The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Yes I’m still here, but I get so busy updating Twitter and Facebook that I forget about the blog. Expect more this weekend!

- As we get ready for the 4th of July weekend, I’ve been really wondering about the types of games that I’d like to play with my bit of time off over the weekend.

Blood Bowl really intrigues me, but it’s hard to put down $50 on a game, when I’ve never played the original board game and have no idea what I’d be walking into.  I read Bill Abner’s thoughts on the game and it does sound interesting… but again… $50 on a whim is a tough one.

I’ve been really interested in some old games lately… maybe Starcraft or Descent: Freespace would be worth a look over the weekend… hmm.

- I’m sure you’ve heard about the rumors that Microsoft is going to be integrating more ads into Xbox Live and I have to say that I’m pretty annoyed by this.  If I’m paying a subscription for your service, I shouldn’t be subject to advertising in addition to it.  I just want to play my games… I don’t want to hear about Doritos or McDonalds when I’m trying to start a title.

- Holy crap… $235 for the Special Edition of Beatles: Rock Band?  It’s a good thing I’m not all that interested in the title.  Of course if you are… don’t hesitate to use our link here to purchase the game.  heh.

- With all of the things that I’m seeing about NCAA Football 10… it’s hard to get excited about it now.  People have really been hammering on the developers over on the OS forums for neglecting certain things that have been broken for a few years now.

It seems like EA has really turned a corner with their development processes though.  It seems like they’re really trying to interact with the community and care what we have to say about the games.  It could just be lip-service, but for some reason I want to give them a chance.

- One last note… is it possible to block any posts pertaining to Michael Pachter on my news reader?  This guy bugs the crap out of me.  Every single day he has some prophetic words of wisdom about the gaming industry and no one ever bothers to go back and find out if he’s wrong.  His word seems to be taken as gospel by the majority of the gaming blogs and he just spouts off every few days about anything and everything and it’s just so damn tiresome.

Oh, vent done.

- Got Fight Night on Monday from Gamefly and have had exactly zero minutes to spend on it.  I’ll get to it within the next day or so though… I hope.

- Spent another evening with EA Sports Active last night and pleasantly surprised with the workout.  Last night had more to do with a thigh workout and I was happy to feel like I had exercised a bit when I woke up this morning.  Today is my “rest day,” so I’ll use the eliptical to supplement.

I’m doing all of this because I decided to try and drop about 20 pounds.  I started right around 190, but have wanted to be in the 170’s for about the last… oh…. 15 years.

The first change that I made was to eliminate all soda from my diet.  I hadn’t had a regular soda in probably 10 years, but I’ve been drinking diet soda pretty heavily since then.  Getting rid of that has really helped me reduce the amount of snack type foods that I’ve been eating.  I just don’t feel as thirsty as I did when I was having 4 or 5 sodas a day… which is a good start.

Along with this, I’ve started to eat more chicken, turkey, and fish… and a lot more salads and veggies.  I feel like I have a lot more energy and have been sleeping quite a bit better as well.  Less time for gaming, but if it makes me feel better in the long run… probably all worth it.

- Since I’m a total Nintendo whore, I picked up Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 on DSiWare last night and tore through the first level.  It’s been years since I played the Gameboy Advance version of the game and I was very impressed with how quickly I was able to jump into the action.  I like looking for a good puzzle game every now and again and for the game has been well worth my 800 points thus far.  Add the ability to download over 100+ additional levels from in the game and it just makes it even better.

- I’m really surprised that Dan hasn’t posted more about the Orioles comeback over the Red Sox last night.  I watched the condensed game on MLB (a sensational feature if you haven’t used it) and was just in awe of how quickly you could see the Sox just fall apart. It can happen to just about any team, I guess.

- The Brewers are slowly starting to pull themselves out of the hole that they dug for themselves, which is a nice thing.  Pitching is going to be a major problem for them down the stretch, but the NL Central is so average at this point… that they might not have to make any major moves in order to keep in the running until the end.  The one player that amazes the hell out of me is Casey McGehee.  How the Cubs let this guy go is totally beyond me.   He’s currently batting .325 after hitting for .368 in June once he was given every day playing time.  Gotta love guys like that.

I picked this up for my wife a few weeks back, and as I am trying to lose another 10 pounds, I thought I should give it a go.

Wow. I was not prepared for it to be a good bit of exercise when I started last night.

10 minutes in and I had a great sweat going.

If you’re looking for a good bit of supplemental exercise, this is a great way to go.

Bouncy Bill Abner has posted his Q&A with the Madden 10 guys. This one cuts through the BS and although we still here PROTAK too often, I found it quite an interesting read.

Check it out here.

- My Component inputs on my 4 1/2 year old Samsung DLP TV seem to be dying.  Both my Wii and HD-DVD player seem to be having issues with their initial connection to the inputs.  If I turn on the device before the TV is switched to the input, it seems to work ok… but it has an issue sometimes where it just shows the image, then flashes to ’signal not detected’ and then back to the image again.

I can easily purchase an HDMI switch box via Monoprice for the HD-DVD player, but the Wii is a different story and I need to rely on the component inputs for that.

Any suggestions for what I can try before thinking about a major TV repair?  (My wife won’t let me entertain the notion of replacing the TV.  Sigh….)

- My apologies for the lack of posting over the last few days.  Work has been crazy and I decided to spend a bit of time with the family.

- Dan and I took part in the conference call for The Bigs 2 last Thursday.  I’ll post the link to that later today.  It sounds like they’ve added some depth to the game (as far as the career portion is concerned.)  Dan and I have been a broken record on this, but we loved the last game… so my hopes are rather high for this version.

- I played a lot of Tiger Woods 10 for the Wii this weekend.  Holy crap, if you want a challenge… try out online option to play in the tournament that the pros are playing.  No spin options, no putting meter, no putt preview.  I finished the first round with a 95.  It’s an incredible challenge, but I found that it did help me with the career that I’m working on as well.  (Which is quite challenging as well.)

The one thing that I was disappointed to see was the Amateur online tournament scores.  People were averaging -20 something for each round.  I hated crap like that with Links and other games.  I guess I can just avoid those tourneys.

- I should be getting my copy of Fight Night from Gamefly today.  From the demo I had some issues with the punch controls with the thumbsticks.  Some punches just didn’t seem to respond correctly from the motions that you were told to use.  I’ll see how that pans out with the retail version.

- Baseball Mogul 2010 is dropping it’s price for the next two days, taking the price down to $19.99.  For the sim players out there, it’s a nice deal.

Sorry about the lack of updates; between the loss of Michael Jackson and the Oxi-Clean guy, I just don’t know if I can go on living.

Seroiusly though, did you know that Blood Bowl is now available for download – at $49. I wish it were on Steam.

It’s not getting along well with Windows 7 RC – I’m trying to download the patch but it keeps breaking…so I’m playing the game in original retail release format.

It’s taking a very long time to load on a quad core PC – I wonder if it’s not optimized for Windows 7.

The game itself seems okay but I’m just not following the control well enough yet. I’m sure I’ll figure it out at some point.

Meanwhile I had to stop playing Fight Night because of my calloused thumb. I guess it’s more Detroit Rock City Rock Band since I watched Paul Blart Mall Cop.

I love Fight Night. I think I should have bought it for the PS3 becuase the RS on the Xbox gives my right thumb callouses. I should at least take a break when playing so it doesn’t hurt so much.

I’m in my career mode, and I’m having fun. I do love the controls.

The one thing I notice is that after every knockdown, there’s a replay feature…well many times this “replay” shows my boxer punching air and then there’s this “boom” noise as if the punch made enough impact to knockdown my opponent. It’s kinda funny to see him punching air and making the guy knock down.

During live action, this doesn’t look to be the case – I didn’t ghost punch him during the game, so it just happens during the replay.

The training hasn’t changed much, even though there’s a 50% hit, I just keep auto training – the load times are a little better than R3, but it’s annoying to load incessantly – even if you do install to the HD.

Overall, I still love it though!

Have you heard of the Entertainment Consumers Association? For $19.99, you get some great benefits like 10% off Amazon games. So if you were to buy a game for $56.99, you would get another $5.70 off, making it one of the cheapest places to get new releases.

Of course it is Amazon, so you’d have to wait probably 3 days after release with Amazon Prime, unless they have release day delivery available (which isn’t available on all games).

Still, it’s a great deal if you buy more than 3 games. Maybe we’ll sign up for their affiliate program, Glen……

Oh yeah, link here.

Well I’m off to the hospital for my sleep lab test. My last time I had 32 times I stopped breathing so I’m officially diagnosed with Apnea and now I will find a mask of my choosing and get fitted. Fun times!

I hope it helps with the snoring and the all day tired ness..I’ve heard good things but then I hear bad things about the mask.

I would love any feedback comments the group has….

- Happy belated Father’s Day to you all.  I had quite the eventful weekend.  Here’s a few of the highlights.

1.  Don’t stand up in a canoe. Lost my sunglasses and my hat.  Pisser

2.  Digital cameras don’t recover quickly from water damage.  2 days later and it finally started working again.

3.  Shaving your head really surprises your spouse.

- My question for this week is whether I want to try The Conduit on the Wii via Gamefly… or Fight Night.  The demo for Fight Night was entertaining, but the thought of a fun FPS on the Wii is something that sounds like a ton of fun.

- I tried out The Bigs 2 and NCAA Football demos and was pretty impressed by both.  The Bigs had plenty of goofy fun plays and looks to be a nice extension of the first game.

As for NCAA, Dan is right on.  It does play a lot like Madden.  I was getting ripped up by the Gators in the play through that I gave it yesterday… so it seems like I’m going to need some work before I start playing it again.

- I tried out Singstar Volume 2 for the PS3 and Lips yesterday as well.  Both were pretty entertaining, but I have to say that Singstar is just a better game.  The ability to be able to record video and audio of your performance and publish them online is just too entertaining.  I posted my version of Bobby Brown’s ‘My Prerogative’ yesterday.  I’ll be curious to see if I get any reviews… heh.

- Just when I thought I was really getting better at Tiger Woods on the Wii (-6 in the second tournament in my career with 9 holes to go,) and then I tripled one, doubled another and scrambled my way to a -1 finish for the two round tournament.

The game is just a ton of fun to play.  it’s a great exercise to learn a bit more about your golf swing and how you can use a bit of rotation in your hands to work the draw and fade when needed.  I’ll be playing this game for quite some time.

I’ve been playing the demo, here are my thoughts:

I’m surprised how much the game is like last year’s Madden..and I mean that in a good way. It seems like all of the player models look a lot better to me.

Another year, another control scheme change. I have to remember not to press L3 non stop to incite the crowd. It’s now on the RS up or down. Interesting.

This game gives you last year’s National Championship. The brief demo gives you just a taste but the improvements aren’t as in your face as they have been.

Jury is still out on the gameplay, I’m not seeing a lot different than last years, but I am still playing NCAA 09 anyway.

Of course I’ll pick it up, as it’s July and what other games are there to purchase? LOL. But that $40 Madden Tradein at GameStop is looking good right now.

Two very interesting demos have made it over to Xbox Live this week, here are my quick thoughts on one of them.

The game is a 3 inning AL All Stars vs NL Stars at this year’s venue, St Louis. You have to play as the Away team if you’re the AL, so no DH. Make sure you sub Ortiz for Youkilis at 1B. Big Papi has a ‘no doubt HR’ power up so hit turbo and swing and you’re in good shape.

I love how different players have different bonuses. Some of the pitcher power ups include not losing a specific pitch.

The game is fun and I like how it takes injuries into account. The only drawback with this game, as with seemingly every arcade-esque game is the catch up logic.

I went into extra innings tied up. I managed my “big swing” (like a gamebreaker automatic HR if you make contact) until I had 2 runners on. I piled on the runs and led 9-3 in the 4th.

Of course the computer then gets 6 runs no problem and then has just enough for the big swing, and you have to be perfect to avoid the big swing – I wasn’t so he homered and game over. It’s just a little too convenient that the computer is always doing this for me. Still I keep playing. Home run pinball is always fun as well.

I am looking forward to the full version of the game – the original was a sleeper hit and I think this will be pretty good as well (PS – please bring Power Pros back. Thanks).

Thanks to Joel Hulsey, we’ve been informed that there is a demo for NCAA 10 available on Xbox Live (and possibly on the PS Store later tonight.)

2 GB (according to the Microsoft site)… get crackin’.