See, if you want to pass, you need to throw the ball, ya see…

August 24th, 2006 at 11:41am PsychoPez

Game: Madden 07
Genre: Sports Simulation
Platform: Windows
Trial Period: Wednesday August 30 until I want to whack Madden in the cankle with a Turducken

I’m a football fan. I grew up in Buffalo, NY during the anti-climatic (for us anyways) Super Bowl runs of the Buffalo Bills. I currently live in Pittsburgh, PA, which is a football town through and through. I’m only involved in two Fantasy Leagues this year; I’ve cut down my number to ‘really focus on the game play’.

On the other hand, while I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a hard core gamer, I’m not a noob either. My video game tastes swing towards the RPG and rhythm genres on the consoles, with City of Heroes and a small MUD to fill my MMO tastes and UT2k4 for when I have a long day at work and I just feel like blowing small fury creatures up.

Yet I’ve never been able to get the two loves together. The last football video game I enjoyed was Mutant League Football, and that was more for the option to kill the ref then the actual game play. Before that, Tecmo Super Bowl was the game of choice, only cause Jim Kelley could throw from the back of his end zone, a touchdown pass to Andre Reed, who was in the other end zone. (Even though every Bills fan worth their chicken wings knew Frank Reich, the back up to Kelley, was the superior quarterback. Norwood didn’t lose the Super Bowl by kicking wide right, Kelley did by making time wasting calls as the Bills drove down the field to get into field goal range in Super Bowl XXV. But I digress…)

Heck, the last sports game I played was an EA Hockey game for the Genesis in the mid 90s. I remember the large learning curve for the controls to the game. Most other video games I’ve played had really intuitive controls. It made sense not only how the buttons were laid out, but what actions were given to the player to do. The NHL game I played it took me a weeks worth of playing time to understand the controls, a long time since I would only rent the game and not own it.

Which brings me to Madden. Over the summer I had mastered the controls for the EA hockey game, surely this EA football game would be no challenge? A friend invited me over to play it on his Genesis (He also had the Sega Channel back then. Remember the Sega Channel? This is here for time frame references only…). The controls for the Madden game that I played were unintuitive. I pressed the pass button, but it would always float, no matter if I held the button down or I just tapped it. I would run and was disoriented by the over the shoulder type of camera.

In general, I felt lost while playing this realistic football game, and swore off Madden ever since.

Ever since then, Madden has become a phenomenon. My roommates in college would spend hours playing it, making up personalized teams, running up the score, going 16-0 during their regular seasons. The game has become more than just a football game; I’ve listed it as a football simulator rather than a football game because of this. There are modes in the current ‘07 version where you start off as a college pre-draftee. You have mini games where you go through the NFL combine, get drafted, haggle over your contract, get sneaker endorsement deals, and I hear if you’re a wide receiver, you get to bitch loudly to the press and brand yourself an arrogant asshole. Just like in real life.

Part of me is impressed with this, it is emersion into the NFL world a fan like me can, before this, only dream of. Or watch the NFL Network, but who does that, honestly? This is the part of me that enjoys role playing my characters in MMOs, to surrender myself into the illusionary world 100%, to act as if I were a member of the universe. Another part of me finds all of this boring. Do I really want to have to run drills so my in game football avatar can shave a fraction of a second of his 40 yard time? Do I really want to sit down for hours at a time to figure out how best to alter my fake contract for fake millions of dollars that I can’t even buy anything with? As much as I love the NFL, I hate a lot of the admittedly necessary behind the scenes bullshit that goes on. I don’t want my escape, my fantasy, my idealized NFL version of me to be dragged into this. I just want my NFL avatar to have a good season, end up with a rushing title or defensive player of the year award.

One last thing before I get to my nice and shiny bullet points. (Oh yes, there will be bullet points. Hell, if my NFL character gets drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, there’ll even be real bullets, this is the realism Madden 07 has promised to me). I hate Madden, the personality. Now, I’m sure Coach Madden is a nice guy off camera, a smart one too. He did win a Super Bowl with the Raiders, that’s something not even my beloved Bills can claim. As an announcer, I loath his voice and his commentary. I hate turducken. I hate cankles. I hate ‘Boom’. I hate his tautological ‘commentary’. (”Now, to win the game, you have to score points, while keeping the other team from doing the same.” In the immortal words of my sister circa 10th grade, “No shit, Sherlock.”) When watching roommates play Madden, his repetitive comments would grate on me faster than Chad Johnson can make himself look like an ass after the cameras are on. (Another aside: Did anyone see his new hair do during the preseason games? Me thinks he auditioned for the role of Angel for an off Broadway production of Rent, but was rejected because he was ‘too flamboyant’ to play the drag queen role)

So, what do I expect going into Turducken ‘07?

* The controls will be impossible for me to pick up on. The game tries to be as realistic as possible at the sacrifice of too many controls. I’ll be playing on my PC (PS2 is busted), but using a PS2-like controller. I expect a step learning curve which will frustrate me to no end.

* Sound. I enjoy the sound of everything in the game non-Madden, but even the repetitive cheers, boos, and such can get old after a while. I’ll not turn off my sound, and force myself to all of this audio horror football show has to offer. (”Let’s do a fly route again! Let’s do a fly route again! It’s just a pump to the left, the a bomb to the ri-i-i-i-i-ght”)

* Simulation overload. As I don’t have the game in hand yet, I do not know the correct name, Franchise Mode or Player Mode or what. I’m not just going to submit myself to the game, but the meta-game in the background. Control the price of tickets, training camp and workouts during the week. My fear is while this will be fun, it will become mandatory to increase my character’s stats, and thus my enjoyment of the game, after a while, and turn the fun into work. Games shouldn’t be work.

* Difficulty. Something I’ve noted from others playing the game is games are either too easy (leading to not that satisfying 16-0 seasons) or too hard (leading to 0-16). I will start off on easy mode, but if my games are won by too large of a margin for 4 or more games in a row, I’ll up the difficulty. Win or lose, I’ll keep my season. (Won’t be one of those, “Restart the game if I’m losing” types).

* Cheating. Madden games come with the option to buy Madden cards, which you can use to ‘cheat’ in games. Cause fumbles more often, throw longer, narrow the uprights when the opposition is kicking a field goal. I will play PokeMadden, trying to collect them all, but I won’t use those cards. If I’m going to mimic myself in a video game being hit by or hitting other large, grown men while wearing molded plastic protection while running around on virtual artificial turf, I want things to be as realistic as possible.

Other things are bound to come up as I play, but there’s the rough sketch. Now, back to my Fantasy drafts…hmm, J.P. Losman’s still gonna be QB, poor QB, no above average receivers to pass to, means Willis Mcgahee’s gonna be the only source of offense for the Bills…do I pick him over Shaun Alexander?

Entry Filed under: Madden NFL 2007