We Break Down The All Pro Football 2K8 Video Alongside NaturalMotion…
So the question everyone seems to be asking us is “does the game include NaturalMotion technology?” Even internally here at ripten we agree to disagree as some of us think it may and others believe it won’t. That said we decided to take a closer look at the video 2K debuted on Spike TV the other day and compare it side by side to that of the football test animation video many of us have been speculating over for months now on NaturalMotion’s official website. We don’t have a firm opinion either way, but we thought we would make the screens available to our readers and get a feel for what they are thinking.
We start things off with a close up of Mr. Happy Feet himself, John Elway as he scampers into the end zone. Many of us remember the run John made towards the end zone in the 1998 Superbowl against the Packers and the hit he took on the way which spun him up in the air sideways. The clip in the video that resembles the hit in the Superbowl also showed us something else. The thing we noticed here was that his feet do not collide with that of the lineman as the lineman gets muscled backwards by the defender into Elway. This impressed us and made us think, hey maybe there is some sort of on the fly aspect to this game engine.
That feeling was short lived though as we went through the film again and noticed that the introduction huddle features less than impressive collision detection when one of the players in the huddle decides to plant his hand about 6 inches into his thigh. See below.

Forget Stickum, this guy’s using Seeum. Now you see um, now you don’t.
Alright, so we have shown you the good and the bad. Now we are going to lay out a few screen grabs we have taken of the in game tackles and falls since that is all we really have to compare with the NaturalMotion video. While we have no idea if the game will or will not be using natural motion, we do know that the process was underway for an interview with the CEO of NaturalMotion when suddenly we were informed that it would have to be postponed due to the fact they would not be able to discuss any Euphoria related information at the present time. We also believe that the video showed a good amount of variation in the falls and tackles, as you can see below.

Now all of the variations we saw could mean they have a ton of canned animations loaded into this game or they in fact are using some sort of reaction based engine similar to Euphoria or even Euphoria itself. We want you to take a look at the information above and below and voice your opinions on this topic. We look forward to hearing what you have to say.





















