All-Pro Football 2K8 trailer

2K Sports has released the first official trailer for All-Pro Football 2K8. Notes on the trailer follow below it.

What I took from this trailer:

-The framerate didn’t seem consistent. Is the game going to be locked in at 60fps? We haven’t heard yes or no and that could be worrysome.

-A real 2K5ish look and feel to it. That isn’t necessarily bad although it seems that a lot was borrowed from a three year old game.

-The player models just don’t seem right, especially how skinny they all are. The players are lacking a real sense of bulk.

-I liked the glimpses of the weather and how that may affect the play on the field. Adjusting your strategy due to weather conditions is something that has never really been necessary. Other than the increased liklihood of a fumble it has never mattered. If the weather really impacts how you play the game that would be a cool addition.

-Some of the catch animations looked nice, the throwing animations looked a little awkward.

-It seems there is a real difference in quality between the cut scenes and actual gameplay. We saw this with the screenshots that have been released. The ones that came from cut scenes were comparable to Madden yet the ones of actual gameplay were very disappointing. In this video the looks at cut scenes such as the TD celebration and the taunting actions were much better than the actual replay footage from gameplay.

-They couldn’t find a better song to use?

Overall a pretty unimpressive video (at least in the sense that it seems unlikely this would sway people towards purchasing it) and the early reaction out there seems to mirror my own. This really is not much of a surprise because I had spoken to a few who had attended the first media event for the game which included a trailer viewing and had walked away from it lacking any sense of enthusiasm for what they had seen.

Still the game shouldn’t be judged based on video from replays and cut scenes. We only have what we have to go on though. That is now disappointing screens, a feature list, and now this mediocre trailer. It is hard to imagine that an amazing game is going to follow such lackluster reveals.