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The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



As I stood in line amongst roughly one hundred people to pick up a copy of Madden at midnight last night, I thought to myself, "I'm getting too old to be doing this ... at least, with any of my dignity intact."

The midnight-buyers seemed to be separated into two groups:

Group #1: Guys who are 10 years younger than me, and will play the game with their buddies for the next 12 hours, altered by various substances, having a blast, giggling the whole time, until one game gets too serious at about 9 a.m. and two guys end up brawling over a pass interference non-call, and someone ends up in the emergency room after their head goes crashing through the living room table. I am no longer this cool.

Group #2: Guys who are a little older, and have either snuck out of the house while their wives were sleeping, or they actually have the kids with them, asleep in the car while daddy goes in to pick up Madden (yes, this happened). They will likely be calling in sick tomorrow or at least thinking to themselves, "I'd totally call in sick tomorrow if I had a job."

(Also at the bottom: The full review of Madden ... a campaign to see more of John Daly's skin ... your weekly dead wrestler story ... and Shawne Merriman mercifully retires his sack "dance" ... )

A lot of people wore jerseys, too, which I think is carrying things just a little too far. You're at a videogame store at midnight to buy Madden ... we get it, you like football. Buying a video game is not an act of supporting Troy Polamalu; it is an act of supporting EA Sports' quarterly financial reports.

I stood in line, picked up my game, and got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

The first thing you see when you pop the game in is an incredible intro video (you can see it here). Brian Dawkins implores you to feel your heart, and by the time the thing is done, you're actually believing that the determining factor in the game you're about to play online against a 12-year-old in Delaware is which of you wants it more.

Well, let me tell you something, PlayaThg1994x, I WANT IT MORE THAN YOU DO. I stretched out my thumbs and did some finger dexterity exercises ... because no one will ever want it as bad as me.

After that, first order of business ... checking out some of the ratings. Some interesting things to note:

• The defending champion Colts are rated lower than both the Chargers and Patriots
• The Ravens have a higher ranking than the Steelers or Bengals
• The four worst teams: Browns, Raiders, Vikings, Bills, all at 67 overall
• LaDainian Tomlinson is a 99 overall, 3 points higher than any other RB
• 10 QBs are rated higher than cover boy Vince Young
• JaMarcus Russell is an 82, Brady Quinn a 77
• Anquan Boldin is rated higher than both Randy Moss and Terrell Owens
• Calvin Johnson is an 87, which is the highest rating for a rookie I can remember ever seeing on Madden
• Laurence Maroney has a 99 rating in the category of Construda (some profanity at that link, courtesy of Laurence Maroney). Everyone else is a 0.

The first game I fired up had to be at Heinz Field, because I was desperate to know if Steely McBeam exists in the game. If he doesn't, Madden will lose points in this review in the categories of creating a realistic playing environment, as well as gay-friendliness.

After two quarters, Steely is nowhere to be found. He's either not in the game, or the game is so realistic that a drunken Steelers fan beat him to death in the parking lot before the game and then shotgunned a can of Iron City over his lifeless body.

As for the gameplay, the first thing that jumps out at you are the new tackling animations. In previous Madden incarnations, the moment a defender hit someone, he was locked into a tackling animation, one that you'd probably seen 75,000 times, and it could not and would not be affected by anything else that happened after initial contact. It wouldn't matter if a 62-year-old woman drove her Buick into your goofy quarterback ... if you were wrapped up, you were wrapped up.

This year ... massive improvements. The gang tackling looks fantastic. One guy gets a hand on the runner, another comes in for the kill. Someone stands him up, someone else knocks him down. Rarely does this game look unnatural.

It really makes a difference in how the game looks and plays. Frankly, it took the Madden people way too long to fix this, but when they did ... they did it right.

The overall speed of the game seems to have been jacked up a bit, too. Things seem a little quicker, a little more free-flowing. They're welcome changes, but it does intensify things. You don't get a lot of time in the pocket, especially playing on All-Pro or higher. After one night of play, I'm pretty confident in saying that it's the most difficult Madden ever. Which is as it should be.

The other highly noticeable thing right out of the box: bunches and bunches of gray and yellow icons beneath players that make the game look a little like a Bob the Builder cartoon. The icons tip off advantages that certain players have ... but it's not just your normal speed, hands, strength, etc ... it's damn near every skill any football player could ever need. Underneath Michael Vick is a small icon of a pitbull with a pistol in his mouth. They've gone too far.

Certain smart players (QBs on offense, linebackers, corners, and safeties on defense), have little light bulbs under them, and if you keep running the same plays, these light-bulbed fellows will catch on and they'll know what you're running when. I like this feature ... if you play as the quarterback, it finally means your "awareness" rating means something. In the past, you could be playing with Peyton Manning and his 99 awareness rating, but if you're as dumb as a rock ... Peyton Manning was still going to be dumb as a rock. That doesn't have to be the case anymore.

There are run and pass block icons under certain linemen, power rush and finesse rush icons under defensive linemen, spectacular catch hands, or possession hands under certain receivers ... they're called "weapons." It could be a cool feature, and I may come to appreciate it more in time as I learn the intricacies of the game, but for right now ... it's just sort of field clutter (you do have the option of turning them off). At least there are tutorial videos to take you through all of them and show you how to maximize them.

But if you have any clue about the team you're playing with, you should already know the particular skills of your line-up before you take the field, right? Do you need the gigantic icons? On one hand, I guess it's helpful in gameplanning and trying to find matchups to exploit ... on the other hand, it seems like it's spoon-feeding you a little bit.

There are bazillions of pre-snap options on both offense and defense. On offense, you have time to recognize things and make adjustments ... on defense, I felt as clueless as Joey Porter on quaaludes. It's going to take me weeks before I can make all the pre-snap defensive adjustments I want in a timely enough fashion.

There's just so much to do. There's the obvious shifting of linebackers and linemen, 8 or 10 different secondary adjustments (including shading the zone to the middle of the field or the sideline). You can change the individual assignment of any of your defenders, send anyone on a blitz, drop anyone back into man or zone coverage ... you can key on any receiver on the other side of the ball, without necessarily doubling them. It can be dizzying. And glorious.

The game looks pretty much like it's always looked ... which is slightly disappointing. It still looks great, and there are some improvements ... player models are a little sharper, and some of the faces are frighteningly accurate (Shawne Merriman's unattractiveness is brilliantly rendered in 1080i precision). But I was hoping for more.

I do like the Sprint halftime and postgame highlights, though ... they're pretty nifty. You get a list of five or so of the game's key plays, and you can cycle through replays of them at your leisure. I watched my first touchdown, a 60-yard touchdown bomb to Chargers rookie WR Craig Davis, 14 times.

But all the graphics, all the rest of the presentation, is pretty much status quo. They've got the ESPN license, why not throw the Monday Night Football graphics on there? (If the trade-off there is that Tony Kornheiser has to be involved ... well, the Madden people made the right choice.)

And while we're on the subject of annoying audio ... charge up your iPod if you're going to buy Madden. The in-game commentary is again handled by a "radio" guy who barely says anything, and never says anything relevant or interesting. He's helped a little bit by the stadium PA announcer. It's not that I miss Madden and Michaels, because, yes, they were getting tiresome ... but this just seems so lifeless.

The sounds from the actual game are good, especially coming through the surround speakers ... there's constant chatter among players, and all the actual game sounds; the crunching, the running, the tackling, seem pretty accurate. But yeah, in time, I think the iPod's going to get a workout.

Before every game, Marshall Faulk talks a little about the matchup, and gives his prediction. This might sound cool. It is not.

Marshall says extremely lame and vague things that could apply to any game, and you'll be skipping through him almost immediately. The pre-game intros are upgraded a bit, with about four individuals being introduced from each side (for me, all defensive players so far, for both teams), and their special abilities highlighted. It looks good. But it's one of those things you'll soon be skipping through, too.

And the big downfall ... there are turnovers. There are lots and lots of turnovers. Patriots and Colts fans, this will annoy you. Raiders and Browns fans, it should seem just about right. You'll fumble a lot, you'll get picked a lot. This is not fun.

In two games, I fumbled four times with LaDainian Tomlinson ... that just shouldn't happen. And I made the Raiders running backs fumble about nine times through two games, which maybe should happen, but it still seemed a little excessive.

This is the kind of thing I just can't understand or excuse. I'm assuming thousands of hours were spent testing this thing, and no one ever said, "Man, I hate fumbling on every other play." That never occurred to anyone?

I was also picked off a couple of times when I felt like I didn't deserve it. Once, when a slot receiver was running an out, and the flanker was running a streak ... I hit the slot receiver moving towards the sideline, and the second I hit the button, the corner covering the flanker downfield, with his back to the QB, turns around the instant I decide to throw, and jumps in to make the interception.

That's just not a play that can happen in reality, unless Fabian Washington has grown eyes in the back of his head, and those eyes can see through his helmet, and/or read my mind.

There are rings (mine's partly gold now, baby) and trophies and such that are involved, and I don't understand what they're for ... and honestly, I don't care to find out. I'm like Herm Edwards with this thing ... I play to win the game. Not to accumulate points to make my ring prettier and buy fake things with my points.

I know I'm whining about a lot of things, but overall ... I still think Madden '08 is a winner. In time, the fumble-itis could turn out to be a game-killer, but that's getting ahead of myself. And it's time to upgrade the game presentation and the general appearance.

But the most important thing, the actual gameplay itself ... is slick. Quite slick. It's the biggest year-to-year improvement in the Madden franchise in some time, and it was needed. If I can figure out how to limit turnovers, the smooth animations and overall fluidity of the game are going to treat me well.

There are a lot of things I haven't gotten into yet ... any of the mini-games, a franchise-mode off-season, the in-season scouting of college players, Superstar mode, mini-games, etc ... there's a lot of stuff here. Perhaps we'll find time for such things later in the week under the Sticking and Moving portion of The Debriefing.





I don't think any of the other people in that picture are safe.






Shawne Merriman. The Chargers linebacker has vowed to discontinue his "Lights Out" sack dance ... you may remember seeing him doing it after he made big plays last year.

And if you can't picture it, go sniff paint thinner for about an hour and then jam a cattle prod into your belly button, and it will produce a similar reaction.

I've long thought he should replace it by simply motioning with his finger that he's flicking off a light switch. He sacks Jay Cutler, gets up, stands still for one second ... holds up one finger, and just flicks off the light. Simple, cool, poignant.

Which would make it very much unlike his current seizure dance. It's the lamest celebration I've ever seen by an individual in any sport ... and I say this with great admiration and love for Shawne Merriman. I'm a Chargers fan, and he's a world-class talent, but defending him has become ... challenging. I mean, it was hard when he was just doing his spasmodic dance. And then, when he was framed for steroid use, defending him became a downright shameful experience.

It's just one of those things you have to deal with as a fan, I guess. Sometimes, a player on your favorite team is a total meathead. I have no choice but to love him.



Michael Vick. Apparently, none of Michael Vick's friends got the Carmelo Anthony "Stop Snitching" video. They're rolling over one by one, somewhat ironically, like well-trained, un-abused puppies.

That makes all of his co-defendants now pleading guilty and lining up to testify against Vick. Vick's pleaded not guilty and vowed to clear his "good" name ... he might want to rethink that one, just cut his losses, plead guilty and live with the worthless name that he's probably always going to have anyway.

This is just terrible, terrible news for the Vick camp ... his lawyers said they "didn't see it coming."

And sure, it was hard to see that one ... I know it sounds crazy, but some guys who are involved in dogfighting might not be the most loyal, trustworthy guys around. Shocking, isn't it? It would have been impossible to predict this ... next thing you know, someone will tell me that these guys don't also volunteer at Meals on Wheels. I'll refuse to believe it.



Deserving Of Your Full Attention ...

10:30, AMC. National Lampoon's Vacation. Park's closed. Moose out front shoulda told ya.

Other Stuff ...

7:00, ESPN2. Little League Softball, First Semifinal.
9:00, ESPN2. Little League Softball, Second Semifinal.
9:00, Discovery. Dirty Jobs. Vomit Island Workers.
9:00, FOX. House.
10:00, ESPN. The Bronx is Burning.