I tell you what, the boys over at Infinity Ward sure know how to press my buttons. I’m actually considering playing the single player right out of the box instead of jumping onto Xbox live with my friends.

My favorite feature new to this years installment of EA’s Madden football is undoubtedly the Online Franchise mode. The ability to bring not only my stick and play calling skills but also my managerial skills online really gets me going.

One of the nice things you get to do is make video mashups of your online games. It’s pretty easy to do, the first thing you need to do is save highlights from your game. This must be done BEFORE you exit the contest. Under the game recap menu just select the highlights mode, go in and pick any notable plays from that game and save them to your hard drive.

At that point you need to go into the Madden menu and upload the highlights to the EA servers. From there you must go online to www.easportsworld.com and login using your ea account information. The front page there should have a link to video highlight reels, click to follow the link and you’re all set.

You can drag and drop different sound files they’ve got, things like ambient crowd noise and cracking football helmets and pads. Mix and match your highlights and sync up the sounds and youre good to go.

Below I’ve posted my highlight reel from my first player versus player matchup. My Bills jumped out to an early lead on a couple of Maurice Jones-Drew touchdowns and shut down Brandon Jacobs and the Buccaneers pass game. Forced to take to the skies in the second half to get back into the game, the Bucs sails were slashed by a couple late picks by Louis Delmas. Final Score was Bills 31 bucs 24. Feast baby…

I apologize to the two of you who check this page regularly for posting this video so late. Robert Bowling uploaded a multiplayer video from the upcoming Infinity Ward release Modern Warfare 2 the other day. Feast…

A few things I notice:

• 15 streak rewards!!!?!?! I can’t wait to find out what they are.
• Heartbeat detector attachment for your weapon. How will this effect game modes like Search and Destroy?
• Flying an AC-130 during live multiplayer action. I don’t need to tell you how that makes me feel
• Sticking semtex (fancy new c4? sticky grenade?) to people’s faces is going to replace teabagging as the most demeaning act one gamer can do to another.

I’ve just stumbled onto a great source for in depth Modern Warfare 2 information. MW2Blog.com goes DEEP and HARD to give addicts of the series all the nerdiest information you couldn’t find yourself (assuming you’ve got a job and a life).

My personal favorite is this picture of the pause screen they’ve posted:

Any site that takes the time to post an upcoming games pause screen is a friend of mine! Now all us awaiting know where to find the first shots of the options menu when we get closer to release.

The biggest question I’ve got after watching this video…..Why in the fuck is this not already on shelves??

You have one Robert. You said it was the first off the line, that implies there are more.
SHIP THEM ALREADY! I’m ready to prestige!!!!!!

In my quest to find my inner badass I purchased EA Sports’ newest release, Fight Night Round 4 the other week. Oh boy did it work, until I went online. Having gotten good enough to knock the PC out in one round nine times out of ten I figured it was a good time to take my skills online.

Ugh….

Let me tell you, I don’t think I’m terrible…But I sure was way off base in thinking I was going to cut it in FNR4’s new Online Championship Mode. It took me 4 fights to make it out of the first round, and when I did I was promptly knocked out to start the second. After ten to fifteen thorough beat downs I ran to Google for help…. And now, for those friends of GeekFortress that are also finding themselves somewhat overwhelmed by the wide world of online boxing, I present what I’ll call, “Fight Night for Dummies”

What I may have found the most helpful in the online arena was dirtyomelettes guide to dealing with online stereotypes. Most everyone I’ve fought online falls into one of the categories he covers: Block n’ counter fighter, the inside pressure fighter, haymaker and body hook spammers, and smart outside fighters.

In your quest to push through Legacy mode you’ll likely find few problems in your game you cannot solve by lowering the difficulty. If you do however, or if you just like to keep it honest and play like the pros do…then you should find this basic guide to fighting by Adenosine pretty helpful. Another plus to that is the guide to uploading photos for use with the Photo Game Face feature. I had no idea how to use it until I read this guide, being that the instruction manual is lacking INSTRUCTIONS.

The above two guides should honestly be enough for most people, myself not included. You see….even with the help of the above guides, I’m still getting my ass handed to me online. I need something more. Another little bit of knowledge. Aj_the_one’s FAQ covers most the same things that Adenosine hit, but the one thing you’ll find that I wasn’t able to find in the others is specific details on the effects of each boxing style when creating a boxer. This is very important because you want your created boxer to have stats that cater to your personal fighting style. Problem is that not all of us know the significance of terms like “Mummy” and “Slickster”……Now we do. Thanks Aj_the_one

There, go! Go spread the pain using these skills I’ve shown you *through other peoples hard work* today!

I want to hear back from everyone on how much they’ve improved! Or if you suck even more now I want to know too!

Just ran across this video preview from IGN’s PC editor Jason Ocampo. He highlights a few interesting tidbits you may not have heard before. Release is only a handful of months away, it’s almost time for my yearly Call of Duty hype machine. You ready???

As I said in my post earlier this week, online franchise is finally here….and it’s now official. Today at E3 Electronic Arts announced the mode with a trailer that made me want to skip my life until the moment that game is in my hands as fast as Adam Sandler skipped through his entire life in Click. Apparently I don’t learn from the morals in movies. Whatever, I don’t care, this game mode looks awesome.

I am assuming the lag will be minimal and everything will run as smoothly as the video seems to imply it will. If it does you will not see much of me. Madden players will be on the web setting their depth charts more often than my little sister checks her Facebook. Seriously, just watch the video (trailer is about a minute in).