Madden 10: A Humorous Review!

When I came up with with the idea to write a review for Madden 09, it was during a time when for the first time in my history of playing the Madden series, I was getting my ass handed to me by the CPU. My wide open throws were being knocked out of the air by forces more powerful than I could fathom. My offensive linemen lived up to the name very well. My defense got torched like the California hills every summer. I was crushed. Only then, in my moment of rage and dejection, did I try to look further for the first time at the game as a whole. Just to try to wrap my head around what I was experiencing, I ventured far back into the recesses of my Madden gaming memory.

I've played the game since Madden 01. So, this will be my 9th year in a row of shelling out money to play EA Sport's version of their NFL football game. I've probably played well over 1000 games against the CPU and probably about 500 or so against human opponents online or in person. I've watched a fuck ton of football in the past 9 years and I trust that I know quite a bit about the sport and how it works. Madden 09 was a fucking disgrace to the game of football. The new gimmicks to lure in "casual gamers" sucked nuts. The AI of the game on all sides of the ball was absolutely imploded. The jump from Old Generation Systems; PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, was a complete disaster. Rushed, half finished, buggy games that you often felt like, when you were playing, that no one play tested at all.

I posted quite a lot on the Madden forums and communities to try to get my voice heard. I quickly found that I was BY FAR in the majority of Madden players griping about this steaming turd of a game. EA decided that they would listen to us and make a concerted effort to make Madden 10' one of the best games they've turned out in years. Anyway, let's bury that useless pile of fuck, Madden 09', and move on to this year's version!




Madden 10' is here! I received mine as a birthday gift from my ever-generous roommate. While it does take away my ability to gripe about having to shell out $60 to play it, it makes me feel even worse that a good friend of mine made this sacrifice. So anyway, I got home, popped the fucker in the PS3 and BAM! An all new presentation, a cool introduction to the game including Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald and each player's journey through the postseason last year to reach the Superbowl. Nice touch. Meanwhile, John Madden is narrating some bullshit about goals or something. Speaking of John Madden, I really miss his color commentary in this game. Chris Collinsworth is a complete faggot. Combine him with the corpse of Tom Hammond and you'll want to turn your sound off after about a quarter of play.



The new menu presentation is functional and I don't really have much to complain about here. One thing I would like to bitch about is the in game music. Here's the rule EA: If you're going to put a song into your game and you have to change more than half the words in the fucking song because they are curse words or not "politically correct", don't have the fucking song. Have the fucking "Baby Bop Hop" song instead, assholes. Take for example Painkiller by Judas Priest. You can have a band as controversial as Judas Priest on your game with the song "PAINKILLER", but you can't say "Atom Bomb"?? What the fuck? How many Rage Against the Machine songs do you know that have repeated use of the word "Fuck" in them? Yep, there's a RATM song on this game's soundtrack. Not so you'd notice though, since every other word is changed to something on the complete end of the spectrum of what the original word was trying to convey.




ALRIGHTY!!! There's a host of new shitty gimmicks that EA drummed up for this year's version so let's dig in!

First up we have the new "Pro-Tak" system. It's a new animation system that finally lets you gang tackle a player with up to 9 players!!! And you know what? 9 people tackling the ball carrier is probably a little bit less than the actual amount you need to bring the fucking guy down. Yes, the broken tackles in this game are in fact, very aptly named! It just so happens that on about probably 80% of all plays, at least 3-4 tackles are broken. While this might be realistic with some of the more elusive players in the league or power backs, it's not quite as acceptable for Marc Bulger (QB-St.Louis Rams) to throw 3 of my grown men defenders to the ground. Apparently the "Tackle" rating, or make that ALL RATINGS, MEAN JACK SHIT ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR. So to sum it up, "Pro-Tak" is a cool feature when it works FOR YOU (which is hardly ever) and more frustrating than watching the United States Men's soccer team compete on the world stage.




Fight for the Fumble! Er, we mean MASH THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR CONTROLLER IN THE VAIN ATTEMPTS TO GET THE BALL THAT NEVER SHOULD'VE BEEN FUMBLED IN THE FIRST PLACE! This feature is beyond retarded. Basically, whenever a ball is fumbled in this game, the screen goes to a big pile of guys laying and humping on each other trying to get the ball. You have to mash the corresponding button that pulses on the screen to get this progress bar onto your team's side. Basically tug of war with button mashing. The only problem is, I could slap my dick on the buttons and have a better chance of ever recovering a fumble. Many times I've won the tug of war only to come out of the pile without the ball. Doesn't fucking work. To add insult to injury, you'll look like a fucking asshole in front of your friends and your hand will hurt after you don't get the ball back. If EA wants me to break the fuck out of my controller, they should just announce that they hold exclusive rights to make an NFL game until 2030. I'd break it right now.




"Fight for Every Yard". That's pretty much the catchphrase for this years game. If it were an accurate slogan and actually gave you a realistic vision of what actually transpires during a game, it would be "Fight for Every 70 Yards". Which, is really what every game seems to boil down to. Big play after big play due to fucking retarded AI, Shitty tackling and other inexplicable faults in the system. I guess it would be accurate playing on ALL-MADDEN difficulty considering the AI holds the power to change the physics of every aspect of a play in it's advantage. We can also call this cheating. If the CPU doesn't want you to complete a pass because you found the hole in the coverage... well... you're not going to complete that pass! It's that simple and the really sad part about it is when you go back and watch these replays of fucked up broken plays, it doesn't even TRY to hide what it just did to fuck you over. Go youtube "Madden 10 Glitches" watch these videos of the AI physically LOCKING YOUR PLAYERS IN PLACE SO THEY CANNOT DO ANYTHING until the CPU has the advantage. Unbelievable that this could EVER be acceptable to the Madden Dev team.

It used to be that if you were smart and knew what you were doing in the course of playing through a game, you would come out with a victory and feel a sense of accomplishment in beating the CPU on ALL MADDEN. It was hard, and a real challenge. That's a far cry from what it is now. I guess in the push from old generation systems to next generation, EA exploded everything and decided that it was okay to make ALL MADDEN a complete joke of a difficulty.

What is this absolute fascination with the right stick in all sports games now? God forbid you ever have to press a button to do any kind of sports move anymore. Just jerk off the right stick in different directions to do anything. The right stick is certainly more intuitional for a few acts but to base the entire pass rushing game around it is just being fucking lazy. This leads me to another gripe. STOP CHANGING THE FUCKING CONTROLS FOR THE GAME EVERY GOD DAMNED YEAR. Leave it the fuck alone. Why do I have to relearn all this little gimmicky shit every year? Why isn't half the shit in the instruction manual for when I have to figure out why what I'm used to play for 8 years is different? The playstation and xbox controllers haven't significantly changed, button layout-wise, since the inception of the original consoles. So, knowing this... why does EA feel the need to alter controls every year? Why is X not fucking sprint anymore? Why does a trigger have to be EVERY MAIN SKILL IN EVERY GAME NOW. We GET IT. You want us to fucking kill each other with guns, I UNDERSTAND THE SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE but PLEASE, stop changing the shit every year. I know EA is trying to play up to the demographic they sell to but I'm white and maybe I'm not born to play football and shoot guns, especially not both at the same time!




Part 2 Coming Soon!!!!
-Improved Blocking Schemes
-"Threshold"
-Duck Passes
-Injury System
-Defensive AI
-Trades
-Challenges
-Accelerated Playclock
-Robo-QB and MUCH, MUCH MORE!!!!

Michael Jackson, Xbox 360, Pacman Jones, Michael Vick

I guess in the last 5 years or so, I've fallen into the social sway of opinions on Michael Jackson. I don't really remember much of his music as I was growing up because it wasn't really my thing. I knew about Fleetwood Mac, Mariah Carey, and Gloria Estefan. That was about the limit of my musical knowledge, thanks to my mother playing the hell out of it on the den speakers. So, the cultural impact of his music doesn't really impact me the way it probably should. Sure, some of the artists I listen to probably cite MJ as an inspiration, so I guess in some roundabout way, it affects me one way or another. Anyway, I find it hard to believe everyone who dumped on MJ for the past 10 years suddenly had an awakening when he bit the big bazooka. What happened to all the jokes? What happened to him touching little boys and disfiguring his face being the topics of choice when casually chatting about the man? I didn't expect so many people to just give him a free pass, especially considering how the American Culture had treated him for an extensive period of time. Sure, it's courtesy to the dead... but whatever happened to courtesy to the living? Do people have to die nowadays to garner any sort of lasting respect at all? You can't have it both ways, America. You can't ridicule a man for the duration of his latter years for crimes he didn't even commit and then all of the sudden forgive all perceived wrongdoing and rant and rave about his cultural impact. It bothers me that it took his death for people to shut the fuck up.

I've been gaming since 1989. If you were able to go back and figure out how much wattage I've used over the course of my lifetime while console gaming, I'm sure the figures would be astronomical. Perhaps with the energy I used to game all these years, you could power a small town for several weeks. We'll never really know. What I do know, however, is from 1989 to 2009, no console I ever owned just upped and died. The days of the super nintendo, sega genesis, playstation 1, N64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Gamecube... All of them played from the day I started running them to probably today, if I dared dig them up. You may notice that I left out 2 notables that I've owned in the past few years. The first is the original Xbox. This big, ugly fucking pile of plastic was made I guess to melt things. I never could play on it longer then a few hours, just to avoid it melting my entertainment center and all the things around it. Xbox360 is here now. I picked mine up last April and enjoyed playing on it until about a month ago. Apparently, it's so cheaply and poorly designed that about 6/10 ever made will suffer a hardware failure at some point in the unit's lifetime. Basically, you continue playing until you get yourself the Red Rings of Death, indicating a hardware failure. Now get this; This hardware problem was/is so prevalent, Microsoft was basically forced to extend every Xbox 360's warranty by 3 years to avoid massive litigation. You still have your basic 90-day Warranty and all on top of the 3 year addition. I find it funny. What I don't find funny is the incredible amount of neglect that must've went into production of the system. Microsoft was in such a hurry to launch before Wii/Ps3 (to saturate the market and get a good base from which to compete with) that they forgot to build a console that was actually worth a fuck. So, now I get to feel like a jackass when I'm doing the "towel trick" to temporarily fix and major hardware flaw. Funny, I don't ever remember wrapping towels around my SNES.

"You can take the man out of the hood, but you can never take the hood out of the man."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=4333957

All I really have to say is there are so many more out there just like him. I will never understand Black "Gangster" Culture and the insane emphasis it places on material objects. I know some well educated black men, and they say this is exactly why Black America will never amount to anything. It's not really fair to these kids to be brought into a lifestyle where they have no future. It will continue, however, regretfully.

Michael Vick is another polarizing figure caught up in the whole "trapped by culture" phenomenon. From a fan standpoint, sure he's entertaining to watch on the field. If you've never watched him play, there's simply no way to describe the electricity he brings to every play on offense. I remember when a young Michael Vick went into Lambeau Field and single handedly defeated the Packers in a playoff game from about 5 or 6 years back. Then he got paid. Hung around the wrong crowd, blah blah. We've heard it a thousand times with a thousand other success to failure stories. To me, as a sports enthusiast, it helps me respect all the hundreds of other players who KNOW right from wrong. Will Vick play in the NFL again? Probably. It just seems a shame to be talking about all of this now, when his career was so promising from the outset.

The American Dream

To all of you ignorant or naive enough to believe your life will be drastically different depending on who's name you click on a voting booth screen;

Stop with these fucking moronic bulletins and posts. Stop slurping middle aged men who care about nothing more than a personal agenda. Sure, take pride in what you've done on Tuesday. Gloat about it even. Just realize that it doesn't change anything.


The real owners of this country aren't you and I. The big wealthy business interests who control everything, make all the big decisions, own all the important land, own and control all of the corporations, own the Senate and the House, own the Judges in this country, own and control all of the media you get to watch on the brand new HD TV you just bought because you saw it advertised 100,000 times.


Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. The real owners of this country count on you to remain willfully ignorant everyday as a big red white and blue dick is jammed up your ass.


The owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

The "REVISED" 10 Commandments

Here is my problem with the ten commandments- why exactly are there 10?

You simply do not need ten. The list of ten commandments was artificially and deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:

About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.

Well let me ask you this- when they were making this shit up, why did they pick 10? Why not 9 or 11? I'll tell you why- because 10 sound official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed). So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision! It is clearly a bullshit list. It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a little boy.

Let's start with the first three:

I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN

THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH

Right off the bat the first three are pure bullshit. Sabbath day? Lord's name? strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century. So now we're down to 7. Next:

HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER

Obedience, respect for authority. Just another name for controlling people. The truth is that obedience and respect shouldn't be automatic. They should be earned and based on the parent's performance. Some parents deserve respect, but most of them don't, period. You're down to six.

Now in the interest of logic, something religion is very uncomfortable with, we're going to jump around the list a little bit.

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS

Stealing and lying. Well actually, these two both prohibit the same kind of behavior- dishonesty. So you don't really need two you combine them and call the commandment "thou shalt not be dishonest". And suddenly you're down to 5.

And as long as we're combining I have two others that belong together:

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTRY

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE

Once again, these two prohibit the same type of behavior. In this case it is marital infidelity. The difference is- coveting takes place in the mind. But I don't think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else's wife because what is a guy gonna think about when he's waxing his carrot? But, marital infidelity is a good idea so we're gonna keep this one and call it "thou shalt not be unfaithful". And suddenly we're down to four.

But when you think about it, honesty and infidelity are really part of the same overall value so, in truth, you could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments and give them simpler language, positive language instead of negative language and call the whole thing "thou shalt always be honest and faithful" and we're down to 3.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR"S GOODS

This one is just plain fuckin' stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "o come o ye faithful", and you want one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it alone. You throw out coveting and you're down to 2 now- the big honesty and fidelity commandment and the one we haven't talked about yet:

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed. So, with all of this in mind, I give you my revised list of the two commandments:

Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie.

&

Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you.

Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fuckin' pocket. I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment:

Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

-Carlin

5

Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.' Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too.
It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got' 'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

4

Priceless.

3

Miracle hail mary to win the game with 16 seconds left. LEWL!


http://www.easportsworld.com/en_US/video/1646822