"Licensed Soundtracks
What do digital pigskin and Green Day have in common?
Your guess is as good as ours. It's bad enough that sports games are increasingly suffused with corporate advertising. Must our ears be assailed by some record company's multi-platform marketing strategy, too? Adding insult to aural injury, "Madden" already features the only licensed music any football game ever needs: authentic NFL Films songs, including "A Golden Boy Again" and the inarguably transcendent "The Autumn Wind." Too bad you have to turn off Yellowcard and Sum 41 to actually hear them.
Sweat
The Xbox 360 debuted at $399. The PlayStation 3 launched at $599. So
what feature did the sports games on these super-priced supersystems
tout above all others? Realistic player physics? Deep Blue-shaming CPU
smarts? Fresh, innovative controls? Nope. Think sweat, glistening and
glorious, running in rivulets down virtual Kevin Garnett's high-res,
texture-mapped forehead. Nothing embodies the most depressing trend of
next-gen sports gaming -- graphics over game play, shiny normal-mapped
paint whitewashing hoary, same ol' game engines -- more than the
inexplicable emphasis on painstakingly modeled perspiration. Never mind
that "NBA 2K6's" players looked like glazed doughnuts, or that "NBA
Live 06's" players appeared to be running a marathon during a monsoon.
Just look at their jerseys -- they're wet, too! What more could a gamer
ask for? Are you not entertained?