I picked up Madden 10 the other day, succumbing to my deep longing for American football after the long absence since the Cowboys lost in the playoffs and since I just couldn’t bear another season of Tecmo Super Bowl.

On loading the game I went straight for the “Superstar” mode, which I found so appealing in the college version, NCAA Football. In that mode, you create a player, then are picked up by a team and play for them, working your way up the ranks, improving and so on. Crucially, you can only control that player – so if your player is off the field, you don’t do anything. There’s something about that which appeals to me a lot, this notion of a very defined and constrained view of what a football game feels like.

Sadly, to this point the Superstar mode in Madden has been disappointing. While the NCAA version had at least enough nods toward some kind of fantasy existence as a player (you had to “study”, there were newspaper clippings, etc. etc), in Madden it’s pretty much just about playing the game. Worse, the only fantasy element, your agent, really sucks. You can demand a trade and be instantly traded (unrealistic), you can do that three times and then no more, and you can guarantee wins. And that’s what your personality amounts to. Bleak.

It kind of adds up to weirdness for me. The idea behind the Superstar mode is that you feel like a real player on a real team because you’re forced to view the game from a single, fixed perspective instead of a godlike one, and are forced to rely on the team instead of manipulate it. In playing this mode in Madden 10 I feel like a really virtual player on a really virtual team – as if it were a simulation of a simulation. It’s not the stuff of fantasy, though perhaps Baudrilliard would enjoy it.

I have now been punished by NCAA Football 09 enough. It’s a fantastic game, but for the last few days it’s been substantially less rewarding that it was. Essentially, this is because I seem to lack the skills (cognitive ones, I think, embarrassingly) to perform well on defence. I can be a solid player for the team, but I’ve been unable to do amazing and impressive things. That kind of thwarts the fantasy.

Fortunately, I have another game in the queue which ought to remedy this perfectly: Fable 2. Specifically, I bought the game mostly because of a review from Eurogamer which said that unlike games which tend to drag you through the hoops with a carrot on a stick, Fable 2 “would rather shower you with bananas.”

I really, really like the sound of that right now.

Extending the play-life of NCAA Football 09, I’ve now started from scratch with a new Campus Legend, this time playing on the defensive side of the ball as a free safety. That the game has this much depth is, in itself, super impressive. Playing on defense is utterly different from playing on offense.

Most interesting for me has been the level of skill required to play as a free safety, something I didn’t really need so much of when playing a half-back. You have to go to the right place, hit the right button, take the right pursuit angle, and more. All just so you don’t look like an idiot as some wide-receiver runs past you for a forty yard touchdown.

Additionally, and I think this is critical, playing on defense often means… not making plays. A lot of the time you carry out your assignment and end up doing precisely nothing. In fact, that’s probably most of the time. The idea that this sort of lack of influence could be a central part of your video game play experience is very strange. It’s also very gratifying, because it means that when you do do something, even something as trivial as making a simple tackle, you feel a great sense of accomplishment.

And imagine how great you feel when you return an interception for an NCAA record 104 yard touchdown…

It feels good.