My Love/Hate Relationship with Madden

I have been playing Madden NFL football since its conception on Sega Genesis. And I have always loved the game. I have fond memories of running all over my friends with Randall Cunningham, and creating our own franchise mode keeping stats and records with a school notebook. And when the game graduated to playstation 1 then 2 it seemed to always impove, and though it had its faults me and my boys were always drawn in enough to overlook the faults.

Well Maddens leap to PS3 and XBOX 360 ("next gen consoles") has been very ugly so far. What happened to my beloved Madden? It has turned into an utter mess!!! Glitches galore, unrealistic physics, boring franchise mode but it looks pretty.......

Since when is FB dive a go to play for every NFL team in the league? Especially with a back like Warrick Dunn at FB.

Or why do the DBs react to the ball 100 times quicker than the reciever? And they Jump so high!!!!!

Why isnt Champ Bailey able to put fear in the QB with his ball hawk skills? I can just run a drag route and get my guy open on him every play. With any reciever as long as he has decent speed.

Why is speed the only rating that matters?

Here is one of many Youtube videos posted showing the bad gameplay of Madden 09.



There are many specualation on why Madden has regressed as a football game. One is that they are catering to the tournament crowd. I dont believe that to be true, because the tournament crowd evolves with the game. They will play the game regardless of how realistic or unrealistic it is. And they will find the glitches in the game and exploit them in order to win.

The reason I believe madden has regresses is because they have no compitition. For those of you who play sports games you know that EA has a NFL exclusive liscense agreement that they won in a so called "bidding war" and that they are the only company legally allowed to make an NFL football game. This eliminated thier long time rival NFL2K. And Madden has not improved since........

Well the new guys making Madden 10 seem to be listing to what us Sim (Simulation gamers, we like our football games as realistic as possible) gamers are looking for and they seem to be improving on the core gameplay and keeping lines of communication with the online community. This gives me hope for Madden 10. You can check some of thier posts over at Operation Sports Online Forums (the best sports gaming forums on the net). Or you can check thier weekly blogs over at EA Sports.

My relationship with Madden is like that of an abused girlfriend. Madden keeps beating me and abusing me with its crappy gameplay yet I keep coming back year after year hoping to restore that love that was there at the begining.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!

Well we won both of our championship games thursday.

The Greybeard league (30 and over, yes I am 30) game was a close game. We ended up winning 52-50 at the buzzer. I hit the game winning layup, but the play was made by my teamate who pushed the ball through all kinds of pressure the full length of the court with about 5 secs on the clock, and hit me for a wide open layup after my guy slid over to stop him. The greybeard league was the more competitive league of the two. Those guys know the game better than the younger guys, and they know thier limits, so they tend to play smarter, have less turnovers. But we were more athletic than most of the other teams we played because we were younger. Two of the guys on the greybeard team also play on the open league with me. And we will be adding another guy from the open league when the summer rolls around, so we will be winning it again.

My teamates awarded me the trophy after the game.... It felt good.



Later that day I played in the open league championship game. We won that one rather decisively. They matched us talent wise, but skill wise and chemistry wise we were miles ahead of them. We ended up winning by about 15. So that was my second championship in one day. Along with two other guys who play on the greybeard too.

Now Im looking forward to defending our championship in the summer leagues, which start in about 2 months.

I hurt my shoulder falling down during one of the games, so I was not able to lift yesterday or today. I hope to get back into it Monday. Last time I weighed myself I was 220, so I am still making progress on my goals.

I leave you with this quote from Eminem
"Critics wanna criticize,
but could visualize,
individuals lives,
through a criminals eyes"

Has nothing to do with my post..... but its pretty deep.

Down Goes P90X!!

So I decided to drop the p90X. Not that it was not working, because I was seeing results, its just that I love to hit the gym and the free weights. Especially since I have a free gym I can go to that is only a minute away.

So I found me a good 4wk lifting program, and I am going to hit that and see where it goes.

Today was my first day on it, and I am pleased. Did chest today. Here is how day one went.

Bench Press 10X5 115lbs
Incline Press 10X4 95lbs
Fly 10X4 30lb dumbells
Dips 12X3
Peck Deck 12X3 80lbs
Leg Raises 15X3

I found the workout plan on Bodybuilders.com. 5 days, separate body part each day, and I will cardio 3 times a week. I usually play basketball, so that can take care of my cardio, but I plan on taking a jog at least once a week in order to keep my distance running up to par.

I have two playoff basketball games tomorrow, one in the morning and one in the evening. Both against the top seeds in the playoffs. So both look to be good games.

I love good games so much more than blowouts. You get more satisfaction out of holding your own against good comp rather than beating up on some guys.

Ima lave you with this track....
This was the anthem for a while!!!

Beggining of WK 3!!

Woke up kind of late this morning, around 10am, I usually wake up around 8 to get my workouts on. But I did lose weight, I was 223 this morning. I guess that very active week payed off. So my goal is around 215, but with more muscle and less chub. Im almost at my weight goal, just got to get my body fat % down.

My workout was great, my numbers are steadily increasing, I started off doing 25 normal pushups, now I am at 30, and I have not tried to do un assisted pullups, I could barely do 1 when I first started the program, but im willing to bet I can at least get 3 now.

After my 1 month mark I am going to take some more pics and post them. Just to see if there are any noticible results.

On a side note, my lil brother returned a CD case I let him borrow a while back and I found some old CDs where I used to rap lol. Ya back in my day I tried to be a MC. These CDs are about 10 yrs old!!! I gave them a listn and they are a trip. We were not that good, but we were not terrible lol. We were witty though, I ran into some funny stuff while listning to some of the songs. Here are a few of my favorites.... I may upload more later, depending on my mood lol. Enjoy.

Got back into it

Ya, I skipped a day. I did not do the Yoga and I have not posted in 2 days. Plus I took my cheat day yesterday, and had some good ole shrimp fried rice and some greasy crab cheese wontons!!! They were great!! But I got back at it today with legs and shoulders and ab ripper. It was a good workout, I really feel it in my legs.

This week has been a long week for me, and its not over yet, I have to go into work at 730am then go back in at midnight.... And everyday this week I have had to come in to work early in order to do some paper work.

Every intramural basketball game I played in this week has gone into double overtime. All wins by the way!! I'm happy to say that my clutch rating is still above 90. Also, I played flag football Tuesday through Thursday. I still got the good ole hands, but my quickness isnt where it used to be. My top speed is still pretty good, But it takes me longer to get there. Nevertheless, guys don't think I can run when they first see me, so I get an advantage from surprising them. Im happy to say that I can still beat a lot of guys in a footrace to the inzone.

I havnt even had time to play any XBOX!!. I'm actually looking forward to getting back into Halo Wars, it was getting more and more entertaining. Also I wanted to give Star Ocean a chance. I have not had time to really get into an RPG in a long time, so I doubt I put time into it. Hopefully next week will be a little more calm for me so I can get a little chill time between working out, work, chilling with the family and playing ball.

Till then I will leave you with the song of the moment. Heard this song playing Rock Band 2 and its stuck in my mind.

Workout cut short

Well I was 45 min into my Plyometrics workout when I got called into work to sign something, so I missed out on 20 min of my workout. I don't think it will hurt me much in the long run because I have had a pretty active two days.

Yesterday I played a little flag football with the guys from my job, then directly after that I had an intramural basketball game that we ended up wining after double overtime.

And today after I had another Intramural basketball game, that we pretty much dominated, but none the less, I ran up and down pretty hard. We have another game tonight, but I think I am going to skip out on that one because we have another one tomorrow night and I do not want to burn myself out.

So the last couple of days, I have been staying pretty active, which is good, because I am sure to slim down as long as I keep with the workout, diet and stay active.

Sooner than later I will be back to dunking on folks, and I will tune you all in on when I get back to that point..... Im guessing a month 1/2 I will have enough of my lift back to get up there.

Til then, check my wife's blog.... she likes to pose half naked, thats how she gets all those views lol.

Good workout this morning

Yesterday I took a day off, I did not do the stretch X, I just laid around the house and played Halo Wars.

This morning I stepped on the scale and I weighed a disappointing 232. I did not do my body fat % I will do that next time I weigh in... Next Monday.

That motivated me to hit this workout hard. This is my favorite day, arms and shoulders. I can really feel this workout when im done with it. Then I did the killer Ab Ripper X and I got more reps in than previous times, so I am not disappointing with my progress in the program.

I know the weight will drop, I just expected to have dropped around 2lbs the first week.

On another note, I had a box of girl scout cookies last night. We purchased them a while back and they delivered them yesterday. This is sort of a reenactment of how the situation went down.

I am the dog and the lady is the girl scout.



But unlike Stains, I got the cookies and ate em.......