'Hokay, so here's the deal:
Nah, just kidding. The real deal is this: reading back on some of my previous posts, I feel some sort of irrational need to assert the fact that, despite the fact that I'm constantly making SkyTV references, linking to the Guardian and so on, I am an American woman. American. Woman. I'm sorry if that upsets you, but it's true. I swear like an American (because Goddammit is the star-spangled curse), I definitely eat like an American, I work at friggin' Wal-Mart, and occasionally I like to ogle attractive men and get my hair done all purdy. And what's more American than Madden football?? Nothing. That's only one of three or four reasons why I decided to fire up the PS3 and play a few games in Superstar(!) mode. What happened next (with a little inspiration from here) is why I decided to fire up the rage engine and get my blog on. I do realize that this doesn't help the "woman" part of my "American Woman" argument, but my next instalment will doubtless be titled "Clothes: What are they good for, and what do they mean?"
Caution: What follows is extremely football-centric, and by football, I mean American Football(!). If you don't like football, or don't have the first clue about football, continue reading at your own peril.
First, a little backstory: I purchased the PS3 copy of this game about three months ago for the still-inflated cost of $9, for the sole purpose of being able to import my NCAA '08 create-a-players into the Madden version, thereby enabling me to follow their careers until they grow old and concussed, something my PS2 version wouldn't let me do, no matter how much I fiddled with the internal memory. And, believe it or not, there's a distinct advantage to importing players; a randomly generated rookie begins with an average ability score somewhere between semi-retarded and mediocre, while my imported Rutgers star, Greg House (a running back, for full ironic effect), ranked somewhere around 93 out of a possible 99, placing me somewhere on the second string of my respective conference's Pro Bowl team before I'd even been drafted. Still, I could have been Peyton Manning for all the draft board cared: poor Greg still got drafted in the third round, right before the kicker who forgets to lace his shoes before kickoff and right after the 400-lb. tight end, both of whom would have been presets, had I gone that route. Still, before long, Mr. House had become the newest halfback for the Green Bay Packers, not that I had any say in the matter.
Which leads me to the thing which makes my rage-o-meter skyrocket: the blatant differences between the PS2 and PS3 versions. Let me rephrase: the blatant, unnecessary, differences between the two versions. It's completely understandable that a machine with Blu-Ray capability and an almost unlimited amount of internal memory would have a better graphics engine, more sophisticated mini-games, and, in general, more stuff than the machine without all the bells and whistles. Then why, oh why, are there things missing from the PS3 version? Why don't we have the option to be drafted by our favorite team like in the PS2 port, a clever (albeit unrealistic) copout that EA must have put in for a reason -- possibly, oh, I don't know, to avoid your player being drafted by a team you fucking detest (in my case, Favre and the Packers). If you really wanted to be drafted by a specific team, you could just change your favorite on your profile, ask to be drafted by them, and BINGO! automatic good situation for your guy. Why was that changed? Other things are inexplicably different -- your "apartment," the menu set-up for superstar mode, has gone the way of the dodo in favor of a sparkly, unoriginal menu bar; some little bugs have been left in (like your inbox recording read emails in addition to the unread ones, forcing you to delete everything as soon as you've read each one, although by the third week of your rookie season, you can tell exactly -- and I mean exactly -- what each will contain based solely on the subject line).
I won't get into the little idiosyncrasies of gameplay too much, mostly because I know that almost three new additions of Madden NFL '0-something have been released since this one, and the softy in me hopes that most of the irritating bits have been fixed. The one nagging problem I have deals with human control and free will. Every year, the new Madden game touts accuracy and immersion -- every one of the controller's 75-million button combinations do something neat, and the game modes that aren't labelled "quick play" require more bookkeeping than doing your taxes. This year, 07-08, was the first that had the aforementioned "superstar" mode, where your goal is to go from college benchwarmer to Hall-of-Famer in 60 seconds. The mode includes one of the most fantastic and frustrating features ever -- the Super Sim, which allows me to be completely disinterested in the bits of the game that don't directly include me and only reluctantly drags me onto the field of play when I'm desperately needed. The problem comes from the events happening so quickly that every so often I'll be thrown in to a situation where I find myself on my own 6-yard-line suddenly down 14 points and wondering if our defence is playing the same game I am.
Also, blah blah football I can't stand Brett Favre blah blah why can't I stop fumbling the ball when my carry skill is 95 blah freakin' blah. It's a game, I get it, I'll get over it. I should probably take a breather now and start talking about clothes sooner rather than later. Goddammit.
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