Fine, let's move on. In our epic quest to break down what is possibly the coolest feature of the 360, the revamped Xbox Live service, I thought it a bright idea to play every 360 sports title on Xbox Live today and detail for you fine readers the agony and the ecstasy of the online sporting experience. You sports fans already know that a sports videogame is only as good as its multiplayer mode in which you lay a beat-down on friends and family. In this day and age, Xbox Live now enables us to do that from the privacy of our own homes so we don't have to bear the smell of our friend's feet at his roach-infested apartment (I'm looking at you Hilary Goldstein).
And now, with worldwide leaderboards, we are more than willing to challenge complete strangers to ranked matches of Madden so we can see our gamertags move up that vaunted list (I'm 8,040, but moving up quickly). Still, the problem with playing complete strangers is that every now and again you run into that 13-year old punk that is, um, maddeningly good at catching Hail Mary's and hurls insults at you for a half hour straight. Seriously, there are few things more humiliating than losing a football game to some kid with a scratchy voice that's still fighting his way through puberty. Although, 10 years ago, I was that kid.
I started early this morning with Madden, because if there's one game that will have competition waiting in an online lobby on a weekday morning, it's EA's footballer. It's frightening as you go through the Madden leaderboard to see how many online games some people have already logged in the two weeks since the 360 launch. We're talking in the hundreds here. Don't you people sleep?
I took on a kid from Boston that didn't like the Patriots, which is pure blasephemy in the North East, by the way. Instead, the chowder-head went with the Eagles and took about five minutes of my valuable time so he could tweak his audibles and insert T.O. into the lineup. Of course I cried foul, but all he did was repeat the maligned receiver's sideline speech to himself as he tries to pump himself up: "Let's go T.O., let's go T.O." Ugh. What a goob.
Even though I'm a Dolphins fan going back to the Marino days, few videogame teams are more boring to use than the Gus Frerotte-led Fins. I went with the Bengals, hoping to see how highly EA rated Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson. From the opening kickoff though, I got completely worked. Palmer was sacked like seven times and picked off three times, and we're talking user-picks here. When he wasn't on his back, Palmer was busy throwing errant passes to absolutely no one. I'm pretty sure he hit the offensive coordinator once or twice he threw the ball so far out of bounds. Then again, that's probably my fault. Pretty soon it was 21-0 and T.O. racked more receiving yards than humanly possible. I blame it on the lag time.
Completely drained, I switched over to NHL 2K6. I had high hopes because of my skills in the 2K hockey series in the past, but that was out the window with the first match. Each of the three opponents discovered a little trick that I had not seen before: goalies in NHL 2K6 are mentally retarded. If you find yourself anywhere in the crease and go top-shelf to the left, you will score. Meanwhile, the goalie stands perfectly still as if he's gazing at the hot blonde up in the owner's box. I picked up on this trick and pretty soon our scores were upward of 15 goals each. There was one stretch where we scored 4 combined goals in about one minute. I tried to check out my ranking on the worldwide leaderboard but I'm pretty sure I saw a big "E," like on your grade-school calculator when you try to divide 0. That's pretty much what was happening to my gamer score after like 6 consecutive losses: we were dividing 0.
Most of the time, I'm a pretty mellow online talker, but today, to better experience Xbox Live, I pretended to be a trash-talking gangsta that mugged an old lady to get my 360. Just for kicks, I unleashed insult after insult and. Every 40 seconds or so I would scream "Don't hate da playah, hate da game!" After blocking a shot in basketball, I yelled, "Get that trash outta here! Weak sauce!" When I scored in Madden, I narrated the end zone dance. "Oh yeah, watch him flex da muscle. Flex it baby. Ooooh, it's so big. Flex that bicep Chad. You so strong." It wasn't long before my opponents simply took off their headsets. Usually though, they just laughed because they were already destroying me on the scoreboard, and my little insults were about as threatening as blank bullets.
So yes, I'm bad, so bad that IGN sports editor Jon Robinson watched me at Madden and remarked to my boss, "Shouldn't we make editors play games before we hire them?" Snap! But let's move on to the technical side of the Xbox Live experience on the 360.
Madden plays, um, just OK. There's some slow down and the action on screen takes a split second longer to respond to whatever buttons you're punching in the controller. Also, a couple of times I had to endure delay-of-game penalties because of a kicking glitch. On the few times that I decided to punt or kick, I couldn't snap the ball. I just kept hitting the A button fruitlessly as the play clock ticked away. After about seven times, I started calling audibles, then resetting back to the kicking play, and finally I could snap the ball.
On NHL 2K6, I was disconnected once when I switched to crease control. There was also a pretty funny minute when the puck just disappeared and my opponent and I just skated around aimlessly. After confirming with my opponent that the game was messed up, the ref blew his whistle and we went to face off. Still, that's pretty weird, huh? NBA 2K6, on the other hand, ran flawlessly. NBA Live 06 ran well also.
My favorite online experience of the day came from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06. EA did a nice job with the easy-to-navigate lobbies and variety of game modes, including betting, which brought me back to my college days. (Back then, my friends and I used to play for a dollar a hole, earning some beer money so we could go to the local bar and bet on Golden Tee.)
In Tiger, there's just something about match play with your own created character that rocks. Also, golf makes for good conversation rather than blatant trash talk. We chatted about the courses, the different ways to play holes and approach shots. For some reason, we are all very polite, offer congratulations after a good shot, and we never, ever talk in someone's backswing.
Although I only played a few matches today in each of the sports games, I did sign up for some online leagues with a few new friends I made, who, coincidentally, are not the ones to whom I talked gangsta-speak. While trash-talking quick games are nice, it's the online leagues, I feel, that will truly immerse us all in online sports gaming down the line. Online fantasy drafts anyone?
