Madden 10 - Why Can't We Be Friends?

"me n u on da same squad wats good"

anonymous XBox Live user

Of all the achievements I've achieved, of all the pointless MacGuffin's I've sought, of all the ridiculous side quests, and of all the time limits and record scores I've been asked to seek, none have proven more controller-throwingly frustrating as these three. And, yes, I'm talking about a sports game.

Madden 10 is the latest incarnation of the long-dominant NFL football franchise from EA Sports--as if I needed to tell you. Everyone has played, or has seen someone play, Madden. It is a fact of life in America, like reality TV and fried everything. It is an institution of male-hood par excellence; located at the intersection of videogames and spectator sports, there may not be a greater monument to 21st century American masculinity. So maybe it is understandable that the kind of person you would find playing this game online would be exactly the kind of juvenile, trash-talking cliche you see in movies--without exception, he will be thirty-something, wearing only underwear and a dingy bathrobe, and screaming expletives into his headset at what always turns out to be a ten-year old boy. If you are playing Madden on XBox Live you either (a) already resemble this person, or (b) very quickly will begin to resemble this person.

Stifling all my primal male urges to smash things and make lewd jokes about women or homosexuals, I have been playing quite a lot of Madden 10 since I got my XBox. The online franchise I've set up is my way of bonding with my brother-in-law (and, FYI, it works). Most of the achievements went down easy in the first week: just a couple of comp stomps were all it took to rack up about 700G toward my Gamerscore. What remained were a couple of the more challenging offline quests ("Get 10 user catches (no drops) with Larry Fitzgerald," for instance, is not impossible but probably worth more than 40G considering the effort it is going to take), a pure-luck\scenario type of achievement ("Win a fumble pile-up in the end zone for a TD"), and the co-op mode achievements. This final category is composed of three challenges that are, in and of themselves, not difficult at all. 

• Why Can't We Be Friends? only asks you to finish a game, which could probably be accomplished with one of those third-party controllers with "turbo" buttons and a sliver of scotch tape.
• Hey Buddy requires you to complete a lateral and though the description clearly mentions your partner, I was able to earn the achievement by completing a lateral to the opposing team...
• Finally, From Me To You is earned when you complete a touchdown pass with your partner. This is made considerably easier by the improvements to the passing system in this year's edition of the game (one of the few things that got better, but we'll get to that in a bit).

The major hurdle in my way, the overwhelming roadblock to a successful achievement grind, was the fact that nobody wants to play a co-op game of Madden. There are many thousands of players online at any given moment looking for someone like me; but if I mention the co-op mode, those eager gamers suddenly turn into French soldiers and run away. I couldn't even convince my brother-in-law to help. We had tried the mode once and the connection gave out. He has since refused to try again. Worse still are the game lobbies--where, even at three in the morning, you will find yourself inundated with random game and party invites. One mention of Co-op in a voice chat and my headset exploded with the laughter of the other players. 

That episode having shattered my confidence, I stopped attempting the co-op achievements for a while. I stopped playing Madden altogether, in fact. My brother-in-law asked about our franchise and I lied, telling him that my internet connection was down. 

Eventually, I gathered myself and tried again. This time I was determined. I tried trapping someone--creating a game session and starting the game before they notice it's set to co-op. Didn't work. I went into the lobbies and lobbied, sending messages to everyone in the room. "I want the co-op achievements," I told them. "Are you gonna help me? If not, you are a girl." Yes, I was a gaming cliche. And I cared not. Nothing would keep me from these achievements. I kept sending out invites. 

The only response I received was worded thusly: me n u on da same squad wats good. I still have no idea what that means. Nevertheless, I sent that guy a game invite. He never showed. 

I decided I was going to be at this a while. So I created an open game session, set the controller down, and went to make some coffee. How else could I go about this? Maybe if I posted something to Craigslist I might find someone with the same problem. I tried bribing my brother-in-law, promising to buy him a game for his troubles. "No time," he told me. "Sorry." Out of ideas, I returned to my XBox and found someone waiting for me. 

I couldn't raise him on the headset. He was silent. He hadn't sent any messages. I started up the game and he didn't leave. We returned the kickoff together. He wasn't leaving! Amazing.

The first achievement, From Me to You, came on our first play from scrimmage: a screen pass from my Brett Favre to his Adrian Peterson. Unfortunately, that was about as easy as anything would come for us. Before the first quarter was over I understood the resistance to co-op games: Co-op mode is terrible. I know its new to Madden, but it is so poorly executed that I can't imagine it was tested at all. The fixed camera makes movement more difficult and limits your field of vision to a ten-yard wide sliver. You can't see your teammates to know when they are open (my partner's silence in this respect made everything harder, I never knew what he was doing unless I followed him around) or to see where they are going so that you might block for them. The whole thing would actually be improved by a first-person view--that's how bad it is. I tried for the next three quarters to get off a lateral, held back by the lack of communication, and finally achieved Hey Buddy when I got one off with about four minutes left in the game and completed it not to my teammate but to an opposing player. Sigh of relief. As long as we finish this game I never have to play this awful mode again. 

Did I mention, by the way, that this is happening at four in the morning? Several hours had been spent searching for a co-op partner before I stumbled upon this guy. Drinking cup after cup of coffee to keep from falling asleep behind the controller, the five-minute quarters were suddenly feeling very long. At least my teammate hadn't left yet. 

As if he knew what I was thinking he paused the game. Oh, goddamn. He's going to quit. There were mere moments left in the game, just a few more plays would earn me 75G toward my Gamerscore. "Please," I spoke into the microphone, not knowing if he could hear me, "don't quit. Two minutes more and we get what we came for. I know that's why you're here. It's the only reason someone could play this for as long as we have. Just suffer with me for another two minutes. Please."

Obviously, he didn't quit. I earned Why Can't We Be Friends? as you can see above. In one game of Madden, about a half hour of playing, I earned those three achievements worth a grand total of 165G, pushing my Gamerscore over 4000.  For such seemingly simple achievements to be worth so much I have to wonder if EA knows how terrible this co-op mode really is. The extra achievement kudos look, to me, like a nod of recognition for anyone willing to stomach its awfulness.

Next:

Nothing on Madden for a while. I'm quite sick of it. Let's be honest. Madden is addictive, but its not a very good football experience. Your vision on the field and control over players is insanely limited. Your involvement from play to play is minimal. And the amount of luck needed to put up good numbers (to avoid penalties, injuries, fumbles, etc.) is outrageous. Furthermore, Madden commits what I consider a cardinal sin of videogames, a sin it has committed time and again for years, a sin it has become synonymous with in my mind: higher difficulty levels = cheating AI players.

Think about it, when you can't buy a yard of rushing because your all-universe offensive line can't hold a block but the AI team's running back rolls over your defense like a katamari, it's not because you are doing something wrong, it's because setting the game on a higher difficulty setting just means a tweak of certain constants that puts molasses in your shoes and steroids in their water. It's lame, and basically means that the game's replay value is entirely a function of multiplayer capabilities.

• Free-to-play Madden Ultimate Team card game now available (destructoid.com)
• EA sending Madden NFL to Facebook (sfgate.com)
• EA Shutting Down Online Play For Madden 09, Other Sports Games (cinemablend.com)