Analog Coast

Aaaah, Madden football. for the past couple years, I avoided it, not very impressed with what I’d read, as the feature set was inexplicably stripped down for a supposed Next Gen title…but this year was different. The reviews were glorious…"Madden is back!" many a headline proclaimed to the Gods themselves, who had bestowed such a gift upon us once more. No more were we forsaken! Madden was back! All was good in the world! And…yeah…not so much…it is time to purge myself of all I feel towards the cash sucking vampires known as EA Sports’ Madden team, who apparently have no idea whatsoever what football even is. And so… I would love to share this diatribe with the company, but, frankly…what’s the point? So that some poor shmoe in Public Relations can be forced to wade through another message of sheer disappointment from another was-a-fan-but-now-want-you-idiots-to-contract-some-form-of-fatal-herpes, while the sweatshop…errr…games company he works for is busy trying to produce 817 different titles, of which approximately 3 will be complete and finished? Or so I can post the damn thing on their message boards, which has replaced their Customer Service department, proving once and for all that EA cares about their customers the same way Stalin cared about Ukrainians? Yes…a bunch of 16 year olds who spend half their time calling each other gay, and the other half impressing the world with their wealth of knowledge about each other’s online tendencies (Hint : Most opponents are, in fact, gay)! And to do this, I have to spend 45 minutes registering? Sure, THAT sounds GREAT. Anyway, perhaps some background with Madden ‘08 needs to be shared. I put the game in and was FLOORED. Holy crap, running is possible! Tiny cornerbacks can no longer pancake a 260 pound power running back! Fantastic! This is great! Hmmm…sorta weird that I’ve played 3 quarters of a game, and not one stat has popped up on screen…that’s odd. Geez…who did they get to do play by play/color for this game, and how long had he been clinically dead before they threw him in the sound booth? Interesting…wow…never have I played a game with as little atmosphere. Strange. Even the digitized crowd seems bored. And…what the…why does every single running back fumble 6 times a game? And, look, middle linebackers still possess impressive 53 foot vertical leaps with which to pick off any pass within a time zone of them…and, look, the defensive backs are still breaking on the receiver when I press his BUTTON, and they aren’t even watching the quarterback…they’re just psychic (even though NCAA football’s team fixed this 3 YEARS AGO!)…well, that’s disappointing. And isn’t it odd that CPU quarterbacks insist on throwing in to triple coverage all game long. Wow…another game with 13 combined turnovers, which is par for the course…in whatever Bizarro World the EA team apparently watches football. (I read a few posts from their design guys…they are aware of the fumble problem, which IS a bug by the way, but plan to do jack shit. Yes, even though they’ve released a flawed product, they can’t possibly be expected to deal with it…after all, we can just manipulate the slider settings to reduce…oh…no we can’t…it’s a hard coded bug…brilliant…fuck off and die). Jesus, this commentary is so bad, I actually yearn for the Madden involvement of old…I wanna hear "Bam!" and "where’d that truck come from?" and "The bad news is, he got hit so hard his helmet came off. the good news is, his head wasn’t in it." 78000 times a game, rather than Commander Somnolex! (By the way, why do helmets still fly off with great frequency in this game? Are they all lined in butter?!) Well, I’m sure the Franchise mode will make up for it. I hear they finally repaired it. (for those not in the know, Franchise mode lets you pick a team, and run them for as many seasons as you want. Free Agency, contracts, the draft, injuries, scouting…it’s all there). Hey, Tony Bruno is gone, THAT is an improvement! (Tony Bruno is a scrub hack of a sports commentator…to give you an idea of his ‘popularity’, his XM time slot is around 5 in the morning on Saturday. He is to sports commentary what Paris Hilton is to chastity.) Oh, they’ve replaced him with a complete void…a miasma of coverage, if you will! Well, THAT seems both cheap and lazy! Combine that with the lack of any real game commentary or updates, and one wonders why this monolithic monster of a corporation bought the exclusive rights to ESPN a few years back! So, you REALIZE you’re this bad at the presentation side of the game, but rather than FIX it, you’ll just make sure nobody ELSE can use ESPN…yeah, GREAT solution, EA. Great stuff. Wow, this sure is a confusing array of sub menus to maneuver through things. Bad design choice. Oh, look, I can no longer set specific players to specific positions for every formation in my play book. Yeah, let’s REMOVE depth from a game, THAT’S certainly a unique way of improving things. Oh, for some weird reason, I cannot edit a player’s position…how strange. Hey, a scouting feature…hey, it has nothing to do with getting any extra knowledge on upcoming draft classes, it’s an absolutely pointless feature that does nothing but waste my time! FanTAStic! And wow, that draft, THAT works fine! WHY is ANY team EVER drafting running backs with it’s FIRST FOUR PICKS?! ESPECIALLY when that team is SAN DIEGO, who alreay have the best fucking back in the league! WHY, through ten tested drafts (I saved the game right before, and ran the draft repeatedly, to see if the AI here is just busted…goddamn, is it ever), does every single GM apparently possess the player knowledge of the team’s janitor? Did HE get to make the picks between shoveling shit off the floor?! (As a final test…San Diego kept drafting either a running back or quarterback in round one, neither of which the need, I took over the Chargers and released every single offensive lineman on the roster, then had the game autodraft for me. They STILL felt that a third string back was their biggest need.) Oh, look, I’m reading posts on numerous sports gaming boards now that, by a certain point, 50% of the time your Franchise ends because the AI teams don’t have enough players at every position! This isn’t helped by the fact that undrafted players, rather than becoming free agents, as they should…vanish in to nothingness half the time! What the fuck?! It’s like a sports version of Logan’s Run…sure, you can enter in to the draft, but fail to be picked and we will kill you to save resources for the talented! So, let’s see…game is frustrating…Franchise mode is broken…the whole experience is just…boring. There is nothing here to draw me back. I made one last attempt over the weekend, and have reached the point where there simply IS no point in continuing. I keep playing this stupid game, not because I enjoy it, but because I WANT to enjoy it. Well, time to face facts…the game blows, and I don’t like playing it. I plan to take this turd over to EB Games with some other games I’ve played (I’ve finished Call of duty 3 3 times now, for example…I think I’m done with it. But at least it was FUN!), and see if they’ll let me exchange it for something better…like a handful of warm shit, or, if I’m REALLY lucky, one of those lint covered mints that’s been sitting, forgotten, in the pocket of a wool sweater for 3 years. Both would not only be an upgrade, but would also be a better representation of NFL football than Madden has become. I have learned my lesson for the final team with these douchebags…RENT BEFORE YOU BUY AN EA GAME! That’s what I did with NHL 2008 (which is shockingly good…Sweet Jesus, defensemen play DEFENSE! It’s a MIRACLE!) NEVER AGAIN will I go with only the glittering reviews I read, because it’s apparent a lot of sports game reviewers get distracted by shiny graphics and ignore a complete lack of fun and/or realism. Hell, they could have had a movie tie in team with Shrek as the fucking quarterback, and goddamn reviewers would have described it as a brilliant representation of marketing in Franchise mode. From this year forth, I rent Madden, and if I don’t like it, fuck it and fuck the collection of whimpering cunts that the Madden team have become. (Seriously…you got rid of your customer feedback? And you even admit the main reason you did it was because you had to wade through COMPLAINTS? DEAL WITH THE PROBLEMS, YOU FUCKING SHIT-TAMPS!) There, I’m done…well, I won’t truly be done until that tumor of a product has been excised from the house, but you get the idea…I feel a little better. Sort of. fuck.