Now anyone can be a head coach of a football team

There’s a delicious review of family bonding on the Slate website, as Felix Gillette not only reviews the new Madden Football 07 video game, but suggests that it’s taught him a lot about the nuances of the game that he may have missed in real life. It's apparently providing a number of lessons that have been well received, as the game has posted record sales since its release in August.

When he’s not recounting the fun filled moments of challenging his brother to an epic battle on Madden 07, he’s pointing some pretty valid thoughts about television coverage of sports these days. For a generation weaned on these game consoles, the coverage we receive these days on the tube is positively from the dark ages.

Folks that are growing up with the Xbox, the Play station and their other video cousins want those different looks, different angles, they desire more hands on participation, things that even with the advent of HD TV and internet broadcasts still aren’t there for us.

Now I’m not exactly the fellow to be reviewing video games, such is my apparent ineptitude in the art of digital gaming. On a recent Rupert monsoon afternoon my young one and I went one on one, cyborg to Jedi if you will, on his Star Wars Battlefront II game.

So sure was he of my inability to keep track of even the simple commands that he “neglected” to clue me in on some key points to ponder while maneuvering my way along the Star Wars front. Oh things like; if you step off the walkway you will die. If you take your fighter off into flight and rise to the roof you will crash, if you run out of ammo when a clone comes your way, its best to make your life insurance arrangements quickly.

Now to be fair, he’s absolutely right. The concept of clicking the circle button, the square one and that triangle thing, all while flicking the various flippers and pounding the remaining buttons just left me as a hopeless wanna be Jedi. If I had been working the war against the Empire, we’d all be hailing Darth Vader right about now.

But yet, I still want to be a gamer.

This leaves me looking for a game that may give me a hope in any rematches to come. So maybe this Madden thing will work for me, as I'm a long time football fan and think I know a thing or two about the sport. Though I like to run a simple offense, you know throw the ball, hope someone catches it and score a touchdown. It's probably quite an easy thing to defend, but I’m a simple run and shoot kind of guy.

Judging by Gillette’s review of the game I will have to modernize my plans. There seems to be quite a bit of thought involved in running the offence and setting your defences in Madden 07. Keeping track of the defensive schemes while you’re formulating a brilliant offensive move that will make the Big man himself go Wham! It’s a challenging game by all accounts, one that requires constant revisions of your plans.

But I think I’m up to the challenge.

If not, maybe I can pick up an old copy of Pong; I think I had that one figured out once upon a time.