EA Sports--particularly their Vancouver-based development team--always seems to make it look easy. While EA Tiburon--makers of Madden--sweat and labor and work their fingers to the bone to make each successive Madden better than the last Madden, EA Vancouver and their hockey sims always seem to arrive silently and elegantly, like a puck quietly sliding into a net. Year in and year out, these guys deliver an excellent approximation of the sport of professional hockey. And this year is no different.

So what's new? And do you need to buy this year's NHL if you already own last year's? Let's take a closer look.

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The best sports game in the universe--of course I'm referring to NBA 2K11--is in grave danger of losing its crown. Which game, you might ask, has the sand to take that crown? 

The answer: NBA 2K12.

The game isn't due in stores until the first week in October, but already the Sports Gamer office is abuzz with excitement over what 2K Sports is promising this year in 2K12. Instead of shifting the franchise into cruise control and taking a well-deserved victory lap around the game industry, the development team seems to be working double-time over there, making sure that they maintain their full-court press on the competition. Keep reading to see a trailer for the game, including all of its cool new features!

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Calendars list all the usual holidays--Thanksgiving, July 4th, Labor Day, etc.--but no calendar, with the exception of the one the Sports Gamer has on his desk, lists Madden Day.

Yes, Madden Day is the annual holiday when football fans and Madden fans everywhere gather together in game stores and electronics stores to pick up their copies of Madden. Then they head home and fire up the game for the first time, steeping themselves in a whole lot of football goodness.

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Everyone has an uncle who has one of those weird little satellite dishes attached to his house/mobile home. That satellite dish indicates one of two things:

1. that your uncle is communicating with aliens, or

2. he is a subscriber to DirecTV.

One of the advantages of DirecTV, of course, is the ability to access the NFL Sunday Ticket, which allows you to see up to 14 NFL games each Sunday, no matter where you live. Well, if you're a PlayStation 3 owner, and you're interested in the NFL Sunday Ticket, and you don't want that satellite thing on your house, you now can stream NFL Sunday Ticket through your PS3. But as with everything in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to doing so. Let me break it down for you.

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My NFL team of choice is--and always has been--the New York Giants. When the Sports Gamer was younger, the Giants were terrible. I recall watching a Sunday afternoon game with my dad. The Giants were just about to wrap up a victory against their rival, the Philadelphia Eagles. On the final play of the game, instead of just kneeling on the ball, the QB attempted tried to hand the ball off and fumbled, and one of the Eagles (Trivia: It was Herman Edwards, the future NFL coach) picked up the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. The Giants lost the game that day, but they gained a life-long fan in me. 

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When you review video games for a living, as the Sports Gamer does, you typically have two kinds of days: You have good days, and you have great days. But every once in a great while, you have downright awesome days. 

This week, I experienced one of those downright awesome days.

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2K Sports, makers of the excellent MLB 2K series, is currently putting the finishing touches on a much more light-hearted take on America's favorite pastime. Imagine, if you can, Phillies hurler Cliff Lee working a full count on SpongeBob Square Pants while a capacity crowd at the Poseidome--the fictional underwater ballpark based on the SpongeBob universe--rises to its feet.

It's those kinds of bizarre moments--when fact meets fiction, and the fiction gets funny--that Nicktoons MLB will provide.

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