Why All-Pro Football Still Trumps Madden

[steveo]

I find APF 2k8 to be very mediocre compared to nfl2k5 probably because of the fact making teams in it sucks with no ratings and just having to guess how players will play.

I'll take madden any day over apf2k8, warts and all.

Now what really needs to happen is a next gen version of nfl2k5 with its few issues fixed. That would destroy madden.

[grunt]

Quote: Originally Posted by The Autumn Wind

I'm pretty well over APF, and I think generally we need to be more patient with learning what's in Madden and what it can do since we spent 2 years learning what APF could do, but you have a good point in your kind words about my long-winded posts. A great feature of APF was the mystery surrounding the players. You had to play lots of games with those guys to figure out what they could and couldn't do, and that was really immersive and authentic. It was a blast to try different guys in different schemes. I do think that Madden has provided some clear player differentiation but much of it is discernible through numerical ratings. I'm not a big fan of that, but it's not going away. I definitely miss learning that Cromwell was a great run support guy, good in zone, had marginal hands, and was slower than Marion, who was better in man and had even worse hands while being a decent tackler.

I should have cut and paste your posts and just kept a notebook. I am enjoying all three games.

[SA1NT401]

I agree on ALL FRONTS......

[Segagendude]

Quote: Originally Posted by wEEman33

You join a league and you start your own online franchise, college football dynasty, fantasy draft, whatever; the game is flexible enough to accommodate just about any league type you and your league-mates can think up. I've participated in tons over the last couple of years and they all trump just about any offline mode you could think up. This game was made for head-to-head play, whether offline or online, not grinding out season after season against a predictable AI opponent.

I don't play online, my connection s*cks.

I'm a single player, no kids, and only one controller, so head-to-head is out.

So for me, APF offers nothing. That's all I'm sayin'......

But I'm not here to bash. Just my personal opinion.

Enjoy...

[LBzrule]

I agree on the trenches. EA still has not caught up with 2k there yet. One problem that I have with both games though is that to me both games have the DE's and 3-4 OLB's coming out of their stance and off the line too slow. 2k8 is year's beyond Madden in the pass blocking department with the ability of linemen to pass one defender off to another lineman.

I also absolutely abhor the sixth sense of A.I QB's, which is one of the reasons why I stopped playing against the A.I in EA games a long time ago. You can even change your coverage at the last second and the QB still already knows where to put it within one second after the ball is hiked. That tells me it does not read coverage. And the things that apply to me never apply to the A.I. I cannot stop my drop if the play has the QB dropping 7 steps. But the A.I can stop its drop if I'm getting pressure. The procedural awareness does not kick in for WR's as they are always ready for the ball whether they have made their cut or not. No sense of timing in the passing game. Anyways, I like the new Madden but it has a much longer way to go than I previously thought.

[lostintravise]

great post. agreed with everything you said.

[fisher]

Quote: Originally Posted by StormJH1

Good point. What's the most frequent complaint against buying Madden year after year? "Oh, you're getting nothing more than a roster update." With APF, not only was the gameplay only a mediocre refinement of 2k5's last-gen engine, but you don't even get a "roster update" because: (1) The game isn't made or supported anymore (2) The game lacks an NFL license (3) There were never real "rosters" to begin with b/c you had this strange alternate universe where fake players and retired NFL vets play in a "league"

And this is why All-Pro Football ultimately failed (gameplay wise, it played a better game than Madden). There's no way a football game released without legit NFL rosters (or real NCAA schools) will succeed, irregardless of how good the gameplay is. Nothing 2K (or anyone else for that matter) does can change that.

Which is a shame, really. Football games are the worst sports games out there these days exactly because there's no competition (2K's baseball game is pretty subpar, but baseball fans still have the Show to play; NBA fans have 2 games to choose from (I prefer NBA 2K); NHL fans have 2 games to choose from (I prefer EA's NHL series)).

Quote: Originally Posted by StormJH1

(4) Roster management never would've worked in a game with no ratings, transactions, drafts, or franchise modes anyway. Rather than always hiding behing the "big, bad EA" argument, why are those shortcomings overlooked?

Nobody's overlooking what you pointed out as flaws of All-Pro Football. The problem is that it's exactly because of the NFL's exclusive license with EA that nobody else can make an NFL game (and like you and I said above, nobody's going to care about fake players and fake leagues).

Quote: Originally Posted by StormJH1

When people evaluate Madden or NCAA, they invariably say stupid things like "Well, this game lacks true field degradation and time of day progression, so those are deal-breakers for me" Crappy, niche features that nobody notices are "deal-breakers", but the total failure to provide anything looking like a professional football league of any kind is not!?!

Funny, but a lot of football fans want their football games to be somewhat sim. You know, they want the stuff in the game to mirror what they see on Sundays. The problem with Madden is that it doesn't even try to be sim-like. It's the same old problems year after year and it's a pretty bad time to be a football gamer these days. Madden was at its best at around 2005 on the Xbox/PS2 (ironically enough, when 2K was making NFL games as well). The fear EA had of competition to their biggest selling game made them buy out exclusive rights and now the rest of us are stuck with one choice.

It's not like EA's sports games are all trash. Look what they've done with the NHL series. If the Madden team put even a quarter of the effort into their game that the NHL crew does, it might well be a half way decent game.

[kingzfan2000]

Is there anything we could do to convince 2k to release a football game and just say screw the nfl license? I remember madden 2000 for the n64 didnt have the nfl license. It just had city names and numbers but people still bought it. 2k really should just make a 2k10 (or I guess it would be 2k11 now) and make it just like 2k5 with full franchise mode and everything.

At this point the only reason Im playing madden is because Im in an online franchise and if not for that I would have traded it in already because there should be a picture of this game in the dictionary next to the word bad.