Just grabbed a copy of All Pro Football 2k8 (APF 2k8) and popped it into my Xbox 360 as fast as I could, here are some of my first impressions of the game after playing around with it for a few hours, full review to come soon.

First off the game starts with you choosing a team very similar to how you would play in a schoolyard and you choose up sides, the only catch is that each player gets a level, gold, silver and bronze and you can only have a certain number of each on your team. Once you go through and choose your team players, you then choose your team icon, stadium and colors and get thrown right into a game. The team you created in the beginning is the same team you will use for your season mode, which I found interesting, and you can create yourself and put yourself on your team. The balance of the players that aren’t superstars are generic players that fill your roster so it makes it interesting for you to figure out how you want to plan your offense and defense.

Once you are all set then it is game time. The game controls are very similar to the old 2k football game, but one thing I am not a fna of is the kicking which has migrated to the analog stick and is a bit of a pain. The default A.I. plays you tough and keeps the games interesting, but I did notcie some problems with the collision detection and some players either looking like they were floating or in the ground during replays.

One thing that brought a smile to my face was the return of the half time report and all the highlights for the game with good commentary, this blows Madden away. The other thing that was pretty impressive was that 2k sports has incorporated a real life sports ticker into the game giving you updates of scores and news from aorund the different leagues, but the real difference is that this ticker streams even during the game not just in menus, pretty sweet.

More to come once I finish a season and get some more hours into this monster, but so far so good, Madden who?