No, I'm not talking about Arkham City (which I'm still working my way through one glorious side mission at a time). I'm talking Super Bowl here. Ever since I traded in my overpriced cable/DVR combo for Netflix and Hulu on Xbox Live, I haven't been able to watch much in the way of sports. I catch the occasional game here and there, but not enough to keep abreast on what's what. All in all it's a good trade-off for not having 40 hours of stuff in a DVR waiting for me to watch. This way, I actually get some work done. I do still have my favorite teams when I am able to watch a game and let's just say the Giants or Patriots ain't one of 'em.
I don't have a very good reason for this. Maybe, since I'm a Midwestern boy, my loyalties drift more toward teams in those regions. Ok...I actually WAS rooting for the Giants. Mostly because they're NOT the Patriots. My reasoning for this? I could spout some anti-Brady sentiment or various disputed plays, but that would just be my attempt to sound like I know what I'm talking about. In fact, I hate the Patriots because of Madden NFL for the XBox. Not the 360. I'm talking the original XBox. I think Madden NFL '05 was the last one I played and I played the HELL out of it with Webmaster Steve on Live. I would pick a team because of the skulls on their jerseys or their proximity to my house and he would actually pick teams based on skill.
Well, in Madden '05, if you picked the Patriots, you could pretty much put the controller down, walk away from your TV, get something to eat, hit the bathroom and STILL win. Every pass, no matter how well it was covered, was caught. Defensive players bounced off of Brady like bullets off of Superman's eyeball (one of the very few cool moments in Superman Returns). Their defense consisted of Mack trucks and bulldozers with jerseys stretched over their freaking backs. And the other teams just wilted. I guess the makers of the game wrote that one off to "momentum" or "shifts in the game's atmosphere". Lob a 70 yard pass to a receiver who'd already been brought down somehow? No problem he'd make the play anyhow. I threw down my controller, traded the disk in at Game Stop for about 75 cents and ended my Madden career.
Even Steve had to admit the Pats were ridiculously overpowered. It got to the point where he'd pick them just to get under my skin and I never picked them because I hated the sight of their stupid digitized faces!! So thanks, EA Sports. Thanks for making it easy for me to pick a team to root for in this year's Bowl. It actually was a pretty entertaining game to watch and when the Patriots lost...I couldn't help but smile. Video game vendettas NEVER die.
