All Pro Football 2k8

Since EA and the NFL inked an exclusive licensing agreement, the Madden Football games (06/07) have been dissapointing and sloppy. Madden 06 on the 360 was put together so quickly, a lot of the features that were in last gen's version were not there. I gave them a pass. First generation games on a new console are either ports from previous consoles or tech demos.

Madden 07 on the 360 was buggy at best sloppily excecuted at worst. The clock ran after the 2 minute warning if a penalty was called, the clock should stop. The menus were laggy offline. The game wasn't as responsive as the previous versions due to sloppy graphic programming.


Also, Madden 07's feature EA hyped the most: 3d Grass.

Madden 08's hype so far? The Madden Curse. It was a nice run for Vince Young, I hope he has good insurance.

On to what I really want to talk about APF 2k8. Here is the hook. Legendary players playing side by side. Teams will be made up from these players.

2k sports is hyping:

• Better AI.

• Instead of a 0-100 rating system, the rating system will consist of icons these represent the positive and negative effects the player has on the field. The interview with Game Informer uses an example of a mobile QB that is a fumbler. Sounds a lot like Culpepper. I wonder if they have a small hands icon. They also have special abilities. Game informer uses 4th quarter comebacks as an example.
  

• They are including game mechanics the NFL doesn't want madden to include for example: Injuries occuring in real time and having animations associated with them and on field banter.

One thing no one knows about right now is the online component. I will make a wild guess here. You will draft your team offline and you will be able to play that team on line. A couple of reasons for this. The teams in the game have no real life counterpart and the players will probably be all of roughly the same calibur, with the exceptions of the special abilities and small hands handicaps. If this is the case, I know a lot of people that will pick this up either with madden or instead of madden.

the price point right now: 59 dollars for ps3/360 versions. Visual Concepts and 2ksports need to work together to lower the price by 10-15. If they do that, madden is dead.