Featuring EA's Madden NFL 2001 for PC
Prognostication Record: 9-7
What a wonderful game last week. Let me tell you, I was torn. I wanted St. Louis to win because a loss for the Bucs helps the Packer's odds of securing a Wild Card berth. But I also wanted the Bucs because I like them more than Warner and the boys and I prefer to be right, rather than wrong, with these predictions. Therefore both sides of me were happy with last week's game. Watching the oddities, the spectacular plays and that damn impressive finale drive by Shaun King and his dirty Buccanneers represented everything I love about Football. And on top of that I get to put another notch in my win column for prognostication purposes.
Tonight it's the Cowboys versus the Tennessee Titans up in Music City. The Cowboys are plagued with injuries (they're calling Aikman “Ache-man” these days) but the game is important because the Titans want home field advantage this year. Despite the date it won't be a Merry Christmas for Dallas fans, that's for sure. I took the Titans.
The game was scoreless until the end of the half when McNair found Pickens for a deep pass into the Cowboys Redzone and in for the score. Then, to open the third quarter Pickens caught another bullet and ran it in to make it 14-0. The rest of the game consisted of a dueling ground war between Eddie George and Emitt Smith, high winds in the stadium made passing dangerous despite McNair's duel successes.
The final two minutes saw the Cowboys reach the 19-yard line and call a fake field goal. The pass was batted down easily. On first down and on his own 15, George fumbled spectacularly and the Cowboys recovered. So, with a minute and change to go Aikman tosses a high floater to the back of the endzone. Too bad it got picked off! For a lark I had McNair throw a bomb from his 20. There was only 55 seconds left, the Cowboys had squandered their time outs and it was 1st down. Pity the Cowboys caught it at the 45-yard line. Sadder still that they couldn't even convert this new opportunity into a score. How the mighty have fallen. Titans 14, Cowboys 0.
The US Army announced that it will be basing its new Land Warrior training simulation on Novalogic's generally crappy shooting game, Delta Force 2. NovaLogic Systems (its military sim branch) will work closely with the Army's Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center (or TRAC -- shouldn't that be ATDCAC?) for the purpose of Making Soldiers Fight Better (or MSFQ -- the Q is silent). In the words of the Army, the purpose of the Land Warrior program is to "integrate existing equipment with modern electronics to increase soldiers' lethality and survivability in the field." Which means that they want to make soldiers better at using a mouse.
"We figure the game's graphics will let soldiers know what it's like to be almost, but not quite, legally blind," explained Captain Shawn Strand. "I mean, a soldier who can hit a blurry target in a game can hit a clean one in real life, right?"