This is a new blog post.

I've decided to forego buying NCAA 09 in favor of saving money to buy gas and groceries. Call me stupid, but eating and driving to work are more important right now. Besides, with the mediocre reviews the NCAA 09 demo has gotten, I'm not sure the high-def grass will be enough for me to feel guilty about not buying it.

Further, even though I enjoyed the 08 version last year, I rented it from Gamefly instead of buying it. In the end, it was less expensive that way, and I might restart Gamefly just to play that game.

Ok, I have to admit... It's the Madden mode I play the most. It has been for a couple of years now. It's also the one thing I have heard the least about in all the media attention surrounding Madden 09 this spring.

As summer approaches, we all get fuzzed up about the coming Madden release. Everyone starts planning their Maddenoliday, securing things like time off from work, plenty of snacks, and diet Cokes, and so on. We look at the calendar and start counting down the days...

But for me, it's a wait of patience, not of futility. See, every year when I buy the new Madden game, I drop it in the console and go looking for the new, cool features. One of them better be a good Superstar Mode! I've always loved that angle to the game. Make a player, play for some mediocre team, accumulate zillions of stats, watch your apartment turn into a mansion, and then write your acceptance speech to the Hall of Fame in Canton, OH.

But it's all for naught, if the Superstar Mode vanishes. I sure hope it doesn't. In fact, I sure hope the monkey heads at EA decided to rewrite it enough to give it some life like features, not that dreary calendar screen from Madden 08. What the hell was that?

Anyhow, I'm sure you're bored by now so I'll stop writing...

Bob-san

It's a shame, isn't it? The purveyors of rock solid sports gaming have chosen to take away a pc gamer's chance to enjoy the Madden franchise this season. And maybe all future seasons to boot.

Before I make my case for inclusion of Madden '10 on your pc, I'd like to point out that almost any significant leap in home computing capability took place because pc gamers told them to do it. No one would have bothered with accelerated 3D video cards, GPU's, surround sound, overclocking, or fast bus architecture unless the gaming industry had spoken loudly enough for hardware manufacturers to hear them. Games push the hardware and software limits further forward on a continuing, albeit unpredictable, basis. No one would be complaining about 486 processors if all we really used pc's for was word processing and email. Throw in performance hungry games like flight simulators, FPS's, and other 3D offerings and the race is on. In fact, recent studies show that the best bang for the buck is to upgrade your GPU, not your CPU, since most performance hogs send much of their work to the GPU anyway.

And now to my case.

It appears that the focus at EA/Tiburon this time around is to broaden the reach of Madden football to new players, not necessarily to enrich the experience of long-time players. There are two noteworthy elements to my assertion:

1. Madden IQ: Apparently, Madden players find the game either too easy to too hard to play. And in a rather blunt way, the development team must have decided that to reach a broader audience of would-be Madden customers, it needed to offer a way to ease them in. There are many young people who have not played Madden before, but with the broad offering of platforms this year (pc excluded), reeling in new players by giving them a "placement" score will probably result in more sales. They coined it "family play" last year for Wii Madden players. Simple controls, lots of assistance... Madden IQ takes care of everyone so that no one feels left out. Personally, I like the system because it adapts to your strengths and weaknesses as you play more and more.
2. Online Leagues: Madden used to be about having your buddy or buddies come over to play, eat lots of salty and sugary junk food, and generally have a good time. But when did we become so detached from this that we now require the interaction of faceless remote franchise owners? I understand the draw of person-to-person competition, but we were forced to interact live, with your friend sitting in the same room. Now, some dude can be in another time zone. Again, don't get me wrong. On an individual basis, this feature looks like a winner. But taken as a whole, these two features smell like sales dollar enhancements, not game improvements.

And it's the second point that bothers me the most. When compared to pc's, gaming consoles are still in their online infancy. If the big push was to make 32 team online leagues pop up like weeds across the world, then doesn't it make sense to use your pc for that? I know what you're saying, "different people have different performing computers, so it would be a mess...", but there are technological methods to smooth out the differences. Just look at the proliferation of MMORPG's. Those game designers figured out a way to keep things relatively calm! Why not EA?

And if the Madden IQ feature can be written for gaming consoles, wouldn't the software to track your skill progress and dynamically adjust the AI work on a more sophisticated platform?

Honestly, what feature from Xbox 360 or PS3 versions of Madden couldn't be ported over to pc's? Are consoles suddenly more capable machines than pc's?

Yes, it's a shame. A shame that a superior computing and game playing system, capable of stomping gaming consoles, that's in more homes than ever before, was ignored buy the developer of the most successful game franchise in video gaming history. A shame that a feature set perfectly matched to a pc's inherent properties, was overlooked. A shame that a development team that uses pc's to build the game, won't allow it to visit.

At least you get to use your pc to read this blog.

Bob-san

In case you've been living under a rock, the Phoenix lander has successfully landed on Mars and might begin its science mission tomorrow.

Go to NASA for more on what's currently happening!

Being from Seattle, and being a lifelong Mariners fan, it's hard for me to describe my disgust at being swept by the underachieving New York Yankees. What the hell just happened?

After capturing the lead early, the bullpen let another one slip through their grasp today, losing to the Yankees 6-5.

In my opinion, the general manager, Bill Bavasi, ought to get sh!t canned right now. His "wait and see" attitude with trades has cost this team ever since he took over. I'm sure his bumbling, lazy approach to baseball is what led to the Mariner's former field manager, Mike Hargrove, to decide to call it quits in the middle of last season. Who makes a trade for a left handed starter by letting one of their best lefty bullpen talents in the past decade (George Sherill) and their protoge center fielder (Adam Jones) go to Baltimore to get the often injured, often meatball pitching Eric Bedard who's only managed two quality starts so far this year? We didn't need a left handed starter! We needed to get the performance out of Batista and Washburn!

I'm not holding my breath with this team. Many years ago, the San Diego Padres did a "fire sale" trading all their talent away for the future. If the Mariners aren't careful, they'll end up in the bottom third of the league, in terms of talent, and could fire sale some of their guys as well.

Furthermore, get rid of Richie Sexson! All he ever wants to do is hit homeruns, and he closes his eyes on every swing. We're paying this guy a bundle of green to miss straight fastballs. What a moron!

As you may tell by my first three blog posts, I'm a sports fan, through and through. It's hard to distinguish much of my real life from the sports analogous outlook I use to pad my day.

Anyhow, enough of that... I need to check the Madden boards...

Bob-san

It would be a nice test of how you handle the mike's and cameras wouldn't it? Stand there and exclaim that your team played poorly today, didn't execute well on third and short, and committed too many penalties. Sound like a useless endeavor?

What if you could do a postgame press conference? What if your gameplay experience depended partially on your ability to handle the media? What if your occasional tirade made the lead story on Sportscenter? Coaches do that sort of stuff.

My idea calls for players of NFL Head Coach 09 to give press conferences after each game, just like the pro coaches do. You stand there, answer some tough questions, and some softies too, do your best to handle the mood of the room, describe your team's work ethic, and then go home. How do you make something like that?

Madden has had these silly IQ tests and interviews in Superstar mode for a couple of years now, and I'd just amplify that type of format. Questions would be posed by the media relative to your team's performance and matchup, then you'd have to select which answer best suits your mood and how you'd like to address the media at that time.

Point could be awarded or reputation could be built based on how you handle the media. Many coaches are still around today because they anchored their careers on handling stressful situations. Having to stand in front of 20 sports writers and explain to everyone how your defensive secondary kept giving up big plays can sure be a drain on your image, but it's reality baby!

Also, some of the questions could be play specific. Answer those questions correctly and your coach's awareness rating improves.

Additionally, when your team wins, you could use the press conference Q and A time to bolster the ego and improve your coach's level of motivation. Handling a loss well could also improve your team's morale and improve your upcoming week of film study and practice.

I can't think of anything wrong with including this little tidbit of real life in this game. Maybe the devs could give me a call and we'll talk...

Bob-san

With all the hype about the soon to arrive Madden 09, I got to wondering why all the bickering still exists every spring about how "Madden will suck", or "I'm not going to buy this game"!

Honestly! The nerve of some people.

You know that most football fans look to that special day in August we all have come to know as "Maddenoliday". It's the day when males in the workforce take a mysterious, unknown day off from work to sit on their butts, grab a bag of cheese puffs, a 2 liter of Coke Zero and stare at their big screens until they can't see straight.

So for my first Gamespot blog entry, I'm devoting this piece to all those gamers who rant about the lousy, disenfranchised feeling they suffer each summer when release day arrives. They miss out on one of video gaming's most lucrative, stable, and player favorite titles of all time. Yes, everyone's playing GTA4 or Conan right now, but come August, all attention will once again shift to football.

One very important point in defense of the Madden rant is that a truly revolutionary and evolutionary step in video game creation is being overlooked by the folks at EA Tiburon. The Euphoria engine in use for the much ballyhooed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed could truly revolutionize sports gaming by installing inherently accurate biometrics into a game that relies heavily on human contact. In the anticipated Backbreaker, the action takes place on a field filled with animated character that would (in theory) act, react, and exhibit natural human motion. This random, energy based distribution of motion goes a long way towards presenting a football game realistically, emphasizing the knowledge of the game, how it's played, and how to avoid unnecessary impact. Who knows if Backbreaker will ever hit store shelves, but the effort is worth mention.

Other than that, everyone that has so far poo-poo'd Madden 09 ought to take a closer look at gameplay footage and professional summations of their pre-release build experiences. It looks and sounds like a solid build so far. With smoother animation sequences for both offense and defense players being first on my list of issues to continuously improve on. Further, the inclusion of the Madden IQ system should help avoid wireless controllers being launched against otherwise innocent walls and windows. The method of balancing offensive and defensive gamer savvy sounds like a perfect way to assist just about anyone. And let's be clear, the four categories (rush offense, pass offense, rush defense, pass defense) are scored individually and sound like they'll be kept separate for skill level consistency. That means that if you run the ball well, but play poor pass defense, the game won't hold it against you.

I wish EA would open up about what it intends to do about Superstar mode and how it plans to integrate Head Coach 09 into the Madden experience other than just mailing over plays from the play creator. Also, I'd like to see some behind the scenes stuff on what differences there are between X360, PS3, and older generation consoles. I know the Wii struggles to show a beautiful game comapred to the X360...

So to everyone who craps on the game before it ships, and starts threads here at gamespot about how they hate EA for causing so much grief, please take a moment to remember who calls the shots. It's you, the consumer. Buy it and enjoy what you can, or say no and sit in the stands.

Which sucks...

Bob-san