Loss of a Loved One
A Madden 2006 Soapbox Devastation Recap
Monday 5 December, 2005

I never got around to recalling my exit from the playoffs last season as it was during my week off. It was the hardest loss I've had on Madden, simply because of the circumstances. Unfortunately, it's been two weeks so I can't remember the numbers, suffice to say that most of the stats, particularly passing, were embarrassing.

Anyway, for the AFC Championship game, it started badly, giving up scores on the Houston Texans first two drives. They were putting eight guys in the box a lot and blitzing plenty, so I was having difficulty running and my passing game wasn't on song. It seems like there's days when your receivers just drop everything. This was one of those days.

I clawed back a little as the game opened up a bit near the half, but I saw the first tell-tale sign around then. On a kick return, the analog control stick jammed up, so as I pushed forward, my kick returner basically tiptoed forward. I sort of circled the stick around after the play, heard some weird clicking and temporarily solved the problem.

Unfortunately, it didn't stay away for long and I got nervous about running the ball. Running and having a mobile quarterback are two keys to my play, so it really hurt. After a frustrating 3rd down sack when I couldn't escape the pass rush, I made the change to my "backup" - the S Controller. This was in no way influenced by the fact I had spiked my Duke controller, the "injured starter", heavily into the floor, sending it bouncing towards the other side of the room.

I've been as vocal a supporter of the Duke (the original xBox controller) as I can be, with it's appropriate button positions, great hand size, better feel of the L and R buttons and the controller shape in general. I couldn't help but feel like a coach calling in his relatively untested backup quarterback for the big game.

While common sense would tell me to save the game and try later once I had got used to the S controller, I had earlier decided that this sort of "take a break when you're losing" tactic was cheating. It's more fulfilling to play your way out of trouble and my logic said that you can't do that in real life etc...so I played on. Plus you can't buy a replacement Duke anywhere, so that wasn't an option. Sniff.

I'd somehow rallied back to within a score and I was quite happy running the football, particularly with my QB Michael Vick. Running a hurry-up offense aiming for a TD, I threw an interception. The interception to lose the game. I pressed Y when I wanted white and considering the two layouts I can understand how I screwed it up. The Texans went on to win the Superbowl and thus they have become my new nemesis. I despise the Texans with a flaming passion normally reserved for Hollywood stars' homosexual encounters.

This third All-Madden season I'm playing, and fifth Madden 2006 season in total, has been all about the Superbowl. I need to win this and if I can't do it this year with the Dolphins, I may go elsewhere. Ricky Ponting Cricket is calling me, so hopefully I can put the finishing touches on my currently 14-1 season and fill that trophy cabinet.

The bond between a man and his video game controller isn't exactly investigated or documented at length, mainly due to masturbation jokes I would suspect, but to spend such an amount of time together with anything, even if it is an inanimate object, surely counts for some kind of sentiment. A controller feels the pain of defeat (with a massive thud to the floor sometime