less than stellar prospects and edit them all to resemble legitimate rookies.
Practice Squads are finally entering the Franchise Mode universe. It was always puzzling to me that EA would make claims about not having the resources to put certain small aspects into the game. This was one of the many that was apparently a matter of time. Now we can have players on a practice squad as long as they have played fewer than two full seasons in our respective Franchise Modes. It will be nice to know that I can take a flier on that 7th Round WR that can run like the wind but catch like Simple Jack.
Dynamic Development is one of the aspects that I am skeptical of when it comes to Madden. They have tried and failed to implement all sorts of development and player growth from season to season. Now they are putting the trait of Development into the front of how players grow in ratings. The broken season awards system is going to play a strong role in how players are moved up and down in development traits as well. It really makes no sense for players to be pre-rated in this way as Slow, Normal, Quick, and Superstar. Make every player start each season with the same baseline and allow the season to determine how each player progresses. Sure, Tom Brady is and has been a Superstar, but he isn’t too far from being done. Then we have players like Robert Griffin III that have played up to par in their rookie year and then either fall apart or get injured. Maybe he comes back and becomes a superstar after this season. His slow development rating might say otherwise.

The other changes like ‘Big Moments’ and the ‘score ticker’ make me scratch my head. I love the idea of a score ticker and believe it has been needed for years. This doesn’t change the fact that Franchise Mode has yet to make it feel like anything more than a single team focus that misses out on an entire story outside of your own franchise.

Big Moments are rather insulting as it looks like they want to make the user think that every moment is a big moment. ‘First Drive of the Game’ is probably the least impressive in-game ‘Big Moment’ I have read about. The non-game Big Moments are laughable. Injuries, Free Agents and Coach Re-Signings aren’t big moments. Signing a coach is the least important aspect of Madden and they call it a Big Moment. Give me a break.

Madden does seem to be making strides this year. I am actually excited about it this season.

As jaded as I am and seem to always be about Madden, I am truly excited to play it this year. I just wish 2K would shock the world and release a new football title.

Madden Ratings System Unveiled

A recent article on FiveThirtyEight.com has helped us understand a bit more about what goes into Madden player ratings. I wish I could say I am impressed. Madden is one of the most stale and non-simulation sports games in existence, yet it gets touted as being true to the game.

It has always bothered me that Donny Moore seems to have full power to subjectively up someone’s rating because of one big catch, run or block. I truly miss 2K Football more and more as I read about Madden and the NFL in general.

Here is the breakdown from FiveThirtyEight –

A Bad Sign? Madden 15 Will Have No Demo.

If you consider how little Madden had grown as a game during the 360/PS3 generation it wouldn’t be too far to guess that it would be the same general game on PS4 and Xbox One. Usually we all get a taste of what Madden has to offer a couple of weeks prior to the retail release with a demo.

Not this year.

Madden 15 will not have a demo available for anyone. This isn’t something that bodes well for the game as the only justification given was that they wanted to put all of their effort into the actual game rather than a demo. It is rather disappointing from many aspects, but in the long run this will hurt Madden 15 more than help it.

2K Football Announcement Coming? – The E3 Rumor Mill In Full Swing

Every year in late-May and early-June we start hearing buzz about new games that will be or might be unveiled at E3. (E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo held in Los Angeles, CA annually.) It is much like the time leading up to the NFL Draft where there are so many rumors and baseless suggestions that you don’t know what to believe or who has the ‘inside track’.

This year there are a few titles that are supposedly being shown at E3 in hopes that they will capture the next-gen console audience’s hearts and minds. Some of these titles include Halo 5, Rockstar Games’ Agent and one game that a niche group of sports gamers have been longing for since 2008 – 2K Football.

Every year there is hope injected in the football gaming community that there will finally be some sort of football game released that isn’t made by EA Sports and that isn’t called ‘Madden’. There have been a few youtube videos with people saying that they have ‘a feeling’ that there will be a new 2K football title unveiled at E3 this year.

It is something that I almost always have high hopes for when it comes this close to football season. It seems that my hopes (and those of the sim football gaming community) are always dashed by the time E3 is over. Hopefully the rumor mill will prove to be correct this time around.

That said – there is no official news one way or the other about a 2K Football title as of yet. If there does happen to be an announcement, it will have to be a far deeper game than All Pro Football 2K8 was back in 2007. Keep your attention focused towards legitimate news and releases as we get closer to E3. The rumors will only get more ridiculous between now and then.

Is Madden NFL Still Relevant?

This is one of the more risky topics I have covered for the sake of this site and the popularity of all of my Madden NFL coverage in recent years. That being said – I am having a difficult time these days wanting to write or cover any sort of news from the Madden NFL front, let alone anything positive about the series. It has been a journey of ups and downs covering EA’s football games and it has finally come to a point where I am questioning whether this title is worth anything more than obligatory coverage for the sake of web traffic.

It Is The Same Game – Every. Single. Year.

Madden doesn’t change. There are roster updates and a few tweaks to gameplay, sure. I don’t expect Madden to become a baseball game or something either. While continuity and general similarities should be expected in a sports title I can’t help but wonder where the innovation has been over the last decade. The last Madden game that really changed anything was Madden 2005 and that was the hit-stick that does nothing but aesthetic value for hits that cause no real injuries to occur (most likely because the NFL demands that such ‘violence’ not be realistically put into the game).

People Still Talk About NFL 2K5

Nothing should make a developer more upset than people still preferring another title that hasn’t existed for ten years over their current game. While NFL 2K has a cult following among a relatively small group of sports gamers, it is still worth pointing out that not only do they exist, but they are quite devoted to never buying a Madden game. Even if we were to look at All Pro Football 2K8 from this perspective. It still holds up to the improved graphics and physics of Madden because it plays like a real football game.

EA Sports and the NFL Hold Madden Back

This might be the biggest issue that causes Madden to be such a dull experience. EA Sports has exclusive rights to create the NFL in video game format for consoles. This means that their goal has nothing to do with the game being innovative or realistic. It has everything to do with the bottom line and whether or not profit is being obtained annually. While this is clearly the goal of any ‘successful’ business, it remains to be seen where this will ever lead to any real innovation in the future.

The NFL has come under fire in recent years for concussions and injuries from the danger of playing football. Rather than coming out and saying that the game has risks and standing firm on the grounds of the game, they have bowed under the pressure of lawsuits that have started to slowly ruin the game. We have gotten to a point where in Madden, they can’t allow realistic injuries to occur because the NFL doesn’t want to market that aspect of the game for fear of being sued some more. It is a farce and the political correctness is hurting the game on consoles and on the field.

The Community Is Dying A Slow Death

Madden 10 was the last time I was truly excited about a Madden title; and it was also the last time I pre-ordered the game. The interaction with Ian Cummings and Co. made me feel like I actually had a stake in the game before it was released. They took the opinions of sim sports gamers seriously and really tried to make the game realistic. To their credit, they did make a damn good game that year. There were a lot of signs that started to point in the direction of Madden becoming truly innovative and a game for ‘real football fans’. That died in Madden 11 and 12 as EA tried to once again dumb down the game for ‘casual gamers’. Again, it was and will always be about the bottom line rather than innovation.

The aspect that EA seems to have forgotten is that the sports gaming community is their primary ‘Day One’ sales target. In this regard, they have been losing more and more customers over the last four years because they have taken away those interactions and decided to make the same game every year. Madden 13 and Madden 25 are virtually the same game. The commentary is the same garbage and the terrible gameplay and AI is still there. The CPU still calls a timeout when they have the ball at the 1:01 mark and they still call the same pathetic plays at the end of close games.

Do you really think that this would be the case if there were some sort of competition? Better yet, do you think these issues would still be around if EA still took an active approach to seeking the input of the consumer?

Where do you stand? Are you sick of Madden yet? Are you still playing and older version or a 2K title?

Comment below.

XBox One and PS4 – Are Exclusive Titles Still A Selling Point?

On the XBox 360 and PS3 there was the constant bombardment of exclusive titles like Gears of War, Halo and Forza versus Killzone, Resistance, Gran Turismo and for some sports gamers – MLB: The Show. Now that the next generation of consoles have finally started to become more common in households around the world it is interesting to see that the focus has shifted away from the exclusive titles and more towards the features of the systems themselves.

MGSV — Snake isn’t limited to just Sony consoles these days. But some of his missions are exclusively on one console or the other.

Sure, there are games that XBox One and PS4 have exclusive agreements and rights for, but they aren’t exactly the same type of focus that we saw last generation. While there are some gamers out there that will have certain games that they simply must have like the Halo or Killzone titles for each respective console… that time is changing.

One of the most obvious changes can be seen in the Metal Gear franchise. Metal Gear has always been a Hideo Kojima/Konami production. In saying that – it has also almost always been seen as a Sony Playstation title as well. Now that they have announced Metal Gear Solid 5 is going to be multi-platform it seems that they are starting to realize that more console availability also means more sales overall. This isn’t always a blessing as other content within the game will be exclusive to each console. This is more annoying than anything as it drives many gamers to wonder why they bother spending more and more money on microtransactions.

With multi-platform releases like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Madden NFL and other titles that prefer mass marketing based on volume of sales rather than simply having an agreement with a certain company to release on a specific console. The one caveat to this is when companies like EA and Activision make agreements (like they did with Microsoft) to release certain downloadable content (DLC) on one console before other another. This is a practice that is rather insulting to users that buy a game like Battlefield 4 on PS3/4, XBox 360 and especially PC as well as purchasing the $50 ‘Premium’ service. Primarily because they are being cheated out of content that is obviously available for XBox One users far earlier than anyone else that have purchased the same service for a different platform.

As we enter into a new era of gaming and an eventual move into a focus on digital content, it will be interesting to see how long exclusivity really plays a role in corporate gaming decision making. As it stands, there are a lot of gamers that are sick of feeling cheated out of their money when it comes to ‘exclusive’ titles and other DLC not being available for whatever reason.

Earning Your Legendary Points In Madden 25

One of the biggest mysteries to sim sports gamers is why they keep buying Madden in the first place. Once you get over that fact and then try to play the only option for video game football you will quickly find yourself asking why your character in Connected Franchise Mode isn’t earning the legendary points you think they should be.

Well, chances are good that you have moved the quarter length up over 7 minutes… It is as simple as that.

After winning the Super Bowl in my first season (I now need to restart with tougher sliders) I noticed that my legendary points for getting into the Hall of Fame and those valued Achievements weren’t adding up. During my second season I decided to mess with the settings before I played in the next Super Bowl. What would you know – moving the quarter length to 7 minutes fixed everything. Suddenly I went from 150 points to over 600!

As I try to find a way to make this into a more sim experience with 7-minute quarters I will say that you should probably set the accelerated clock to nothing lower than the default 20 seconds. It would be nice if EA actually said something (or God forbid, put a notation on the achievement like they once did). While I am enjoying my time with Madden 25 I must say that it gets rather annoying putting up with EA’s endless idiotic decisions and implementations.

Madden 25 Connected Franchise Mode – Don’t Settle For Anything!

After Madden 25 announced a recent Gamestop promo for ‘Connected Franchise Mode’ and an article surfaced on Bleacher Report talking about the supposedly tweaked Connected Careers Mode; there seems to be a lot of work for us to do in order to make Madden better instead of simply allowing EA Tiburon to give us old features and call them ‘new’.

There is a poll on the Brian Mazique article asking if editing rosters, fantasy drafts and controlling every team are enough to make you completely satisfied. These aren’t new features! Madden 12 had every single ‘feature’ they are trying to re-implement into a mode that essentially disallowed them. While these features are a must and will only add more depth to the game they by no means should satiate your desire for a better football game.

Some of the (many) additions Franchise Mode needs in order to mimic the real NFL are below:

Player Morale – Player morale was in Madden 2005 and has been in the NBA 2K series for years. If there is one thing that Madden lacks in terms of bringing life into the players it is morale and mood when it comes to the actual players.
Free Agent/UDFA Signings – Madden seems to think that free agency is something that allows a team to go and simply sign anyone they want if they aren’t on a team. After this weekend’s draft there were many players that were picked up just seconds after it was over. These players don’t simply go to the first time that calls, they weigh their options and choose. Some players have no desire to play for a team that has too much depth or a team that simply doesn’t win. Madden needs to make this more realistic and that starts with a more true-to-life free agency.
Storylines – The addition of storylines for some of the draft prospects in Madden 13 was awesome. It was a nice way to give some of the players in the draft a personal touch. The downfall is that their stories all seemed to stop once they were drafted. The commentary doesn’t follow any of them and the updates on the ‘news feed’ seem to leave any of those stories high and dry. Continuity is something that Madden’s career modes always seem to lack and while it will take some work to fully implement – it will be worth it.
Fan Bases – Some teams sell out almost every game. Some stadiums are lucky to be at 50% capacity. Somehow, almost every game in Madden is a sell out according to the stands. While some games have low attendance due to weather it doesn’t seem to matter what is going on in a given city for a game to be sold out. I can promise you one thing, if the Browns ever host an AFC Championship Game and it is snowing like crazy… the stands will be FULL. On the other hand, if the Bengals are playing a game in the middle of the season at home and they are 2-7, they will be lucky to have any ‘fans’ show up. The NFL is nothing without the fans and that needs to be made apparent in Franchise Mode.
Team Movement – While this poses some sort of strange issues with licensing, etc. there were some serious shortcomings when Madden allowed you to move a team to a new city. Outside of the issues listed in the fan base section, you couldn’t keep the team logo and there wasn’t any real support for the gamer to create a team in a new city because the commentary was terrible and franchise mode lost its luster. If you look at the fact that many teams are looking to move to new cities because of stadium issues or simply for more money it is something that will be happening soon and should be given the proper attention in the game.
Injuries – Madden finally put in some sort of real-time physics last year with the Infinity Engine. The downfall was evident in many areas but injuries are one of the most obvious. As much as the NFL wants to censor Madden and try to convince people that it isn’t a violent sport – football is a violent sport and that is why we like it! Real time injuries need to be in the game and big hits need to matter. It makes no sense for my 6’4″ 260lb MLB to have a random injury when he crushes Joe Flacco or Mike Vick in the backfield and they get up like nothing happened. Fix the injury system… please.
Player Progression – While I have always been a proponent of performance based progression I do not like how Madden 13 allowed the user to simply accumulate points by stats and put them where ever we wanted to in each player. Abilities should progress as the player uses them and performs them. How can a strength rating go up randomly or just because we decide we want it to? Follow the lead of MLB The Show and let the user have the option to determine what areas players will work on in a given week or set it to auto and let the coaching tendencies determine it.
Player Value – After Joe Flacco won the Super Bowl he got a healthy contract renewal. I drafted a QB in my Browns CCM, Mark Mallett… He has thrown for over 4500 yards and 35 TDs in his first three seasons. He then won a Super Bowl in 2015 and is up for a new contract offer from our front office. His OVR is 84 but his abilities have been growing with his performance. His contract demands?… 5 Years, $4.6 Million per year. There is no thinking about this from my perspective – Mallett is never going to ask for the money he deserves and that is sad. Players with great speed or players we like using are typically going for crazy statistics in our Franchise Mode. We should have to pay a premium price to keep them around if that is the case. Player value shouldn’t be determined by OVR but by performance and that should make it harder for teams to sign players they want to abuse the other teams with and keep them forever.

We will continue our efforts to make Madden a better game and you shouldn’t let EA get away with calling old parts of the game ‘new features’. What are your thoughts? What is Madden missing the most in Franchise Mode?