Brian started out showing off the NL West teams, and now he’s released a portion of the NL East here with the ’86 Mets, ’95 Braves and ’97 Marlins.

Following up on the Oakland Athletics, we have just two teams left to cover in this series. Today, we’ll be covering the Houston Astros. The Astros home run swings have some heft to them as there’s lots of swings and celebrations to cover. Let’s get to it.

The Houston Astros were reviewed yesterday and it’s going to be hard to top that set of reviews because SDS did a great job with the signature swings of the Stros. That being said, let’s try to end on a strong note here with the Rangers home run swings.

Matt is back this week with a look at the top 5 sports games that need a next-gen reboot. Though, we should say, this is more like the five most “realistic” options for a next-gen reboot. Matt took things like Skate out of the running since that’s been announced. He also left something like NFL 2K out of the equation because the NFL re-upped with Madden.

There’s a lot of talk right now about features vanishing and when franchises modes used to be better and so on, so it felt right for us to put out a video remembering some of the good ol’ times. MJK has put together his list of the best NCAA Football features from the PS2 era that later vanished.

eSports Boxing Club first came to our attention back in April, and Prince is here running through some of the latest info on the upcoming boxing game. Development studio Steel City Interactive also recently released some of the first in-game assets for the game, which is shown in the video as well.

Back in October, I wrote about a list of little things that would make the uniform editor within MyLeague better, and this article is an extension of that. It’ll touch on things that could influence other modes as well, but as someone who is not as familiar with those modes, I’ll focus on how it impacts offline MyLeague.

Before we dive into my wishlist, let me first explain that my biggest gripe — and it has been my biggest gripe for years — with the NHL series is in regards to its arcade-style gameplay. I personally would much rather have an excellent playing poor looking game than a exceptional looking game that plays poorly. So with that tidbit of information in mind my wish list will not include any gameplay features. Instead I will release a full in depth article specifically focusing on my frustrations with its gameplay in the coming weeks.

This jersey is awarded to the rider who reaches the most mountain summits and gains the most points. The polka dot jersey is points-based so it is not to be confused with how the yellow jersey is won. Although the yellow jersey is often won by riders who dominate in the mountain stages, the polka dot jersey is comprised of mountain summit points throughout the Tour and not overall time. There is a unique strategy to holding the polka dot jersey.

You can read part one of my NHL 21 wishlist here. I also want to reiterate before diving back in that my biggest gripe — and this has been the case for years — relates to the arcade-style gameplay. I personally would much rather have an excellent playing but poor looking game rather than an exceptional looking game that plays poorly. So with that tidbit of information in mind, my wishlist will not include any gameplay features. Instead, I will release a full in-depth article specifically focusing on my frustrations with its gameplay in the coming weeks.

With the Gridiron Notes yesterday detailing Face of the Franchise and “classic” Franchise, the rubber finally hit the road so to speak. What are your thoughts on the additions and the backlash?

Plenty has been said about the lack of updates to “classic” franchise — and more will continue to be said about it — but we wanted to split off and at least give a little more attention to Face of the Franchise here and give a few more thoughts on the Face of the Franchise 2.0 improvements discussed in yesterday’s Gridiron Notes.

DeuceDouglas is a resident legend in these parts for all the work he does detailing the ins and out of Madden’s franchise mode. I’ve highlighted his work before when he explained how he would improve scouting in Madden 21. Well, he also analyzed what the scenario engine looked like in Madden 21 back in October after it received updates through a patch from EA. He broke down the scenario engine down into three parts: frequency, variety and impact.

There’s plenty of ways EA could improve franchise mode, and one way involves looking to the community for feedback and assistance. There’s really no greater version of that feedback than DeuceDouglas and his 23,000+ word franchise mode blueprint that also includes more than 70 mock-ups of various elements of the mode.

As stated earlier, the goal of this preview is just to throw out some early impressions of what I am seeing on the field, and with just a couple games under my belt, I can say that I am having more fun with Madden 21 than ’20 so far. It could just be that new car smell, but during the last few years Madden has quickly gotten stale for me. So, right now, I keep internally asking myself if I could I play two, three, four years of a franchise before getting bored? As of right now, I am leaning towards yes (and I mean an online franchise, for the record). Could this perspective change in the next couple days? Absolutely.