Pure Gameplay-compare All Pro 2K8 to NFL 2K5

[catcatch22]

I've found that the focus bug only seems to happen when you give up a big play to the opposing team's player. Then the CPU automatically shifts your teams focus to the player that made that big play.

I first noticed this when I first got the game and played the Iron Men (Dan Marino Pittsburgh team) in the season mode. That team ran a 3 and 4 wide sets and was always given a gold TE (Ditka or Jackie Smith when I played them). I would always give up a big one at some point and what do you know the focus bug shifts my teams focus to that player.

It wouldn't happen all the time just once in a while when I gave a big one up, run or pass.

[JMD]

Quote: Originally Posted by sportyguyfl31

So its acceptable for a defender to just randomly wander off and cover some generic and leave his zone wide and clear? Okay.

Did you see last nights Saints / Pats game? It happened there. A Saints WR was left WIDE open for a long TD. It does happen.

[sportyguyfl31]

I will say this for APF.

I played the game last night for a couple of hours, and the attribute and tier system makes the game really diverse.

I mainly control a Free or Strong Safety.

the thing I DO like about APF is that the type of player I have and what I can do with them matters.

I roll Ronnie Lott into the the box on a coverage shell...I feel like I'm basically using a extra gold LB.

I bring Eugene Robinson into the box, and I get him killed.

[sportyguyfl31]

Quote: Originally Posted by JMD

Did you see last nights Saints / Pats game? It happened there. A Saints WR was left WIDE open for a long TD. It does happen.

Nice try, but that doesnt work.

That happened due to a player error.

A busted assignment.

If that happens, in the natural course of a game..I have zero complaint.

When it happens, because the game decided to switch focus on a generic reciever, or on a legend, clear on the other side of the formation..then I have a issue.

User error, or a player not being good enough to make a play, I can accept. Tip your cap, and move on to the next play.

Giving up a play because the game predetermined who focus should kick in on, without my say so, I cannot.

[kcxiv]

Quote: Originally Posted by JMD

Did you see last nights Saints / Pats game? It happened there. A Saints WR was left WIDE open for a long TD. It does happen.

hehe, the thing is i dont htink people understand that even in a cover 2 sometimes the safeties go with their instinct and help cover someone. Sometimes they do get burned, they are only human, but when your playing and a game is happening you have to think and use your instincts.


If it didnt we wouldnt see football games scoring so much.

[tpaterniti]

Here is a long summary of the difference between the two. I think I can confidently say that I knew just about everything a person could know about 2K5. I played it for well over 1500 hours (maybe 2000+) and I made 2 full roster edits for it on PS2, which took forever. I have played 2K8 quite a bit as much, managed many leagues, and I made the top 32 in the official 2K tournament.


QB

2K5 is a little more natural than 2K8 because there is no charge to deal with in 2K5. But you have the option in 2K8 and the charge is overrated anyway. Pick Otto graham or Troy Aikman and they throw fine without it. If you want to scramble Big Ben style 2K8 is fine; if you want to scramble Mike Vick style forget about it. Due to the scramble abuse in 2K5 they really neutered it in 2K8.


HB and O-line

Running is a lot different in 2K5 than it is in 2K8. In 2K5 you could do a lot more with the right analogue stick whereas it is pretty much worthless in 2K8. Charged moves are about all you can do in 2K8. Also there is a pretty big difference between different tiers of HBs in 2K8, although people probably forget how impossible HBs in 2K5 franchise are to tackle when their BTK attribute got anywhere above 85. Also O-linemen can take some pretty bad angles, but that goes for both games. 2K8 feels more realistic and comfortable.


WR/TE

Only certain passing plays and routes really work in 2K5. Mostly lots of rollouts and single-move routes. The other routes are there, but the WRs don't run them right and ever since 2K3 there has been a problem with WRs getting hit and having passes knocked loose. It is better in 2K5 than previous installments, but still a problem. WRs run routes very realistically in 2K8. You need a WR with Route God or a high level WR to run double moves crisply, but all of the WRs can run them sometimes. If anything WRs in 2K8 are a little overpowered on lower difficulty levels but just right on Legend. The fade route is almost instant success so this one is a little broken, but that is minor in the grand scheme of things. TEs are a different story. In 2K5 they are about on par with slightly slower WRs (what they actually are in real life). In 2K8 thy tend to be monsters. Give a TE TOugh in the Middle and they will catch EVERYTHING, and it gets worst the higher they are. You can throw it up to your Gold TE in triple coverage all day long and he will catch almost every one. Also the higher their level, the faster they get and LBs seem totally incabaple of keeping up with them in man coverage, even very fast LBs.

Kicking and Punting

Kicking is in my opinion way harder in 2K8 than in 2K5. Basically if you have a generic kicker, no kick over 35 yards is a gimme depending on the wind. This is a pet peeve of mine because I am bad at it. In 2K5 you line up your meter, adjust for the wind, and kick it. Simple, and I was fine at kicking in 2K5. In 2K8, generics have not much power on kickoffs, and the wind does really inconsistent things with them. If the wind is 2 mph to the left, you could kick it off somewhat to the C expcting the wind to blow it left and it goes exactly where you kic it. So you aim it right where you want it to go on your next FG attempt and it looks lik a sudden squall blows your kick 5 yards left of the uprights. So you adjust for your next FG aiming it slihtly right of the uprights and now the kick goes right where you aim it, as though there were no wind at all. This sort of sequence happens so often it is sickening. Punting is not too bad and there is not much risk to doing it badly so I would say that although the mechanic is different in 2K8 than it is in 2K5, it is no better or worse.

Kick and Punt Returns

Kick returns are much more fun in 2K8 becaus you have a lot more chance to do something with it. Most punt returns d not provide you with a lot of opportunity though unless your opponent doesn’t know what he is doing. 2K5 kick returns are about receiving the kick, charging, then spinning as soon as you hit your first defender, and sometimes you will spin free of like 4 defenders and then have a huge lane to cut it outside for a big gain. It is much more realistic in 2K8 ad following your blockers works like it should.

Defending QB

In 2K8 you have to worry about Hard Count, but not too bad if you stick to sim players on line. On 2K5 you pretty much had to build your defense around defending the QB scramble whereas it is not so much an issue in 2K8. Also in 2K8 the QB spy feature works pretty well, depending, of course on how good the spying player is. With Greg Lloyd, it’s lights out.

Defending HB and O-line

Branching tackles and scrub defenders is the biggest thing you have to worry about. Also some plays are notoriously difficult to defend if run with the right personnel (like the Weak Counter Trey from F Wing Jokers). Interior D-linemen as well as good LBs are needed to stop the run. MLBs in 2K8 are notoriously bad about taking bad angles and getting trapped inside on blocks, even Gold ones. As a general rule because of player momentum playing manual defense is much harder in 2K8, but much more realistic at the same time. Players cannot stop and start on a dime like they can in 2K5. Basically (this is my cynical perspective) if you can manually control a LB in either game you can dominate; if you can’t your LBs can get dominated by a good running team.

Defending WR/TE

Defending the passing game in general is more fun on 2K8 because you can make so many more adjustments. You can literally adjust every player in the back 7/8 and assign him to a man, to blitz, or to a zone on every play. This gives you tons more options for defending the pass than you had in 2K5 where it was either blitz or assign him to a man. Also in general it helps that there are more defensive formations in 2K8 than in 2K5, but especially that you cna pick the formations and plays you want. You will recognize similarities: they split the Bear from 2K5 into 4-4 and Bear, where 4-4 is the 2K5 version of the Bear, and the Bear is the 2K3 version (i.e. the real bear with both OLBs on the LOS on the same side of the formation), the 5-2 was in 2K5 (in the Raiders playbook), I believe they did away with the 5 vs 6 man GL fronts and made them all 5 man in 2K8, the 3-4 and 4-3 are there as well, minus some special incarnations of it (like the Patriots Nickle in 2K5). But as I said, between the adjustments you can make pre snap and the fact that you can pick your playbook, it is a lot more fun in 2K8. There really are no major exploit blitzes in 2K8, and you cannot auto shift your D line like you could in 2K5. Bump and rn coverage can be a little overpowered with the right personnel, but a skilled player can take advantage of all man defenses in 2K8. In general the zones are wider in 2K8 than in 2K5, although the defenders are much worse at catching INTs than they are in 2K5. It is more difficult to manually pass rush in 2K8. You cannot just line up a DE at prevent width and do the take an outside path then cut in quickly to the QB for an instant sack like you could in 2K5. But in general even if you are not manually controlling them, you feel like in 2K8 the players get pressure according to their level and their abilities. Non manual pass rushers who are generics in 2K8 are very slow off the snap and sometimes seem to stand oblivious instead of taking obvious sacks.

Offensive Play Calling and Playbooks

Quite frankly, 2K8 completely owns 2K5 in this area. I remember spending hours in 2K5 putting together a playbook for my franchise and offline play work, but I could never use it online and the challenge was then picking the team with the best personnel and the offensive playbook that sucked the least. In 2K8, you can make a playbook, copy it to all your teams, and put whatever you want in it. It’s wonderful. Also in 2K8 you have the option to do formation shifts, where you come out in one formation and change to another one before running your play. This can be fun and useful. Also you typically have a lot more motion options in 2K8 than in 2K5. The hot routes are the same in both games, as is the audible system (3 for each offnsive formation and 5 total defensive audibles) and the no-huddle system (5 no hudle auudibles). There are more formations in 2K8 than in 2K5. Probably not as many as you would think, but it feels like a lot more since you can actually use them all in the same playbook. The depth chart system in 2K8 is intuitive enough, although you will occasionally run into some weirdness in the substituion menu where some subs will not work.

Franchise Play

As much as 2K8 owns 2K5 in the area of offensiv playcalling, 2K5 owns 2K8 that much in franchise play. In 2K5 if you have the Action Replay you can download a totally updated NFL roster and it is like playing 2009 NFL football on the 2K5 game engine. Even if you don’t want to do this you can play through the franchise and have hours and hours and hours of fun scouting, game planning, training players, and much more in the franchise. I love 2K football and I find 2K8 football to be totally unplayable offline. It is mind-numbingly boring and the season mode does nothing to help this. The only thing about offline play that is even remotely interesting is the weather and the new animations that pop up during it (you can do online weather in 2K5 but not in 2K8), but even this cannot save what is a totally unplayable game mode, again, not because the game is bad, but because it is so boring.

So a quick summary would be that in terms of gameplay, 2K8 is definitively the better game. 2K5 allures you with the franchise, but for me, once the scouting and roster building is up, I have to actually play the games, and then again that is were the gameplay disparity surfaces. Of course 2K8 looks better graphically than 2K5. It is the best graphic football sim in terms of animations that there is, although some more cinematic aspects look better on Madden.Once the players start actually moving around and playing football though, no other game comes close to 2K8.

[WWBlue4]

Quote: Originally Posted by tpaterniti

Here is a long summary of the difference between the two. I think I can confidently say that I knew just about everything a person could know about 2K5. I played it for well over 1500 hours (maybe 2000+) and I made 2 full roster edits for it on PS2, which took forever. I have played 2K8 quite a bit as much, managed many leagues, and I made the top 32 in the official 2K tournament. QB 2K5 is a little more natural than 2K8 because there is no charge to deal with in 2K5. But you have the option in 2K8 and the charge is overrated anyway. Pick Otto graham or Troy Aikman and they throw fine without it. If you want to scramble Big Ben style 2K8 is fine; if you want to scramble Mike Vick style forget about it. Due to the scramble abuse in 2K5 they really neutered it in 2K8. HB and O-line Running is a lot different in 2K5 than it is in 2K8. In 2K5 you could do a lot more with the right analogue stick whereas it is pretty much worthless in 2K8. Charged moves are about all you can do in 2K8. Also there is a pretty big difference between different tiers of HBs in 2K8, although people probably forget how impossible HBs in 2K5 franchise are to tackle when their BTK attribute got anywhere above 85. Also O-linemen can take some pretty bad angles, but that goes for both games. 2K8 feels more realistic and comfortable. WR/TE Only certain passing plays and routes really work in 2K5. Mostly lots of rollouts and single-move routes. The other routes are there, but the WRs don't run them right and ever since 2K3 there has been a problem with WRs getting hit and having passes knocked loose. It is better in 2K5 than previous installments, but still a problem. WRs run routes very realistically in 2K8. You need a WR with Route God or a high level WR to run double moves crisply, but all of the WRs can run them sometimes. If anything WRs in 2K8 are a little overpowered on lower difficulty levels but just right on Legend. The fade route is almost instant success so this one is a little broken, but that is minor in the grand scheme of things. TEs are a different story. In 2K5 they are about on par with slightly slower WRs (what they actually are in real life). In 2K8 thy tend to be monsters. Give a TE TOugh in the Middle and they will catch EVERYTHING, and it gets worst the higher they are. You can throw it up to your Gold TE in triple coverage all day long and he will catch almost every one. Also the higher their level, the faster they get and LBs seem totally incabaple of keeping up with them in man coverage, even very fast LBs. Kicking and Punting Kicking is in my opinion way harder in 2K8 than in 2K5. Basically if you have a generic kicker, no kick over 35 yards is a gimme depending on the wind. This is a pet peeve of mine because I am bad at it. In 2K5 you line up your meter, adjust for the wind, and kick it. Simple, and I was fine at kicking in 2K5. In 2K8, generics have not much power on kickoffs, and the wind does really inconsistent things with them. If the wind is 2 mph to the left, you could kick it off somewhat to the C expcting the wind to blow it left and it goes exactly where you kic it. So you aim it right where you want it to go on your next FG attempt and it looks lik a sudden squall blows your kick 5 yards left of the uprights. So you adjust for your next FG aiming it slihtly right of the uprights and now the kick goes right where you aim it, as though there were no wind at all. This sort of sequence happens so often it is sickening. Punting is not too bad and there is not much risk to doing it badly so I would say that although the mechanic is different in 2K8 than it is in 2K5, it is no better or worse. Kick and Punt Returns Kick returns are much more fun in 2K8 becaus you have a lot more chance to do something with it. Most punt returns d not provide you with a lot of opportunity though unless your opponent doesn’t know what he is doing. 2K5 kick returns are about receiving the kick, charging, then spinning as soon as you hit your first defender, and sometimes you will spin free of like 4 defenders and then have a huge lane to cut it outside for a big gain. It is much more realistic in 2K8 ad following your blockers works like it should. Defending QB In 2K8 you have to worry about Hard Count, but not too bad if you stick to sim players on line. On 2K5 you pretty much had to build your defense around defending the QB scramble whereas it is not so much an issue in 2K8. Also in 2K8 the QB spy feature works pretty well, depending, of course on how good the spying player is. With Greg Lloyd, it’s lights out. Defending HB and O-line Branching tackles and scrub defenders is the biggest thing you have to worry about. Also some plays are notoriously difficult to defend if run with the right personnel (like the Weak Counter Trey from F Wing Jokers). Interior D-linemen as well as good LBs are needed to stop the run. MLBs in 2K8 are notoriously bad about taking bad angles and getting trapped inside on blocks, even Gold ones. As a general rule because of player momentum playing manual defense is much harder in 2K8, but much more realistic at the same time. Players cannot stop and start on a dime like they can in 2K5. Basically (this is my cynical perspective) if you can manually control a LB in either game you can dominate; if you can’t your LBs can get dominated by a good running team. Defending WR/TE Defending the passing game in general is more fun on 2K8 because you can make so many more adjustments. You can literally adjust every player in the back 7/8 and assign him to a man, to blitz, or to a zone on every play. This gives you tons more options for defending the pass than you had in 2K5 where it was either blitz or assign him to a man. Also in general it helps that there are more defensive formations in 2K8 than in 2K5, but especially that you cna pick the formations and plays you want. You will recognize similarities: they split the Bear from 2K5 into 4-4 and Bear, where 4-4 is the 2K5 version of the Bear, and the Bear is the 2K3 version (i.e. the real bear with both OLBs on the LOS on the same side of the formation), the 5-2 was in 2K5 (in the Raiders playbook), I believe they did away with the 5 vs 6 man GL fronts and made them all 5 man in 2K8, the 3-4 and 4-3 are there as well, minus some special incarnations of it (like the Patriots Nickle in 2K5). But as I said, between the adjustments you can make pre snap and the fact that you can pick your playbook, it is a lot more fun in 2K8. There really are no major exploit blitzes in 2K8, and you cannot auto shift your D line like you could in 2K5. Bump and rn coverage can be a little overpowered with the right personnel, but a skilled player can take advantage of all man defenses in 2K8. In general the zones are wider in 2K8 than in 2K5, although the defenders are much worse at catching INTs than they are in 2K5. It is more difficult to manually pass rush in 2K8. You cannot just line up a DE at prevent width and do the take an outside path then cut in quickly to the QB for an instant sack like you could in 2K5. But in general even if you are not manually controlling them, you feel like in 2K8 the players get pressure according to their level and their abilities. Non manual pass rushers who are generics in 2K8 are very slow off the snap and sometimes seem to stand oblivious instead of taking obvious sacks. Offensive Play Calling and Playbooks Quite frankly, 2K8 completely owns 2K5 in this area. I remember spending hours in 2K5 putting together a playbook for my franchise and offline play work, but I could never use it online and the challenge was then picking the team with the best personnel and the offensive playbook that sucked the least. In 2K8, you can make a playbook, copy it to all your teams, and put whatever you want in it. It’s wonderful. Also in 2K8 you have the option to do formation shifts, where you come out in one formation and change to another one before running your play. This can be fun and useful. Also you typically have a lot more motion options in 2K8 than in 2K5. The hot routes are the same in both games, as is the audible system (3 for each offnsive formation and 5 total defensive audibles) and the no-huddle system (5 no hudle auudibles). There are more formations in 2K8 than in 2K5. Probably not as many as you would think, but it feels like a lot more since you can actually use them all in the same playbook. The depth chart system in 2K8 is intuitive enough, although you will occasionally run into some weirdness in the substituion menu where some subs will not work. Franchise Play As much as 2K8 owns 2K5 in the area of offensiv playcalling, 2K5 owns 2K8 that much in franchise play. In 2K5 if you have the Action Replay you can download a totally updated NFL roster and it is like playing 2009 NFL football on the 2K5 game engine. Even if you don’t want to do this you can play through the franchise and have hours and hours and hours of fun scouting, game planning, training players, and much more in the franchise. I love 2K football and I find 2K8 football to be totally unplayable offline. It is mind-numbingly boring and the season mode does nothing to help this. The only thing about offline play that is even remotely interesting is the weather and the new animations that pop up during it (you can do online weather in 2K5 but not in 2K8), but even this cannot save what is a totally unplayable game mode, again, not because the game is bad, but because it is so boring. So a quick summary would be that in terms of gameplay, 2K8 is definitively the better game. 2K5 allures you with the franchise, but for me, once the scouting and roster building is up, I have to actually play the games, and then again that is were the gameplay disparity surfaces. Of course 2K8 looks better graphically than 2K5. It is the best graphic football sim in terms of animations that there is, although some more cinematic aspects look better on Madden.Once the players start actually moving around and playing football though, no other game comes close to 2K8.

EXACTLY!! This is a perfect explanation.

[NYG 5]

2k8 sucks because all it boiled down to was an arms race between receivers and defensive backs.

running teams are neutralized because they can spam Lott, Browner, Barney etc and stack the line to stop the run and not have to worry about the pass.

i could somewhat tolerate this if all player positions dominated their opposition if they were of lower tier. for example, Lem Barney never gets beat by a bronze, but is push against a silver WR. Reggie white gets stood up by generic olineman, so does Butkis, Lambert ETC. generic defensive lineman don't get demolished by gold lineman, gold linemen even whiff blocks against generics. WTF.

also, the fade route. instantly defeats single coverage, makes you have to unrealistically over commit to stop this broken play.

runningbacks are too slow. runningback moves come down to mashing A to break tackles or shoulder charging with OP players like Okoye.

oh, did i mention OP players? 2k made a big deal about "we're not going to nitpick skills in the tiers like arm strength between Marino and Elway", yet they wanted to make certain players the pick of the pack. Ditka, Lott, Barney, Browner, MAYNARD, Okoye, Metz. Manley being better than Reggie White, Van Pelt being as good as Wilcox, safeties playing like supercharged linebackers, poor line AI, and money plays like the deep out and fade. the game is really good, but suffers from a few killer flaws.

also, the game doesn't punish reckless plays. everyone talks about how great the teambuilding is. say you want to play a pressure, turnover defense? well you can't, because interceptions are dreadfully inconsistent, fumbles never happen, hits on the quarterback don't hinder passes enough. the game will occasionally hand you a cookie game where you get 4 picks without even trying, or get 5 sacks. and then the next 9 games you play, you drop about 30 picks, and you'll lose long yardage conversions on money play deep outs or lucky catches in traffic. your pass rush will just not be there, or you will have to over commit and get burned on screens and fades. and don't come back and say "oh, thats how football is, sometimes the pass rush isn't there", because the skill players never just disappear for no reason.

i think 2k8 gameplay comes down to too much lucky BS and prescripted games. 2k5 used to punish you for playing reckless with the ball. throwing into double coverage? probably going to get picked. your tackles suck? gonna get pressured. using a runningback with low secure ball? probably going to fumble (i lived and died by Tiki Barber and Henry Thomas). but i 2k8, you can just throw the ball around and feel confident in your odds. you can go ahead and take sacks in the off chance a legend dlineman gets pressure, because you're never going to fumble.

also, the blocking AI is pitiful. in 2k5, a defense could line up, and i could have a solid idea of where my line is at least going to try and block. not in 2k8. they whiff blocks for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

2k8 was good, but you need to take it off the pedestal. sure, players could dline glitch and hot corner the tight end in 2k5, but they can still do it in 2k8. the dline glitch is a little harder to do, but its doable. hot corners still work, and the fade route is like 100 times stronger because of the obscene speed boost the WR gets. 2k's chosen players take the place of 2k5's patriots, steelers, and eagles. field goal glitching exist. if the teambuilding and fundamentals of 2k8 are so great, why does nobody use any gold linemen online? why does it take so much to stop out patterns? why does generic tackle make Reggie White look like he's playing patty cake, yet Night Train slaps the crap out of generic receiver every snap?