EA Breaks The Fourth Wall, Ensures Death Of Calvin Johnson

Wow. Not only did John Madden personally travel to Detroit to put a hex on C.J. this preseason, he has now somehow convinced EA programmers to force this year’s Madden to become self-aware, and condemned Megatron from the INSIDE.

Here’s a screenshot from a Madden 13 player who’s enjoying his early access weekend. As you can see, not only is the game referring to itself in the third person now, but it has also decided Calvin must horrifically injure himself in week 3 of a simulated season, because OF COURSE it’s going to happen in real life. Is this evidence John Madden really is an evil sorcerer, or simply a case of art imitating life? Ruin the future of Calvin Johnson for yourself tomorrow when Madden 13 comes out.

Hilarious Madden 13 Ads Feature Ray Lewis, Paul Rudd, And Hate

Holy crap, there’s a Madden coming out this year? I nearly forgot. Thank God EA and their genius marketing team are here to remind us, with this hilarious set of ads featuring Paul Rudd and the greatest linebacker to ever play the game of football, our very own Ray Lewis. Now, I’ll warn you: the ads are funny, but if you hate the Steelers with the kind of fiery passion I do, you just really want to see Ray get up and punch Paul in the face by the end.

EA Sports Season Ticket Looks to be Much Better Deal Than Last Season

I was a purchaser of EA Sports’ new Season Ticket premium membership when they initially offered it last year.  For $24.99, I got 3 days of early access to their core 5 sports titles (Madden 12, NHL 12, FIFA 12, Tiger Woods 13, and NCAA Football 13) as well as a 20% discount on any DLC I purchased for those games.  To be honest, I really didn’t buy too much DLC (just a few Ultimate Team packs for NHL), and the 3 days early access wasn’t much of a benefit, especially considering some of the game modes I really wanted to check out, like the Ultimate Team mode, weren’t available in the early access download.

I wasn’t planning on renewing the service this year.  That was until I found out EA is upping the ante.

An eagle-eyed forum member on Operation Sports noticed yesterday EA updated the Season Ticket page, and it looks to bring a lot more value to the table this season.  In addition to the early access and 20% discount, there will be free DLC handed out for all five titles involved in the package.  What will you get for free?  Glad you asked!

• 1 Legendary and 24 Pro Packs for Madden Ultimate Team in Madden 13
• 24 NHL Premium Gold Packs for Hockey Ultimate Team in NHL 13
• 24 FIFA Premium Gold Packs for Football (the non-American kind for all us Yanks) Ultimate Team in FIFA 13
• As yet unannounced content for Tiger Woods 14 and NCAA Football 14

All in all, those freebies add up to over $100 in value.  If I had to speculate, I would guess the Tiger content will be a few courses, and the NCAA content will likely revolve around the Heisman Challenge Mode or purchases for created athletes.

If you are an Ultimate Team player in one or more of these games (which I am), this certainly has become almost a must-buy.  Add that to the 24 free Gold Packs for pre-ordering FIFA and the 16 free Gold Packs for doing the same for NHL, and my Ultimate Team looks to be quite the force this season.  Kudos to EA for re-evaluating what was previously a pretty lame package, and re-branding it into one that looks pretty awesome.

Also pointed out in the forum post was the lack of mention for NBA Live 13.  Is that game still happening, you know, since we haven’t seen a damn thing about it for what seems like months?  The latest rumor is that it may end up being a download-only title, but considering EA is bound by NBA policies to release the game by the real-life NBA season tip-off, I sincerely hope they are further along than we know.

Source: Operation Sports

Madden 13 on Wii U Will Be Missing a Few Important Features…IT BEGINS!!!

The good news for prospective Wii U owners: Madden 13 will be a launch title on the Wii U, just as Madden 2007 was on the original Wii way back when.  The bad news: you won’t be getting a few of the key features seen in the PS3 and 360 versions (where have we heard this before…).

While the new Connected Careers mode will be present on the Wii U, the much ballyhooed Infinity Engine, which adds real-time physics and collisions to the Madden franchise for the first time, and the popular Madden Ultimate Team mode are nowhere to be found.  The Wii U version will instead use the movement detection system found in Madden 12.

In fairness, it doesn’t seem like the Wii U will miss out on these in future iterations of Madden.  “We definitely wanted to get the physics into the game,” said producer Yuri Bialoskursky.  “It’s just something we weren’t able to achieve for this first year on the new hardware.”

Also missing from the Wii U edition of Madden 13 will be 3-on-3 online team play, though the Wii U will support up to 5 players…locally.

The Wii U version will naturally have features that take advantage of the Wii U GamePad, like calling plays and drawing hot routes on the GamePad screen.  Still, for a system trying to make headway with the core gamers out there, launching with a gimped version of Madden isn’t going to do much to drum up interest.  I sincerely hope this is a one-off situation in terms of feature discrepancy between platforms, but as regular readers know, I believe this is more likely to be a harbinger of things to come.

 

Source: ESPN

Calvin Johnson Is Already Dead; Madden Curse Reinforced By Evil Sorcerer John Madden

I’m sorry, Detroit Lions fans. John Madden is apparently rolling around the country with fellow warlock NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and they made a special trip yesterday to stop by your team’s training facility to sentence your best wide receiver to death.

During an interview with the Detroit Free Press yesterday, Madden insisted that the infamous “Madden Curse” does not actually exist, despite the fact that almost every athlete featured on the Madden cover has suffered some kind of issue that either ruined their season, or their lives.

I guess it’s not enough for John that since Megatron was announced as the Madden 13 cover athlete, four Lions players have combined for seven arrests. He actually had to come out and beg for the universe to destroy CJ.

“If there was such a thing (as a curse), you couldn’t ask for a better man to prove that wrong than who we’ve got this year,” Madden said about Johnson. “He might be as close to indestructible as we’ve ever had on the cover. Maybe I shouldn’t say that…that might…I’m not going to talk about that any more.”

Something simple like an injury or an arrest just isn’t enough for Evil Madden anymore, as presumably he’s getting older and needs to absorb more of these men’s souls to prolong his life. I’m predicting that sometime during the season, Calvin Johnson will be attacked, killed, and carried off the field by a giant falcon. Stay tuned for more as we get closer to football season.