Madden 2006: A Totally Sane and Rational Review

Madden 2006 is way too fucking hard.



We’re talking calculus for business majors hard. We’re talking watch Mulholland Drive and understand what in the blue hell is going on hard. This year,
EA Sports added this thing called QB vision. Here’s how it works: a quarterback gets a cone of light aimed at a receiver that essentially means it’s much
easier for him to complete a pass. If you’re a QB with a high awareness rating, the cone is bigger. If you’re a QB whose name is A.J. Feeley, you have a cone
smaller than Courtney Love’s kidney.

"I wanted Video Game Justin to cheat on his wife and drive his Viper into a crowd of pro-life advocates. None of that happens in Madden
'06."

At first, I thought this would be a cool feature. Given that I was playing with the Patriots—namely, the best quarterback in football
and porn connosieur, Tom Brady—I assumed this would only help my immortality with Number 12. Just for background, in last year’s game I led Brady to seven
Super Bowls and six MVP titles, including
a magical 2010 season where Brady threw 72 touchdowns. (Take that, Peyton, you pussbag.)



Anyway, I assumed my brilliance with Brady would only continue in 06. Wrong. WRONG. He got absolutely torched in his first game. Five interceptions against the freaking
Raiders. But it’s not his fault. QB vision is absurd. Absolutely absurd. You start out focused on one receiver. To change focus to another receiver, which you almost
always have to do because the defenses this year don’t put up with my bullshit of the same shotgun play every time...this became known in my apartment as the 12-second
drill.... Where the hell was I? Ok. Basically to change focus to another receiver, you have to hit R2 and the icon of the receiver. Sounds easy, but you have about .01233
seconds to pull this off before you get sacked. And I’ll ruin the suspense for you, you will get sacked. Remember in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory when Steven
Seagal outran a train collision, meaning he basically had to outrun a speeding train that collided into the speeding train he was already on, with no point of impact
whatsoever? Or remember The Mummy Returns, when Brendan Fraser had to outrun the sun to save Rachel Weisz and Rachel Weisz’s breasts? Or remember Day After
Tomorrow, when Donnie Darko outran it being cold? Those are pretty base examples of the concept of time required to pull off QB vision successfully. Maybe this is
accurate. Maybe this is like the real NFL. I don’t care. I’m playing a video game, dammit. What are we in store for in 2007? Perhaps some doctor injecting whale
hormone into our grundle? Actually, that would be kind of cool.



The other new addition to Madden 2006 is Superstar mode, in which you can create a player from scratch and guide him through an NFL career. I, of course, created myself.
Now, you’d be surprised, but a 140-pound, left-handed rookie quarterback out of THE Northeastern University doesn’t fare terribly well. Every time I got hit,
which was often and always, I either got lost the ball or got injured. In the third quarter, following a vicious hit from Jeremiah Trotter, video game Justin died. Literally
died. The injury report said: “JD Rebello, out for eternity.”

Regardless, superstar mode is horseshit. You take interviews, star in shit movies (like a Revolutionary War film called "Musket," which
sounds funny, except you know those pricks who made “Troy” will somehow try and make “Musket a reality), but it doesn’t lead anywhere. I wanted
Video Game Justin to cheat on his wife and drive his Viper into a crowd of pro-life advocates. None of that happens. How come you can’t go T.O. and get into a war of
words with your coach? Or tell GQ about your affinity for porn? Or lie at a congressional hearing and sucker the city of Baltimore into thinking your some kind of hero?
You can’t do any of that. About the coolest thing you can do is get your guy a mullet. Good times.



That’s not to say this year’s game sucks. Far from it. The Patriots are ri-donkulous in this game. Peyton Manning still takes a laughable amount of time during
the snap count. The soundtrack is decent, and Madden still makes utterly retarded observations like, “The ball tends to get slippery when it’s raining
out.”



I just don’t like this year’s new additions, particularly when you consider how well EA Sports has done in the past, like in 2003 when you could set snack bar
prices, in which I created one-dollar draft beers at Gillette Stadium, or in 2005 when you could audible your defense, allowing me the first ever 11-man blitz.



But that QB vision. God, it infuriates me. I’ve lost my first three games on franchise mode by a final score of 105-10. And that’s with the defending fucking
champs! Not only that, but I didn’t really need a bloody video game to remind me I’m way too skinny to play football, and am a constant risk to be decapitated
every time I drop back for a passing play.



Thanks EA Sports, but no thanks. Maybe next year you could kick sand in my face and steal that brunette I like. I mean, the least you could do is put Brady on the
cover.

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