All-Pro Football 2K8 (Xbox 360, 2007)

In 2004 Visual Concepts released one of the greatest football games of all time with ESPN NFL 2K5. And it was only $20. No sooner had SEGA and VC popped the cork on the champagne than EA swooped in and signed an exclusive licensing deal with the NFL, essentially killing the 2K football franchise. Fans wept. The VC team redistributed itself to help out on other sports titles. All seemed lost for 2K fans. Now, three years later, Visual Concepts has finally regrouped with a new gridiron title sans NFL license. All-Pro Football 2K8 plays and feels a whole lot like NFL 2K5, but the brilliant presentation and feature set of VC's last great football game didn't make the next-gen transition.

Because it lacks the NFL license, no current pro players, teams, or stadiums can appear in All-Pro 2K8. To make the experience satisfying, Visual Concepts gathered a bevy of retired pros and allowed gamers to draft their own teams. The Hall of Fame roster is impressive. Dan Marino, John Elway, Jerry Rice, and Dick Butkus are among the superstar roster. There are also a healthy number of lower-tier pros, many of whom had decent but not Hall of Fame careers. There's also Eric Bienemy, the former second string running back for the Chargers known only to a few thousand people. And yes, O.J. Simpson also made the list. Don't worry, the Juice is searching for the real killers on the gridiron.This large collection of more than 240 players is assembled into your own personal motley crew the first time you turn on All-Pro 2K8. You get to select two Gold Star players (Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, etc.), three Silver Star players (Randal Cunningham, Leslie O'Neal, etc.), and six Bronze Star players (Jim Harbaugh, Alvin Harper, etc.). In other words: Gold = Hall of Famer; Silver = Pro Bowler; Bronze = Played in the NFL. There is never an option to alter these numbers. You can't sacrifice three Bronze players for a Gold. There are no trades. There's not even a true draft. Even if you just wanted an All-Star scrimmage with a friend, you are out of luck. This limitation is perhaps All-Pro's greatest fault. For a game that must find replayability without a franchise mode, "have it your way" should have been All-Pro's motto.

Perhaps what's more frustrating is that in the barebones season mode, you will play against other teams that have a great variety of skilled players. One team will have no Gold Star players, while another might have five. This was done intentionally to avoid parity in the league. But that could have been achieved by putting some variants in coaching and player AI. Instead, every team tends to play pretty much the same. Even as you bump the difficulty, only the hidden statistics change; the AI only becomes minimally more improved. This is a stark change from NFL 2K5, which had some of the best AI around.

Visual Concepts' most radical departure from what we've seen previously from football games is the complete removal of statistics. Instead of seeing that Jerry Rice has a 99 in "Catch" and "Route Running," the greatest wide receiving in NFL history is measured by his special abilities. Rice is a Route God, Clutch, has Break Away Burst, Soft Hands, and earns a Leadership Bonus. These abilities define Rice in real life and on the virtual field. Each player has some number of abilities. Obviously, the upper-tier players will have more than the Eric Bienemies of the world.