Specifically, the character of a self-aggrandising, hopelessly transparant bulldunger.

Because that’s England’s role in the twenty-first century. If the global community were a bar, England would be the beery loudmouth sat in a corner pummelling anyone unfortunate enough to wander into range with shaggy-dog stories of the outrageous and fantastic things he did when he was younger, painfully unaware of how needy and pathetic he sounds. We’re the fatuous git with the bloodshot eyes and gin blossom who so routinely inflates the tales of his past glories that he’s come to believe them himself. We’re the sort of person who pines openly and obnoxiously for The Good Old Days when he was Somebody and young people had respect and you could say what you liked about the birds and the darkies and the fairies without the PC Brigade turning up to cart you away.

England is the Pub Bore Of The World.

This is part of what makes the World Cup so special. Seeing every third house and car decked out with the flag of St. George, to see the country so fervently celebrating the non-existant acheivements of a lying git is a sweet, sweet thing. It’s a nice little reminder that even while the American fundamentalist right wing continues to preach hate in the name of the Prince of Peace, England’s still got a thing or two to teach the world about doltish, unthinking irony. And if that truth’s not worth a bit of chest-thumping tribalism I don’t know what is.

So, you know. If the England football team could see their way clear to extending my state of weary ambivalence by squeaking past Slovenia tomorrow, I wouldn’t object overmuch.

Not that these are zombie movies, of course. The difference between zombies and the “infected” from 28 Days / 28 Weeks Later is both semantic and profound. Zombies symbolise our mortality – they might be slow but they pursue us tirelessly and relentlessly. We can stave them off for a while but in the end there’s no escape, whether through bad choices or bad luck eventually they’re going to get us. There’s also an element of zombies representing our society and specifically our worst impulses – our fears, our hate and/or our greed. Single zombies are easily avoided and almost laughable, it’s only when gathered en masse they become incredibly destructive and dangerous.

You know. Like Leeds fans.

The infected don’t have quite the same flavour. They’re much more of a direct individual threat and especially in the first movie we rarely see them in large groups. And, of course, they run. Key sequences in the opening of both films feature characters fleeing with the infected in hot pursuit.  It’s a threat that feels more personal, more aggressive than that which their forebears present, an impression that’s further heightened by the speed with which victims join their ranks. Unfortunates bitten by zombies generally take hours if not days to die and rise again, but the Rage virus is passed on in seconds. We live in a world where advertising and the media bombards us with the message that we’re all special, that we’re all clever nonconformists, that our opinions matter. These films give us the monsters we deserve, zombies suitable for attention spans eroded by the millions of different ways Western society presents to distract ourselves while the planet falls to ruin.  The infected are suppliers of bespoke carnage for the Me Me Me Now Now Now Generation. Because we’re worth it.

This election hasn’t left me angry, it’s left me with the exact same feeling that comes with England’s inevitable quarter-final tournament exit. You know the one. I knew the odds were against the right result, I knew that defeat was more-or-less completely inevitable but the big prize was so close and there were just enough positive signs that I’d allowed the first glimmerings of optimism to overcome the wisdom of experience.

It’s not the despair. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.

Shouting and screaming and stamping my little feet feels wildly inappropriate. I’m more in the mood for embracing the powerlessness that my face has just been rubbed in, and sulkily pointing out that I didn’t break this country – it was this way when I found it.

See also: Control.

I really, really have to be in the right mood before I’ll sit down in front of a movie I know is going to be a bit of a tough watch. That’s the reason why American History X was on the shelf for the better part of two years before even getting its shrinkwrap removed, it’s the reason why I’ve seen Magnolia a grand total of three times despite it being one of my five favourite movies and it’s the reason why I hadn’t watched Control even though a chum had leant me the DVD an embarassing number of months ago, well before before I conceived the notion of the grand folly for which there really must be a better name than The Great DVD Project.

Suggestions on a postcard to the usual address.

I’d already hung on to the film for a shamefully long time so slotting it in down the order in its “correct” place (between Constantine and Coraline, as it goes) wasn’t really an option. So before I could start grinding away precious hours of my brief mortal span in earnest I had to clear the decks, and that meant manning up, sitting down and watching a film that I really wanted to see about a band that I absolutely love.

I’m pathetic, honestly.

To my complete non-surprise, Control is a terrific piece of work.  The quote on the box reads “The coolest British movie of 2007″, and it’s hard to imagine a review that could be more misleading whilst remaining more-or-less factually accurate. “Love, laughs and lessons in life set to a foot-tapping eighties soundtrack”, maybe. The phrase “a cool British film” makes me think of brashness and glamour and excitement, of beautiful people and sharp clothes and snappy dialogue. It makes me think of Velvet Goldmine or The Italian Job, basically.

Control is pretty much the opposite of The Italian Job.

Watching it is like listening to I Remember Nothing – it’s fragile and beautiful but relentlessly oppressive, a slow shuffle to breaking point punctuated by moments of frustrated anguish and rage.

I can apppreciate why that might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

In a film filled with strong performances Sam Riley’s central turn as Ian Curtis stands out as something special, awkward and delicate and haunted and deeply, deeply sad. It’s a portrayal of an obviously troubled young man that’s carefully understated yet completely magnetic. Every time he was on-screen I genuinely had a hard time looking anywhere else.  As the film goes on the sense of Curtis being ground down by the pressures of the world and by his own failings and frailties grows and grows until tragedy is unavoidable.

Joy Division’s music greatly aids the depiction of its singer’s mental and social disintegration of course, but the reverse is also true. Love Will Tear Us Apart is now so overplayed it’s become a cliché but when it’s used here, when it’s placed against context of Ian and Debbie Curtis’ marriage falling to pieces the song suddenly regains all the meaning and emotional impact that familiarity stole from it. The sweetness and heartbreak of it come rushing in all over again.

If you need a better recommendation to see Control than “it’ll make you hear arguably the greatest pop song ever written like it’s the first time”, consult your GP immediately.

Fantastic as Control is, it did cause me a problem – specifically, being wide awake at 1am on Easter Saturday having just been pretty thoroughly bummed out (ooh-er Matron, etc). However, an obvious solution did suggest itself – I was now free to begin my ascent of Mount Pointless Distraction. So what was at the top of the pile? A Better Tomorrow? 300? 28 Days Later?

Nope. 24 Hour Party People, the 2002 biopic of former Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. Or to put it another way, the other film that prominently features a fictionalised account of the rise and fall of Joy Division.

Damn you synchronicity my old nemesis, once again you have defeated me!

Now, on a good day with a following wind my taste in music lags about three years behind the cool kids. On most days it’s closer to ten years behind the weird kids that get sniggered at almost behind their backs. Every single significant musical movement of my teenage years passed by with barely a nod in my direction, and the rise of Madchester was absolutely no exception. While schoolfriends were getting into the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses I was busy developing a mild obsession with absolutely Godawful American perm-rock that’s been more embarassing and difficult to get rid of than a cold sore. A year or so later a mate who worked at the local games shop leant me his record collection for the last weekend before he moved away to Romford and kickstarted a passion for mid-eighties goth that would heroically shepherd me through the shoegaze, grebo, grunge and Britpop eras without the slightest threat of credibility. My parents bought me my first CD player for my 17th birthday in late 1992, giving me the ideal opportunity to restart my music collection and carry out a Stalinist purge of the Roxette albums and dad-rock best-ofs that were my first flirtations with pop in my early teens.

The first CDs I bought? All About Eve’s first album, Floodland by The Sisters Of Mercy and Slippery When Wet. Cool Britannia really was just something that happened to other people.

I digress. Massively and self-indulgently. Here’s the point – if you’ve slogged through the last couple of paragraphs you’ll have no problem believing that when I first watched 24 Hour Party People I had no idea who Tony Wilson was, beyond being that bloke with the floppy hair and incredibly smug manner who’d appear infrequently on ITV as an all-purpose frontcreature. Finding out that he was the bloke who’d discovered Joy Division was surreal and a bit disorientating – it was like hearing for the first time that teatime TV demigod Bob Holness had been the saxophone player on Baker Street.

Except, you know. True.

24 Hour Party People does two difficult things incredibly well. Firstly, it manages to portray Tony Wilson as one of the single most irritating, difficult,  grandiloquent men in the history of pop music without making him seem unsympathetic. In this respect, casting Steve Coogan was a stroke of genius. After all, he’s made a career out of coaxing reluctant affection from audiences for characters who are deluded, massively monomanaical and generally reprehensible. There’s certainly more than a pinch of Alan Partridge in this version of Wilson, most obviously when he almost pulls out of creating the first Factory night because the club owner’s name is too similar to his own (“There’ll be Tony 1 and Tony 2. Can you not see how that’s a problem? Straight away there’s a hierarchy“). Like Partridge, Wilson’s intial success and inevitable downfall are both rooted in his overweening ambition. Like Partridge, most of the time we’re laughing at him rather than with him. Like Partridge, there’s something about Wilson’s Quixotic tilting at windmills, his repeated refusal to accept his own limitations or the status quo, that makes him oddly but genuinely appealing.

My favourite moment in the film comes when Tony Wilson is at his lowest ebb, just he’s left by his first wife and Ian Curtis has committed suicide. Walking down a Manchester street he’s accosted by a homeless man (played by the ninth Doctor) quoting a 6th century Christian philosopher:

BOETHIUS: It’s my belief that history is a wheel. “Inconsistency is my very essence,” says the wheel. “Rise up on my spokes if you like but don’t complain when you’re cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it’s also our hope – the worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.”

Coogan’s delivery of the reply – a silent beat then “I know” – is wonderful. It’s both arrogant and vulnerable, both funny and heartbreaking. This is Tony Wilson’s moment of doubt on the cross and in two words you learn everything you need to know about him as a character.

To quote Wilson himself, though, he is a minor character in his own story. 24 Hour Party People is primarily a film about music, about musicians and the about their environment. This is the second difficult thing that it gets right – it makes Manchester circa 1979-1990 seem a genuinely exciting place. The film isn’t really interested in getting the facts right – often, it openly and gleefully deviates from historical events. What it’s interested in is getting the mood right. And it succeeds. From the first Joy Division gig (“The intro doesn’t normally go on this long, I think our singer’s in the toilet”) to the exhilarating, strangely moving last night of the Haçienda there’s a great sense of place and a greater sense of something new and revolutionary being created.

If you had no specific knowledge of either Control or 24 Hour Party People you might expect it to be tedious and /or tough to watch the same tragic story twice in quick succession. You would be completely wrong. The two movies compliment each other brilliantly – they could, in fact, almost be seen as companion pieces. Control is a eulogy. It’s grim and grey and grounded, intently focussed on the characters of Ian and Debbie Curtis. 24 Hour Party People is a celebration. It’s light and arch and vivid and completely, gloriously all over the shop. Both films are utterly fantastic.

Control
RANK: A.

24 Hour Party People
RANK: A.

A long way from being perfect, obviously – the story was pretty ploddingly predictable, with the only minor suprise being the “going away is good, staying away is better” incident. It lapsed a bit into distinctly RTD-ish technobabble as the story neared an end. The whole interaction between the Doctor and the little girl didn’t quite ring true for me, although it’s entirely possible that’s just because I’ve got no soul. The “Doctor Time” stop-motion thing were we’re shown him sifting through what he’s seeing to find the telling off-key detail was a bit gimmicky, went on too long and has been done before in slightly different form by seemingly every detective drama on US telly. If there’s one thing I don’t want Doctor Who to do, it’s remind me of an episode of flippin’ CSI.

Also: remixing the theme music – good idea, absolutely Godawful execution.

More importantly though it was funny, it had just enough emotional heft (“Why did you say six months?” “Why did you say five minutes?”), Matt Smith and Karen Gillan work brilliantly together and despite being a bit disappointing in “Episodes Written By Stephen Moffat” terms it was by leaps and bounds the best season opener in the NewWho era.

Between the episode itself and the rather spiffy “Coming Soon” montage that followed, my feelings toward the new series have been upgraded from “cautious optimism” to “understated but genuine excitement”. Please adjust your watches accordingly.

Look upon my works ye socially adequate and despair.

Best guess, that’s the better part of 300 DVDs and 500 or so hours sitting there. We’re only including feature films not TV series, standup sets or music DVDs. There is still some debate as to whether we should be watching every DVD in the house (and subjecting ourselves to Blue Man III’s petrol-station bargain-bucket action/light horror collection, or Ms. Blue Man’s diabolical taste in romcoms) or just the stuff that either Mrs. Blue Man or myself voluntarily bought.

Number Of DVDs Still Shrinkwrapped: 6 (Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, Cruel Intentions, KIll Bill vol. 1, Kill Bill vol. 2, Terminator 2, Velvet Goldmine)

Number Of DVDs That I Know We Own That Have Mysteriously Gone Walkabout: 5 (28 Weeks Later, Almost Famous: Untitled Edition, Batman Begins, Bulletproof Monk, Pirates Of The Caribbean)

Number Of DVDs That I Had No Idea We Owned: 2 (Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, Underworld: Rise Of The Lychans)

Number Of Films That We Own At Least Two Copies Of: 11 (A Matter Of Life And Death, Blade Runner, The Longest Yard, Mission Impossible 2, Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, True Romance, Goodfellas, Fellowship Of The Ring, The Two Towers, Return Of The King)

DVD That I’m Most Embarassed To Admit Owning: Dead heat between Bring It On and Basic Instinct 2.

Here’s a measure of how eventful and thrilling my life’s been in the time I’ve been away: I’m seriously considering trying to re-watch my entire DVD collection. In alphabetical order. The drawbacks I can see to this plan are a) it would would mean watching Alien, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection then Aliens, and b) it would mean watching Batman & Robin.

Anyway, some stuff that’s been great that I’ve discovered in the last three months:

The latest Metric album (especially Gold Guns Girls). The latest Raveonettes album (especially Heart Of Stone). Moon. Mount & Blade. The latest Yeah Yeah Yeahs album (especially Dragon Queen). The Incredible Hercules. Drag Me To Hell. The Sounds (especially No-One Sleeps When I’m Awake). Castle. Lloyd Doyley’s first ever senior goal. Forza Motorsport 3 (especially after finally working out how to use the XBox steering wheel I got for Christmas last year and has been lying shamefully unused since because of my general hamfistedness. Turns out I just needed some patient tutoring. Actually, one sentence of impatient tutoring. Actually, just my wife saying “You’re turning that wheel like you’re driving a hugging clown car”). The second series of Being Human. The second series of Newswipe. Pretty much everything Gail Simone’s written for DC Comics, especially her brilliant brilliant work on Birds Of Prey, Wonder Woman and Secret Six. The Answer Me This podcast. Lego Rock Band. Snow. Oh, and the iPhone.

Some stuff that’s not been great in the last three months:

Champions Online. Work. The Doctor Who Christmas special. The end of the best coverage of any sport on UK telly as Channel Five show (probably) their last Yankee Helmetball game. The Digital Economy bill. All car insurance ads in the history of all things, ever. Flash Forward. The iPhone’s battery life when you’re playing games on it.

So yeah. Alive and reasonably well. Further updates to follow. Eventually.

Once
The low-key and super-low budget story of the friendship between a Dublin busker and a young Czech pianist it made me laugh, made me weep like a tiny child for approximately 75% of its running time, then made me rush off and buy the DVD and soundtrack album. It’s not a musical, but rather a film about music so it’s just as well that the songs are absolutely bloody wonderful, by turns beautifully delicate and spine-tinglingly passionate. In an attempt to claw back my Hard-Bitten Internet Cynic image by proving that there’s nothing so exquisitely crafted and personally affecting that I can’t crush it under the lumpen weight of objective overanalysis, I’ll say that Once is better than Garden State and the Commitments, about on a par with Almost Famous but not as good as Magnolia. Rank: A

The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox360)
We bought the game solely to replace the drum controller that got knackered on our heroic expedition up the north face of Mount Rock a couple of bank holidays ago, so it was a pleasant surprise that the game was so good. It’s fair to say that nobody in the family is a big Beatles fan – personally I’m so amazingly ignorant that before playing this I’d never previously heard While My Guitar Gently Weeps or Dear Prudence (other than the Banshees’ version, obv) – but this game totally won us over. The enthusiasm that the developers obviously have for their subject matter comes across over and over again, in the animation of the band members, in the often-beautiful staging of the songs (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends being a particular highlight), in the wealth of unlockable photos and video that’s included, even in the names of the Achievements. The Beatles: Rock Band is like reading an article by a really great writer on a subject they really know and really love but that you never previously cared about. Rank: B

Lie To Me
Someone’s seen House and gone “I’m getting me a piece of that action!” Quirky take on an established (some would say tired) TV genre – check. Grizzled veteran British lead actor who’s plainly having a whale of a time – check. Troubled but charismatic and brilliant central character with a distinctive gait (House’s limp, Lightman’s bizarre half-gibbon, half-Quasimodo shambling) – check. Unbelievably formulaic scripting with exactly the same story beats every week – check. The always thoroughly watchable Tim Roth does a nice job with a part that calls for him to say “Ah! Now THAT’S the truth!” fifteen times an episode but that doesn’t cover the fact that this is a slightly degraded photocopy of a show that itself has no pretentions to being anything other than disposable fluff. Rank: C

Dragon Age: Origins (PC)
Love it. Love it love it love it. It’s a properly beardy fantasy RPG for properly beardy people. I could pick nits – I’d like the game mechanics to be a bit more transparent so that I could make more informed decisions when levelling up, and while the main story feels decently epic it doesn’t wander far from painfully familiar fantasy tropes – but that would be stupid because this is the best game I’ve played this year that doesn’t involve a man dressed as a nocturnal mammal jump-kicking people in the face. What makes it come alive for me above anything else are your NPC party members, as consistently likeable a group as I’ve ever encountered in a CRPG. In particular, the droll-but-dorky Alistair (Chandler Bing in plate mail, but nowhere near as annoying as that sounds) and Morrigan the sarky heartless sorceress have spent most of the game in my active party, in large part because I enjoy them sniping at each other so much. Only slightly less fun are desperate romantic Leliana, the golum Shale who’s reminiscent of the (awesome) psychopathic android HK-47 from the (awesome) original Knights Of The Old Republic, and lust-for-life Elfish assassin Zevran who’s spent most of his time with the group trying to get into my pants. Bring on Mass Effect 2! Rank: A

[rec]
An hour of enjoyable-enough mockumentary zombie hokum, 15 minutes of HELL ON TOAST. In a good way. Rank: B

Dexter
When I first heard the premise of Dexter – a serial killer working for the Miami police department who preys on other serial killers – I was utterly repulsed. It sounded tacky and sensationalist and dark-for-the-sake-of-darkness and generally not my cup of tea. But eminently sensible people kept singing its praises, so eventually I gave it a whirl and was duly blown away. After a bit of a wobbly second series it got back on track with an excellent third (starring Jimmy Smits’ enjoyably terrible Cuban accent), and now the new season is easily the best yet. The latest episode – set on Thanksgiving – is like a distillation of everything that makes the show worth watching. It’s got Dexter struggling to cope with regular human interaction, it’s got terrific performances all round (particularly from John Lithgow in magnificently creepy form) and it’s got incredibly tense sequences alongside moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. It really is pretty much as good as telly gets at the moment. Rank: A

Lungs – Florence + The Machine
Since last.fm arrived on the FunSquareSuperPlus, I’ve spent a fair bit of time listening its automatically-generated reccomend-o-tron. It seems that Skynet has decided that I’m almost exclusively into impassioned and slightly eccentric female singer-songwriters. And, you know. It’s hard to argue. So it’s fair to say that there was a better-than-average chance I’d go for this album. And sure enough, it’s awesome and proof positive that modern pop really needs more a) harp-playing and b) songs about werewolf-themed sexuality. Rank: A

Let The Right One In
Unsettling lo-fi Swedish vampire flick that plays with themes of alienation and adolescence. But better than that sounds. I couldn’t shake the feeling there was stuff going on here that I was too stupid to understand - what was with the repeated shots of characters’ feet, f’rinstance? Rank: B

So I did. And this is it.

Hard To Handle – Black Crowes
Yeah, it’s just an “As Made Famous By” jobbie, but it’s a total crowdpleaser, not least because of the big a capella chorus that everyone can join in on. As good on bass and drums as it is on guitar, which is this good: very good indeed.

Live Forever – Oasis
Chance to do Liam’s Manc whine plus two of Oasis’ three best guitar solos = winner. Mic stand and singing with your hands clasped behind your back compulsory.

Crushcrushcrush – Paramore
It’s a rubbish song, and I’m obliged to grumble whenever my daughter picks to sing it (which is only, you know, every time we play it). But secretly, playing the chorus is an absolute hoot. Don’t tell her, alright?

More Than A Feeling – Boston
Cheesier than the Waitrose deli counter, but the pre-chorus riff that ends with the two rapid bursts of three notes? Possibly my favourite guitar bit in the whole game. And brilliantly there’s a long sustained note straight after it that gives you plenty of time to bask in the warm glow of your own awesomeness.

Gouge Away – Pixies
Not a difficult song on guitar and bass, but it’s got a significantly different “feel” to almost everything else in the game and that makes it interesting. And Frank Black hits the sweet spot where his vocals are demented enough that you can give them EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT but not quite so demented that they’re impossible to replicate (hello, Debaser!).

Skullcrusher Mountain – Jonathan Coulton
“I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like him
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, and you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much?
Maybe I used too many monkeys?
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony
Making a gift for you?”
Lyrically and musically Coulton’s stuff is, almost without exception, an absolute blast to sing. I’d highly recommend checking out Re: Your Brains, too. Word around the campfire is that The Future Soon is next up which should also be a winner, although I’m still hoping for Shop Vac at some point.

The Way That It Shows – Richard Thompson
It seemed an odd choice from RT’s extensive back-catalogue, but as soon as you play it you can see why they went for it. It’s a song that’s put together like a Swiss watch, every element meshing together with exquisite precision. The guitar part, predictably, is outstanding – gradually becoming more and more intense as the song goes on before reaching its climax in an extended, incendiary solo.

I’m Eighteen – Alice Cooper
Maybe the best song about being a teenager ever, and this live version is agreeably ragged and twiddly.

Stonehenge – Spinal Tap
Heavy Duty is technically trickier, doesn’t have long periods in it where certain band members aren’t doing anything and is arguably all-around more fun to play, but I can’t get enough of that mandolin solo. And doing the “Nobody knows who they were… or… what they were doing” line in the Nigel Tufnel stunned, spacey Mockney voice is yet to get old. Might want to keep an eye on your drummer, though.

Tribute – Tenacious D
The kind of song that Rock Band does best is the overwrought power-ballad. This? Well, it really is the ne plus ultra of overwrought power-ballads. Great fun on guitar and drums, even more fun on vocals – “He asked us… *Snort-grunt-growl-thing* ‘Be you angels?’ And we said ‘NAY! We are but men! ROCK! *Long-drawn-out-overtheatrical-wailing*”

I owned every single Madden game between 1994 and 2008 before EA ditching the PC as a platform led to me missing last year’s. If there’s a series of games that I’ve sunk more time into over the years I can’t think of it. This isn’t a boast – blimey, it’s almost the opposite – but I mention it for context, so that you’re aware that these opinions are in no way coming from a sniffy Eurotrash “I Find It Curious That A Nation That Prides Itself On Machismo Feels The Need To Strap On Thirty Pounds Of Armour In Order To Play Rugby” sort’ve place. With that out of the way, here are my top ten problems with Madden 10:

1. The running game doesn’t work. At all. For the opposition or for me. Running’s always been rubbish in one way or another in pretty much every iteration of Madden but this year it’s particularly broken – your typical sequence of runs will go 0 yards, -2 yards, 1 yard, 1 yard, 0 yards, 2 yards, 35 yards, -1 yard, 1 yard, 0 yards. It’s like you’re playing Advanced DeShaun Foster Simulator 2010. Yes, after some fiddling with sliders it’s possible to get your back to the giddy heights of a semi-consistant 2.5, three yards a carry, but why the HUG do I need to be roostering about under the hood in order to get one of the FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF A HELMETBALL GAME to work? In addition to which…
2. …it’s almost totally impossible for a receiver to beat a corner deep. So when you add that to the ground-game’s ineffectiveness, it means  the only type of offence that works with any reliability is a junky semi-West Coast Captain Checkdown sort’ve thing built around short passes. However…
3. When I first started playing Madden, quick out-routes were almost impossible for defenders to cover man-on-man. A few years ago, hook patterns were basically 10 free yards every time you ran them. This year, both of those have been so unrealistically cracked-down upon that trying to complete either, even when your receiver has position, will work maybe one time in ten and get picked off about half the time. So when I say “the only offensive strategy that works reliably is passing short”, I in fact mean “the only offensive strategy that works reliably are very specific short passes, namely slants, dumpoffs to your backs and, if you’re feeling really adventurous, the odd drag route.” Which is frighteningly realistic if you happen to be playing as Andy Reid, but for anyone else it’s pretty profoundly rubbish.
4. If I’m playing Superstar mode as a quarterback, why can’t I look left or right, or “focus” on one receiver? There’s a play in the Packers’ repertoire that has the flanker run a corner-route with the slot receiver close by performing a “quick hit” five-yard hook. Several times, I’ve been in a position where the defence is in a cover-2 or similar zone, with only one defender in the vicinity of the two receivers meaning there’s an easy completion available to one or the other of my guys straight off the snap IF I COULD SEE WHICH OF THE TWO THE DEFENDER WAS TRYING TO COVER WHICH I CAN’T BECAUSE OF THE STUPID FIELD VIEW YOU’RE FORCING ON ME YOU USELESS, CRETINOUS MORONS.
5. I quite like the ability to upload the replays of my Plays Of Awesomeness to the Internet. HOWEVER, this seems to have come at the cost of the instant-replay option only being able to record X number of seconds of action. Unfortunately, X seconds is considerably less time than it takes to, say, take a kickoff return back for a touchdown. This means that for longer-than-average plays (you know, the sort that you MIGHT WANT TO SAVE) you often lose the first few seconds of action (you know, the bits where your receiver gets open / running back breaks through the line of scrimmage / returner busts through the first line of defenders, the bits you MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN RE-WATCHING) leaving your replay only showing the ballcarrier running in the open field for 60+ yards (you know, the boring bit).
6. Why is there no create-a-playbook function? The one in Madden 08 was clumsily implemented and occasionally irritating to use but that’s a lot better than, hmm, let me check, oh, nothing. And to make this even more annoying, why can’t I preview the existing playbooks to find the one that suits me best, instead of having to guess, load up a game and flick through the plays there? Oh, and while I’m on the subject, why can’t I select a set of audibles that work with whatever team I’m playing with? Why do they have to be locked to one “favourite” team? And seeing as we’re talking customisation let’s indulge a tiny niggle – how come if you move a team or start with a new custom team there are no names that the commentators will use? In every version of Madden since 2003 there have been “default” names that go with the custom logos that are recognised by the  game – now, nothing.
7. The Achievements are rubbish, almost entirely based on doing certain things with certain players (tackle Antonio Gates inside the 5-yard line, or intercept Pointing Manning three times in a game) with next to nothing on offer for, well, actually acheiving anything. Win a Super Bowl? Draft a rookie who goes to a Pro Bowl? Run for 200 yards in the game? Get your Be A Superstar player to the Hall Of Fame? Child’s play, now get back to trying to juke Bob Sanders. I generally don’t give much of a cuddle for my Nerd-O-Score, but it still seems a bizarre and mildly annoying decision not to focus Achievements on the way the vast majority of people play the game – Franchise mode.
8. Why can’t I turn off the incredibly bland, totally useless, load-delay-infested “halftime show” that is inflicted on me every game? The cliché with EA Sports games is that they’re a bit soulless but glossy and beautifully presented. Well, this is a bit soulless and it’s presented horribly. The commentary is repetitive and even more prone to mis-reading the game situation than it was when Madden and Michaels were on the mic. The menus are a pain to navigate. On top of everything else…
9. In-game marketing just washes over me as a rule. But Madden 10 abuses the privilege. Delaying me from starting a game for three seconds so that Snickers can tell me to “Be a Chompion!” started as a mild annoyance but has made a swift ascent up the north face of Mount Infuriation to the point that I’m now ready to choke a marketing executive to death on a delicious bar of nougat, caramel and roasted peanuts smothered in thick, thick milk chocolate. Mmm, Marathon really satisfies.
10. And while we’re at it, having a menu item almost constantly on display that’s ever-so-discreetly nudging me to part with actual cash-money for a cheat-code, well – you stay classy, EA Sports.“Given that millions of people are already habitually paying full price for a glorified spreadsheet update every year, do we really need the relatively paltry sums that are brought in by milking the fanbase in this incredibly tacky way and corroding the user experience for everyone?” “We don’t need the money, Piers, we just want it. Because we’re very, very greedy.”

I don’t know. Despite the many, many issues I’m still getting some enjoyment out of the game, but that may be because by now it’s physiologically impossible for me to have less than a tolerably decent time playing Madden. However, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that Madden 10 is a significantly worse game than the 2008 version. The fundamental problem for me is that your offensive playcalling is so utterly hamstrung by the hopelessness of the running game and desperately narrow range of options for getting a receiver open. How is it possible, after 20 years of iteration and refinement, to produce a game that fails so completely at such a basic level? It’s like shipping a FIFA game in which corners and crosses were completely ineffectual, where the only way to score was the dribble-and-shot. Which come to think of it was exactly what EA did every year before Pro Evo came along and ruffled their feathers, wasn’t it? Of course, given the EA’s exclusive licence with the NFL, there’s zero chance of that happening with the Madden titles which might go some way toward explaining the bloated, unlovable, complacent mess that is this year’s game. Rank: D