THROW AWAY THE KEY

Today =

Ah-ah-ah-ah-aaah-meeeeennnnn

There's work, naturally, but come quittin' time the roommate will pick up his reserve copy at an undisclosed local outlet and we will commence to droolin'. And then, of course, to criticizin' - I hope to have a review of my initial opinions up here later on tonight. The only real OMG teh Ea SpOrTs RoX! changes as far as I've heard - and I don't keep up with these things, so there may be some other surprises in store for me - is that the crowd actually looks like a crowd and not an animated blanket designed by Atari via 1984.

Modest hopes: the addition of gang tackling - and more importantly the ability to make a tackle when the ball carrier is in the process of destroying some other defender, rather than just breaking the second hit as well by default - better response out of defenders on the deep ball (DBs tend to sit there and let well-covered receivers make a catch because they "react" like the ball's going to just fall into their hands, rather than do what every DB is taught and go up for it at the highest point) and maybe the ability to complete a quick slant or hitch, the easiest throws in reality but the most impossible on the game, even compared to bombs, which last year were embarassingly - and boringly - simple to connect on. And while I prefer a pretty high degree of difficulty, I'm sick of being out-pancaked 125-2 on Heisman level, too.

The ideal, end-all desire for a computer AI that even occasionally adjusts (in a fair, non-omniscient, I-know-your-play-cuz-I'm-the-computer sort of way) based on play-calling and formation tendencies and sometimes audibles or makes assignment adjustments when you blitz too much - leading to, you know, actual strategy, instead of allowing you to find the three effective plays on any given version and run the shit out of them over and over - is likely to remain but a dream. Oh, for the day when a virtual screen or draw looks remotely like the real thing...