www.bengals.net

Via Joystiq

Anyhow, yes, the graphics are much sharper in the Xbox 360 version we were shown, with tons of new animations for the players an much smoother transitions in-between the motions. They've also returned to the Sports Center style, television-centric coverage, complete with a new "Backtrack" feature, where Cris Collinsworth will "telestrate" on the screen and highlight what you did wrong. Apparently, "You hit the wrong button, bonehead!" isn't in his repertoire. It's a bit like a mulligan in golf, and lets you learn from your mistakes.

EA was keen to point out the accessibility of the game, showing the ability to change your team's abilities in multiplayer on a sliding scale and pitting yourself against a friend who'd never picked up the game before. You can crank up their pass and rush defense, while turning down your offense in an attempt to create a more balanced game. Plus, you know, it'll keep players like us from getting our **** kicked by 10-year-old kids. The single-player game also keeps track of your stats internally and will adjust the A.I on the fly, enabling you to constantly "step up", as the kids say.

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Not getting beat by 10 year old kids anymore? I'm there man ...

August 12th, 2009 release date.

From Planet Xbox 360:

"Madden NFL 09 introduces 85 new features and enhancements, including the ability to adapt gameplay to the player’s skill level. Whether you are a veteran Madden NFL player or a newcomer to the game, everyone can have an enjoyable and competitive gaming experience. Madden NFL 09 will also feature a network-inspired broadcast presentation highlighted by the commentary team of Cris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond. The game also features online leagues, allowing players to take their rivalries online and compete in leagues with fans from around the country."

You can clearly see the problem with his delivery in this exclusive video of last nights performance:

So now it looks like thelotd is supporting RSS, been a long time coming for Lance's page to show up in my RSS reader.

For the uninitiated, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, thats unimportant. What is important is that it gives you a way to make a central place to pull in all the kinds of stuff you are interested in. There are many RSS readers you can use, the one I use every single day is Google Reader. Googler Reader (http://reader.google.com) is free to use, and the one thing that I like the most about it, being an online reader it means it doesn't matter what computer I am using, I just log in to the google reader and it has all my feeds, and knows what I've read or marked for follow up, etc.

This is important to me as I have a work computer, a computer in my home office, a computer on my TV serving as an HTPC, my wife's computer, etc. Doesn't matter where I am, Google Reader keeps all my stuff straight.

So check out google reader, add Lance's RSS (which right now doesn't seem to be working well) and poke around, if you've never used RSS before I think you're in for a treat.

Other Tricks:

Once you're into RSS heavily you'll notice that you may have more stories to deal with each day than you really want to read. Other days may be lighter. On a typical day I'll have about 300 items waiting for me in Reader.

The nice thing about reader is you can break things into multiple categories, and assign a feed to many different categories. Most of my feeds are assigned to two categories, one that sorts it into the kind of feed it is, and one that sorts priority, "High, Medium and Low". So Lance's RSS will go into "Sports, High" which means that if I log into my reader and there are over 1000 items (I've been away a while) I click on the "Low" heading and then mark all as read. That usually chops it down by 2/3rds. Lance being in my "High" category will still be unread, and will be waiting for me when I tab through it (I Usually sort oldest to newest)

Also, another neat feature in Google Reader is the ability to Share items. I see something neat and think my friends might like to see it, I just click the "share" Icon at the bottom of the item. Done. Now my wife, my family, and my friends are all reading the same item if they're using reader. It shows up in their shared items list.

Some of the feeds I subscribe to:

garfield minus garfield - http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/rss
Joystiq - http://feeds.joystiq.com/weblogsinc/joystiq
Lolcats - http://feeds.feedburner.com/ICanHasCheezburger?format=xml
The Daily WTF (worse than failure) - http://syndication.thedailywtf.com/TheDailyWtf
The Truth About Cars - http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?feed=rss2
xkcd.com (webcomic, hilarious if you're a geek) - http://xkcd.com/rss.xml
Bad Astronomy Blog - http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/feed/

others (you can easily search these if you want to subscribe I don't have the feed url handy)

Linux.com
Slashdot.org
Paul Daughtery's Blog
Redleg Nation
Chris Sabo's Goggles
RulesofThumb.org
Xbox360Fanboy
ESPN.com
Engadget
Lifehacker
National Geographic News
fast cool cars (Top Gear's Blog)
Television & Media (John Kiesewetter's blog)

And now C Trent, Lance and Mo Egger ... welcome to the RSSOsphere boys.... ;)