Sometimes it's fun to use the same word over and over again, until it loses all it's meaning. This one goes out to my new pet peeve. It's something that I've held my tongue on for a long time, but now, thanks to a video that I stumbled upon on YouTube, I just gotta speak out. See, it has come to my attention that there is a considerable portion of both the general gaming population and those sacred figures of authority we call reviewers that seem to have one common bone to pick with seemingly every single sports title that is released; inevitably someone will always raise the point that the experience that comes across in the game is not quite like doing it in real life. To this I say: "DUH!!!!" I don't want to know what it's like to hit a Randy Johnson fastball on real life, I just want to hit home runs by the bucketful. I don't care if the O-line doesn't block down like they should, just give me some sort of feasible pocket protection and I'm good. If you want realism, put down the controller and, gasp, go outside! Now, I'm not, by any means, insinuating that gamers are lazy, but I mean, I don't pop in Madden '09 to watch the offensive line block, know what I mean? Apparently though, some people do just that. I'm not in the business of calling people out here, so I'll give the name dropping the ol' heave-ho, (that, and I can't remember the cat's name anyway), but there is a video, a whole series actually, on YouTube on why Madden sucks. Now I'll admit that it's not without it's short comings, but come on, who blocks who when and how, is not a real concern to me. A football purist, perhaps, but to me, as long as I can off set the shatty blocking at times, with a nice little scamper, I'm cool. Again, if you want a real true-to-life experience,hit up your local park and rec department and get on a team. The same goes for baseball. I don't care if MLB 2K9 is too easy to pick up and play. To me, that's a good thing. I mean, if I wanted to strike out every time, I'd go to the bars. I think that we as a gaming nation, reviewers and players alike, just need to cut the sports titles some slack. No one needles Halo or Gears of War for not being realistic, (Ah, I can hear it now: "That's not how a locust would really attack!"), and yes, I know that they're fiction from the word go. Or I suppose, if we all still want to cry about a center missing his block or a .456 batting average, then it's STILL always fun to stay at the YMCA.