NBA 2K8 (Xbox360)

Developers are often criticized for seemingly doing as little as possible from one year to the next with their sports games. That is not the case with NBA 2K8. It's superior to last year's game in almost every way; there's loads of new content and the gameplay is better than ever. Issues, such as missed shots close to the basket and atrocious documentation, hurt the overall package. But this is still a game that's sure to please both casual and hardcore hoops fans.

There's no shortage of ways to stay busy in 2K8. The series has had a street ball component to it for a number of years and it's back again. It's called NBA Blacktop here, but it has been revamped and improved upon in a number of ways. You can participate in a three-point shootout or play street ball using real NBA players. The goofy story from last year is gone--you just play ball. The big addition to the mode is the dunk contest. Up to four players can choose from current stars and legends, such as Clyde Drexler, Dr. J, or Dominique Wilkins, for a three-round dunk contest that takes place in the streets of Las Vegas.

There are three parts to each dunk: the gather, in-air style, and the finish. A gather is how you start the dunk. You can bounce the ball to yourself, hop off of one foot, toss the ball in the air, and more depending on what direction you move or rotate the right analog stick. In-air style is determined the same way. Here, you can pump fake, spin, windmill, spread your legs à la the Jordan logo, and a host of other actions. To finish the dunk, you press R2 or the right trigger in the highlighted area of the meter. The closer you are to the center, the better your finish. You can also place props, such as ball racks and benches, to add a bit of flair to your dunks. It takes a little bit of practice and the game does a poor job of letting you know what you need to do (though it does tell you what you did wrong after the fact), but once you've spent some time experimenting, you can pull off some amazing-looking dunks. Because the judges are all over the place with their scoring, this mode is best played against friends offline or online when you can trash-talk your opponent and argue over scores. Losing to computer-controlled opponents on a weak dunk is no fun at all.

NBA Blacktop is nice, but it's more of a bonus--the association is the bread and butter of the series. It's still the deepest basketball sim out there, but not a whole lot has changed and it's starting to feel a bit stale. The menus have been redone, but they are still a chore to navigate. A lot of the tasks aren't much fun either, like scheduling practices and scouting future draft picks. The way you negotiate contacts is more realistic than ever and you now have the ability to include no-trade clauses. Hooray! Now you can be saddled with a bunch of horrible contracts--just like Isiah Thomas! You'll also need to assign roles (starter, star, sixth man) to your players in an effort to keep their morale up--unlike Isiah. All of these options may make it seem like going through a season of the association is a lot of work, but the effect they have on your team is minimal. It's possible to use the default roles, never schedule any practices, and scout very little yet still do just fine. But you get what you put into the mode. If you really immerse yourself in the life of an NBA GM and coach, there's a lot to enjoy here. Should you want to only worry about the rigors of a single season, you can do that in the aptly named season mode.

Once again, the NBA 2K series sets the standard for online play. There's something for everyone to enjoy here. Hardcore fans can participate in an entire season, complete with online draft. You can create tournaments, as well as play ranked and unranked matches. The game never really bothers to explain how to do it, but if you go to the online lobby page and scroll down, you'll find that you can participate in all of the NBA Blacktop modes too. Up to eight players can play together on the Xbox 360 and up to 10 players can team up on the PlayStation 3. All of your stats and progress are tracked on your player card, making it easy for you to scout prospective opponents. 2K8 takes a proactive approach to getting player feedback, not only asking you if you want to give Xbox Live feedback on a player after a game, but also giving you its own series of questions to help ensure people know what kind of player they're going up against in the future. None of this would mean a thing if the game didn't run well. Outside of free throws being a little more difficult and the referee sometimes not wanting to put the ball in play, our online experience was quite good.

2K8 boasts some impressive options, but how the game plays is most impressive. The signature jump shots in last year's game were nice, but this year, Visual Concepts has raised the bar with signature style animations. There are countless new layups, dribble moves, passes, and dunks. These new animations complement the already great-looking jump shots. You'll be amazed at how realistically the game plays and moves. The CPU does a great job of taking advantage of all these signature moves by making the players play just as they would in real life. Even though we were on the wrong end of the beating, we were dazzled as Steve Nash threw no-look passes, squeezed bounce passes through tiny openings, and drove the lane with reckless abandon. Other players are just as lethal in the game as they are in real life. Shaq's an absolute terror near the basket, throwing down vicious dunks over anyone who stands between him and the hoop; Kobe will take over a game, owning entire quarters at a time; while LeBron will beat you with his passing and scoring. It's one of those things you've got to see in action to truly appreciate how everything comes together.

You wouldn't know it from the game's horrible instruction manual (save for some load screens, there's no in-game instruction either), but there are a number of new gameplay features this year. We didn't find this particularly useful, but you can use the right stick to raise or lower your defender's hands. You can also control other players at any time, get them open, call for the ball, and then drain a shot. Another addition that will help you get open shots is a diagram that shows you where players need to go when you run a play. This is a great way to learn the proper way to run plays and should encourage you to do more than drive the line or toss up endless three pointers by making it easy to run an offense like the pros. You'll also need to run plays because your players don't do much on their own to get open. They'll shuffle around out near the three-point line, but they don't work hard down low nor do they cut to the basket much on their own. The big change to the way the game controls is that you now perform crossovers and other dribble moves strictly with the left analog stick. If you're playing from the sideline camera, it can be a tough to get the players to do what you want them to do. The system is much more responsive from the baseline view because your actions more accurately mimic what the players are doing. It's a good change because the controls were getting overly complex, but Visual Concepts needs to just swallow its pride and copy NBA Live's use of the right trigger.

These changes and additions are not huge on their own, but how everything comes together is what makes 2K8 such an amazing game. Once you get a handle on the controls, you have a wide array of moves at your fingertips. The artificial intelligence is great--it's more challenging than last year, but it never feels cheap. Even free throws, which were frustrating last year, have been made more forgiving this time around. If you toss in the fantastic signature style moves and the way they're implemented, you've got a great game on your hands.

It's too bad, then, that there are some nagging issues that keep the game from being truly remarkable. Once again, there are too many blown layups. Whether you use the shoot button or the shot stick (it's a little less of an issue with the stick), players will miss wide-open dunks and layups. They'll turn around midair and throw up a circus shot for no reason. They also seem to have an aversion to going strong to the hole. This seems to be the developer's way of keeping overall shooting percentages realistic, but it comes at the expense of completely unrealistic percentages from in the paint. It's such an obvious problem that even the game's announcers see what's going on, chiding players for missing such easy shots. There are also some smaller flaws that bring things down a bit. When double-teamed, ball handlers are too quick to pick up their dribble and often turn the ball over as a result of being tied up. Defenders charge into the ball handler to push him over midcourt for a backcourt violation, the AI does a poor job of helping you rotate defenders to cover the open man, and there are a lot of questionable foul calls. None of these issues ruin the game, but imagine how great it would be if they weren't there...

2K8 doesn't look a whole lot different from last year, but the addition of all the new signature style moves does wonders for making the game appear more realistic. Many sports games have great animations, but none of them react so realistically to what's happening, apply physics, and then transition from one move to the next so seamlessly. Player models are generally quite good, though many of the Caucasian players look downright horrifying, as do most of the coaches. The weird bug where the shorts the players are wearing tear and vanish still rears its ugly head once in a while too. Arenas look fantastic, thanks to great-looking courts, cheerleaders, dancing mascots, players on the bench reacting to the action on the court, and (ugly but active) individual crowd members. The frame rate is generally steady, but it does choke a bit during free throws and replays. The announcers do a nice job of calling the action and mix in a fair amount of game analysis as well. They do occasionally miss some big plays and there are a few situations where you'll repeatedly hear the same call, but they're generally quite good.

It is rare to find a sports game where you're in awe of the moves you see onscreen, but it's something that happens routinely with 2K8. Rather than get upset about how the CPU is picking you apart, you'll find yourself admiring how it happened and then resolving to return the favor the next time down the court. It's just too bad that such problems as missed layups, poor instructions, and a somewhat stale association mode are present because even with these problems, NBA 2K8 is one of the greatest basketball games in recent memory. Whether you're a casual basketball fan or a total hoops nut, this is the game for you.

All-Pro Football 2K8 - (Xbox360)

ESPN NFL 2K5 is one of those games that have developed a seriously hardcore following in recent years. That's because it happens to be one of the most tightly crafted football games ever made, and also because it happens to be the last NFL-licensed game made by 2K Sports, following EA's snatching of the NFL license into the land of exclusivity. For just about three years now, fans of the 2K brand of football have been wringing their hands in anticipation of what 2K might do to bring back an alternative to Madden. The answer is finally here in the form of All-Pro Football 2K8. All-Pro is precisely the kind of football you remember from NFL 2K5--maybe a little too much like it--but with a roster of classic players from NFL yore. The premise? Build your own team out of your favorite old-timers, and compete against other teams full of heroes of the gridiron, both offline and online. It's a very cool idea for a game, especially in the way you build your team, but some niggling issues with the gameplay and presentation, as well as a stripped-down package of modes, prevents 2K8 from being a truly great return for 2K football.

First, let's look at who you're working with in All-Pro. The roster of classic players goes well over 200, and you'll see plenty of big-time names like Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino, Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Mike Ditka, and more. There's also a nice variety of players that aren't quite as immediately recognizable, but certainly deserve their all-pro status, like Lem Barney, Len Dawson, Chuck Muncie, Jessie Tuggle, and the like. However, there's also a decent chunk of players in the game that kind of leave you scratching your head about why they're in there. Mike Golic, for instance, is far more notable for his ESPN broadcasting career than his playing career; Korey Stringer is better known for his death at training camp than his role on the field; and what, exactly, did Brian Bosworth ever do besides play well for about two seasons before getting injured, retire, and go on to star in bad movies? Still, several weird choices aside, the number of honest-to-god legends vastly outweighs the goofy picks, and while one could argue endlessly about various omissions in the roster, this collection of players is plenty good for a starting entry.

But what do you do with all these classic players? Essentially, from the moment you first boot up the game, your task is to build the team of your dreams. To build this team, you're provided 11 empty slots with which to fill superstars, and the remaining slots are taken up by generic players. The classic players are ranked in gold, silver, and bronze tiers. You get two gold, three silver, and six bronze players for any team you create, and they can fill whatever positions you like. Want a potent offense? Grab Jerry Rice and Walter Payton, toss in a silver-tier quarterback like Joe Theismann or Randall Cunningham, and you're in good shape. Prefer the defensive game to be the focus of a team? Pick Ronnie Lott, Dick Butkus, Lem Barney, and Ed "Too Tall" Jones, and you're looking pretty scary. Of course, it's all about balance. Go too far on one side of the ball or the other, and you may suffer in the end. Likewise, if you don't fill out your less sexy positions, like offensive line and kicker, you could find yourself in a difficult spot in certain situations. Difficult a balance as it can be to strike, it's a fun one to experiment with. You can create as many teams as you like, and edit any one you create over and over again until you feel like you've gotten it right.

Once you get your team on the field, any fan of NFL 2K5 is going to be able to settle into a groove pretty quickly. That's because this game might as well be 2K5 with a handful of gameplay tweaks. Some of those tweaks include a new gang tackling system that actually looks and feels superior to anything found in recent Madden games, and a new right-analog-stick tackling mechanic that essentially lets you do big hits, high and low tackles, or reach tackles (the last of which rarely ever seems to work very well). There's also a new kick meter that tries to turn the right analog stick into a kicker's leg, having you pull back on it to start the play, and then push forward to kick (provided you time it and aim correctly). Nifty idea, but it doesn't work well at all. Kickoffs seem to work fine, but kicking field goals is a lot more scattershot than it should be. You know something's off when you're timing your kicks nearly perfectly and putting little angle on the ball beyond where you set the arrow pointer, and you're still missing kicks from 35 yards out.

Interestingly enough, it's not the changes made to 2K8's design that really sell it--it's the stuff you remember. It probably speaks best to how fantastic a game 2K5 was that 2K8's gameplay can still be considered great fun, and still feel realistic, considering how much of it is identical to that game. The running game is still the best in the business, with moves and blocking that look and feel just about as spot-on as you could ever hope for. The passing game is no slouch either, though there's a weird bit of delay between when you press the button to throw to a receiver, and when the pass actually launches--one that might be somewhat realistic, but feels overwrought when you're just trying to get the ball out quickly. Defense is stingy and mechanically sound. Defensive backs tend to drop a few too many "gimme" interceptions, and defensive players still like to stand dead still in one spot when assigned to zone coverage (wide receivers tend to do the same thing on certain types of routes), but those quibbles aside, it's hard to complain much about the defensive game.

So, if the game still plays so well, what prevents it from being truly great? It's a lot of things, many of which are elements that are missing. As an offline, single-player game, All-Pro is a weak effort. You get a quick game mode, and one season to play through against a series of pre-made teams, and once you win the championship (or don't), that's pretty much the end of it. There's no franchise mode, no crib, none of the amenities 2K Sports fans have become accustomed to over the years.

Customization options also feel a bit lackluster. There are plenty of ways to design your team, including names, cities, uniform styles, and the like. The number of logos is a little on the paltry side, but there's enough of a variety to ensure you won't end up creating very many similar-looking squads. Player customization options are more disappointing. There aren't quite enough base options for faces, nor any way to really edit hairstyles or other distinctive features. What's also disappointing is that any player you create has to be put into the gold, silver, or bronze category. There's no way to edit the scrub guys on your team. It makes sense that you wouldn't be able to edit their attributes and performance ratings, but not even being able to edit their names or appearances is pretty weak.

At the very least, the multiplayer game isn't lacking. In fact, it's safe to say that 2K8 feels like a game specifically built for multiplayer competition. Half the fun of the game is pitting your created teams against other people's concoctions to see how they match up. You can do so in the standard ranked and player matches, as well as in tournaments and online seasons for up to 32 teams. There's still no fantasy-draft option, but given the limited number of noteworthy players in the game, that's somewhat understandable. Online performance seemed aces all around in the matches we played. Small bouts of lag popped up, but nothing that affected gameplay.

Presentation is another area where All-Pro falls a bit short. Graphics are a point of contention simply because of how much the game resembles its Xbox forebears. Certainly the graphics engine has been scaled up quite a bit. You'll see plenty more detail in players' jerseys, helmets, and especially the arenas, which are massive and feature excellent-looking crowds, and animatronic mascots in some cases. But at the same time, it still looks like a scaled-up version of 2K5. The overly lanky player models, weird player faces, and sometimes stiff running movements give the game an aged feel.

That's not to say all the animation looks bad, mind you. Not even close. The new gang tackles look excellent, collision animations in general look just about perfect in most cases (even when players run off the field into the bench and players on the sidelines) and there's nothing quite like having a QB launch a long bomb to someone like Jerry Rice or Andre Reed, and watching them make a spectacular leaping catch for the score. There are definitely some areas where the animation could have used an upgrade, but much of what's there works nicely. By the same token, the celebration animations feel pretty out of date, as a lot of them came straight from 2K5. Not to mention that some of them seem woefully out of place, or downright inappropriate. Barry Sanders doing a boastful dance after a TD? We don't think so. And there's something truly disquieting and, frankly, a bit tasteless about OJ Simpson doing a throat-cut animation after a big play.

Broadcast presentation is another issue of note. On-field stat displays are solid and give you good info about what's going on in the game, but the camera presents an occasional issue, especially if you aren't playing with a widescreen TV. Zooming back prior to a play doesn't let you see your receivers on the far ends of the field, which sometimes makes it difficult to check up on what route they're running. On the audio front, the delightful twosome of Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe make their return to the commentary booth, but loads of the commentary seems to have been directly lifted from 2K5 with little editing or adjustment. Sure, they've got all the player names updated, but O'Keefe's food jokes and "You can't coach that!" moments are largely recycled. On top of that, the ancient editing techniques give the commentary a stilted feel that breaks up the flow. On-field dialogue is also extremely cheesy and poorly delivered, and the in-game soundtrack is rather short, so you tend to hear a lot of the same tracks again and again. At least the sounds of the game are as high quality as ever.

Ultimately, All-Pro Football 2K8 delivers an enjoyable gameplay experience that fans of 2K football will find immediately engaging. At the same time, that great gameplay is so great because much of it comes directly from a three-year-old game, and many of the supplementary features that made that old game so fantastic are missing here. The issue isn't with the lack of an NFL license, but the inability to truly enjoy the game in a single-player environment for very long, not to mention the decidedly antiquated presentation. But with all that said, what matters most is that All-Pro is still an enjoyable football game, in spite of its more lackluster elements. This is a good, solid foundation that 2K can hopefully build upon for future sequels. If you temper your expectations from the extremely high ceiling set by NFL 2K5, and simply go in expecting a fun multiplayer-focused experience, you'll get just that out of All-Pro Football 2K8.