One of my biggest pet peeves comes from the sports genre. I hate when game designers fail to strike a balance between gameplay and game depth. I don't know how many times have I played a game where the on-field/on-court action was fantastic but the franchise/dynasty/season modes were shallow and unimpressive. Or conversely, what about the games that have a tremendous ammount of depth and content but the gameplay is boring or just plain pitiful. With most games, it seems like you get one or the other. As much as I hate the fact that Madden essentially bought out their competition in football, at least they do a good job of striking the balance between gameplay and game depth. It is hard to find something that matches Madden's successful balance in the other major sports (basketball in particular). You would at least think the development team at EA could try to duplicate this success with their basketball sims.

For what it's worth, the folks at Gamespot should have re-ran the simulation since the original predicted a game-ending injury for Manning. I don't doubt the Bears D could seriously mess up a QB but Manning has proven he basically the next Brett Favre when it comes to avoiding serious injuries. The guy never misses any playing time. It's one thing to stay true to the original simulation but it is another to let a scenario this improbable be your final simulation. Or better yet, why not run multiple simulations and average the data for a more reliable simulation. That is Statistics 101 - increase your sample size.