How many of you play in fantasy football leagues each fall? Well, probably not that many, since this is Destructoid, after all. But think of the thousands — nay, millions — of people across the nation who participate in office pools and “roto” leagues every year. Now think of how many of those people own a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360. That’s a pretty sizable area of convergence there on your mental Venn diagram, isn’t it?

It was only a matter of time before someone attempted to capitalize on that, and EA has put together an impressive-sounding package to do so. They’ve launched a new Web site, fantasy.EASPORTS.com, where you can play fantasy football. It sounds like your average, standard-fare World wide web fantasy football league — there are endless other sites where you can do the same thing.

But EA’s one-upped all their competitors by developing two applications specifically for the PS3 and 360, EA SPORTS Fantasy Football Live Draft Tracker and EA SPORTS Fantasy Football Live Score Tracker. They’re meant to work in conjunction with EA SPORTS Fantasy Football on the Web site and take your experience “to the next level.” Fantasy football is free on the Web site, but the applications will be available on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace for “a fee.”

Each of the apps offers some very cool features to help manage your league more easily — see the press release after the jump and the attached screenshots for more details — but what really impressed me is EA SPORTS Fantasy Football’s integration with Madden NFL 09. Have you ever wanted to actually play with your stacked fantasy team in a videogame? Well, you’ll be able to do that this year. The team will serve as a fully-functional created team, so it’ll be playable in all areas that normal created teams have access to (yes, that includes on the internet multiplayer!).

So how many of you are now chomping at the bit for Madden 09 and these apps?

Via Destructoid

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Filed under: News, Fan stuff

Alright folks, time to demonstrate our nerdiness for all the web too see. After the most current Halo novel, Contact Harvest, we really hoped that if there was to be another that it would be by penned by either Eric Nylund or Bungie institution Joseph Staten. While we aren’t quite getting the thing we really would have wished for, (Staten is likely hard at work on the secret Project Phoenix, and Nylund is likely writing stuff for Microsoft Game studios) we will be seeing another Halo novel before the year is out.

Entitled The Cole Protocol the next novel is going to be penned by Tobias S. Buckell, an up and coming sci-fi writer, and is going to deal with a supposedly new perspective and the Spartan Gray team. So far the only mention of other Spartans (warned ya ’bout the nerdiness) in the books are a few passing references. There was this from Ghosts of Onyx: “And what had ever happened to Gray Team on a mission far outside the confines of UNSC space, now missing for over a year?” and then this from Fall of Reach: “Assembled here tonight, are all surviving Spartans save three, who are otherwise engaged on fields of combat too distant to be easily recalled.”

The book is set for a fall release and more about it should be revealed as the final date inches ever closer (also, to avoid any confusion, that cover isn’t real, it’s a ’shop). You are all now that much closer to being Halo otaku. Glad we could help.

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Via Xbox360fanboy

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Metal Gear Solid 4 has been a long-awaited title. We first heard word back in 2005, and drama has only built up from there. It’s been touted by PS3 owners as a reason to own the system, and then claimed to be coming to the 360. Well, all of that can be put to rest now that the game is in our hands and available for play.

We’ve followed the stories of Solid, Liquid, Massive Boss, and a bevy of other names through three Metal Gear Solid titles, creating a web of plot points and storylines that have been left unanswered. Delving into Metal Gear Solid 4, I was looking for an experience unlike any of the previous games.

It’s something that required three of us to tackle this review: Anthony Burch, Chad Concelmo, and myself. Figure out if love can bloom on the battlefield after the jump.

Via Destructoid

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Filed under: Culture, Mac, Personal computer, Sony PlayStation 3, Retro, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, On the web, Simulations

As you know, we sometimes like to cut the wires and take things Off the Grid, which can lead to bouts of surfing through websites like BoardGameGeek until 5 in the morning … allegedly …

However, all of that browsing paid off in spades when we stumbled across Quirks, a board game from the magical year of 1980. Looks a bit familiar, doesn’t it? We wonder if Will Wright ever sat down with this back in the day. He would have been around 20 years old when it came out, and he’s admittedly a massive fan of board and strategy games, so you do the math. Find out more about genetic manipulation in the 80s after the break (spoiler: it wasn’t all huge hair, bangle bracelets, and friendship pins).

Continue reading Quirks: the 1980 board game equivalent of Spore

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Filed under: Culture, On the internet, Polls

To whom it may concern,

The Weekly Webcomic Wrapup has for the past few months been getting pushed back further and further. There is no excuse for this, and we’ve set plans in motion so that it does not happen in the future. Thank your for your time.

As is usually said, “Here are our picks for the week’s best game-related webcomic. Be sure to vote for your favorite.”

Signed,
The Undersigned.

Bad Date (Digital Unrest)
Golden Book Reject (Fanboys)
On Perspective (Penny Arcade)
Now You’re Playing with Power (2P Start)
DM Rules (CAD)
Afternoon Delight (Dueling Analogs)
Superstardom (Sharcbate)

[”Hang Man” image via Flickr]

Continue reading Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is inexcusably late

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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online, Sports

Electronic Arts is dogpiling new features onto their Fantasy Football service in an effort to get people to migrate from the siren-like call of other fantasy football sites, including the ever-popular (and free) one at Yahoo. EA has created both a free fantasy football website as well as downloadable applications for both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network that will be available for an as yet-unannounced fee. Both services will give you the ability to manage your fantasy teams and track stats through the extremely long-named EA SPORTS Fantasy Football Live Score Tracker application.

However, what really caught our eye in the press release was this: “The fantasy scores can be viewed in two ways: full screen mode with complete rosters and details or picture-in-picture mode which allows gamers to keep an eye on scoring updates while watching live football action.” Is EA magically adding live TV to our consoles? If so, thank you, wonderful elves! We’ve contacted EA about this and will pass (get it?) an update once we have it. Oh, you’ll also be able to import your fantasy team into Madden NFL 09 and pit them against other players. Finally, we’ll have fantasy fantasy football.
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Super 8 is sponsoring a sweepstakes in celebration of the 2008 Beijing games…

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Filed under: News, Xbox Live Arcade

With so many places to gather information from these days, it’s rare that a game is actually announced by the people who are really making it, and this time is no exception. After the very recent release of Guilty Gear X2 #Reload to the Xbox Originals download service, this might seem to be a rather strange move, but still, Sega is looking to bring another Guilty Gear game to the 360, this time via the Live Arcade.

The European ratings board just got up its rating for the game, which is simply entitled Guilty Gear. While it is of course unknown at this time whether or not the game is going to be a straight remake of the original or something new, given XBLA’s history, a port of the original PS1 game seems likeliest.

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Via Xbox360fanboy

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Filed under: News, Console wars

Speaking with VentureBeat, Xbox 360 boss Robbie Bach chatted about where the Xbox brand is headed next generation, reconfirming their plan to be the first out of the console release gate once again. “If you take the question of whether it was the right thing to try to be first [with Xbox 360], the answer to that is definitely yes” Bach told VentureBeat, “it has given us a leg up with game developers. It has given us a leg up from an economics perspective. It helped us expand Xbox Live quickly. At a strategy level, if you asked if we wanted to be first again, I would say yes.” Plain and simple. Then again, trying to beat the PS4 to market won’t be all that hard for Microsoft seeing that Sony has publicly announced their plans to make it a ten year console. Right? Xbox 720 in 2011, bring it on!

[Via CVG]

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Via Xbox360fanboy

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