Tony Martin  John Madden football. The name itself conjures up hours upon hours of wasted time on a couch, achy trigger fingers, and countless empty soda cans and half-smoked cigarettes. "Madden" is not only an annual rite of passage, but a cult of gamers...

It was a pretty wild summer for video game players. A staggering amount of sequels and new intellectual properties popped up over the course of three months, but not all of them lived up to their high expectations. Fortunately, these were few and between...