My personal anticipation for this game has been long over due. Being a huge fan of the 2k sports series since day one, Visual Concepts has returned to the grid iron with a football game that is not as heavily inspired by its NFL roots, yet offers enough in the area of solid gameplay to garner some attention.
I can't say this is my official review of the game, but it does serve as a major check point for going over all the things I've found so far in this game that simply pisses me off...

character creation - or more like the lack of! Yes, you can setup teams from scratch, even make individual players ranging from gold, silver, to bronze rankings. which in turn means, special abilities is limited to 3, 2 or 1 skill. Since the game has no actual numerical rating system, skills is what distinguishes the stars from the bench warmers. I drooled over the endless possibilities in making entire teams, but that was all shot when I noticed once a player is made, thats it... no improvements or ways to advance rank and skills, nothing left but to watch him play with a stupid name on his jersey :evil: Just in case yer wondering about physcial features, all you get is body details, some facial adjustments and thats a wrap... LAME!

whack season mode - apparently when EA made the NFL deal and 2k discontinued on football, VC and crew just went to sleep on anything innovative like franchise mode from 2k5 football. I played the maxium amount of years in the old football which was a robost 30 years worth of franchise that ranged from awesome drafts of rookies, trades and hussle from the front office, pre-season training and tons of depth chart adjustments. Some laugh when I admit to so much time spent in one game, but it honestly never became tiresome... which is creepy now that I think about it *need a life alert*
I'm half way thru the 16 game season in 2k8 and the only teams you really compete against are pre-made legend rosters which sucks because the only way to judge who is worthy of defeating are teams that have more gold ranking players than others. Computer Ai is on par no doubt, but say if yer rolling with a team (which is limited to 2 gold players at max) and someone vitial gets injured badly...might as well play the game over or look foward to plenty of @ss whoopings later in the season/playoffs :(

graphic issues - right away, for anyone who has played the previous football game (especially as much as me) will instantly recognize a majority of the designs, animations, layouts and so on. In no way did VC air ball on basically revamping an old xbox game for the 360, but they did make slight errors in things that you would imagine easy to fix. For instance, there are tons of new animations for characters on field and they do look cool, yet every now and then penalties are called for stuff like holding or face masking. Strict rules in the world of football, but insanely frusterating when watching replays that show no such injustices... and if you watch closely, its more of a matter in things not linking, connecting, contacting properly or whatever the hell they call it in animation... its funky! Besides often glitches in graphics and character/object clipping, its not something that interferes too much with the overall game.

the small things - no matter what any person says, fan or not... the minute details add up. Commentary thru the game is enjoyable and accurate, especially compared to other football games. But nothing impressive since its mostly the same content they used back from 2k5 :| Tons of stuff can be going down on screen and rarely at times will the audio distort when a player gets blasted hard or catches a massive gang tackle. The new kick function is just plain silly... I'm use to it now after missing numerous easy kicks on and offline, but out of all things they could have revamped or changed, thats one I would of put low on the priority list. 2k Beats is the music provider while in menus and the track selection is pretty decent. Just don't have the volume too loud or you'll likely hear the same song too many times in a 30min time span.

Now that I've wasted plenty of time talking about the game, lets see how I fair against the LA Legends who are packed to the brim with 6 gold players and no losses in the season :?