A while back, Michael Abbott posted an excellent post about the status of sports games, which I agree with. [I posted some of my own experiences in support of his points.] If you’ve seen me on Xbox Live, you’ve probably seen me playing NCAA 2010. I have a couple of online dynasties that I play with my brother. And we’ve been experimenting with the new teambuilder feature, that allows you [as you might guess] to build and customize a team from scratch.

And to follow up on Michael’s post, we are taking the customization in a fun direction, doing things outside of the game.

You see, we decided to combine comics and gaming to start developing teams based on superheroes. The idea is to take the traits of the character and apply it to different aspects of the team–player attributes, playbook, school attributes.

For example, a team built around Ben Grim/The Thing might look like this:

• The Thing QB has a 99 throwing power rating but probably a low throwing accuracy, of say 55 or 66.
• Everyone on the team has boosted Strength stats: Strength, stamina, Injury, break tackle, stiff arm, Run & Pass Block Strength, Kick Power, Trucking, Block Shedding, Hit Power, Tackle.
• All of the speed attributes are much lower than normal (which would depend on the attribute–a basic speed of 40 for a RB might be unusable, although an interesting test when pared with the high strength values).
• Intelligence-related stats would be 50, 60 or so.
• The defense would be a 5-2 or 4-3, and the offense would be a more run-oriented team with some short to middle passes.

But here’s we started having fun–characterizing how the team is played:

• The same Ben Grimm team would take a lot of chances because Grimm is an emotionally, fly-off-the-cuff character. That team would go for it on 4th a lot more often.
• You’d always play to win, not to tie. For example, that team would go for 2 point conversions outside of the normal.
• It would blitz a lot, too.
• It probably would run up the middle more often than not. Very few screens and no trick plays.

We started going even further with these out-of-game characteristics:

• With Doctor Doom’s Doombot team, the Doom player gets to pick some aspect of the opponent’s coaching or gameplan and remove it [as an agreement since it can't really be enforced]. For example, he could say that you have to start your backup QB and demote your starter to 3rd string. Or he could say that you can’t call any inside runs.
• But the Doom team has a weakness for monologuing, which means that once a quarter, the Doom team has to take too long to call an offensive play. The Doom player picks when [early or late in the quarter].

No, this probably won’t appeal to college football fans. But we’re captivated with this new ability to play the game in a different way. And the game’s RPG aspects now seem to be more open and obvious than before. We’re no longer playing a strategy game and focused on numbers. We’re now developing game personas and playing roles.

I still haven’t replaced my 360, mainly because I haven’t seen Jasper versions of the 360 in the Best Buy near me. So, to soothe my football jones, I decided to try Madden 09 All Play, a game that has gotten mixed, though not terrible, reviews. 

The graphics are definitely far behind the ps360. And some of the presentation is borderline annoying–I can’t say that I care for using Miis in the game, which is still a clash of styles. Yet, when I got past the presentation, and learned the Wii controls, I found myself enjoying the game in a much different way than on with the 360 or earlier PS2 football games. 

• The kick and pass gestures add a level of immersion that I enjoy more than I thought I would. It actually required a little more physical control than mashing buttons requires because, for example, I have to keep the Wii remote level when I ‘kick,’ a much more natural control than pushing up on a joystick. Also, I found myself mastering lob/bullet passing much more quickly on the Wii than I did when I first played on the 360. On the 360, the difference between tapping and holding down on a button was sometimes whimsical. But the throwing gesture seemed more natural and more intuitive.
• Similarly, I find the gesture for hard hits much easier than pressing the joystick on the 360. I had far more such hits on the Wii, thus getting more fumbles. (I also had a few more penalties for early hits, too, but I would expect that.)
• I also find that the receiver selection scheme much easier. I can pre-select a receiver, but selecting another receiving is generally defined by a direction on the d pad and the A button. This scheme is easier in my opinion to the use of buttons and triggers on the 360 controller, mainly because I use only my right thumb to select a receiver.