The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Well the New England Revolution lost their only chance at glory tonight by losing in the SuperLiga. Oh well, didn’t have much hope anyway.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing Dead Rising Case Zero. There is something always fun in mowing down zombies.

Been playing with my Kindle 3 – wow it’s a lot smaller than the 2 and the new case with the integrated booklight is awesome.

Oh yeah and there were new iPods today. Only Apple would say “hey, look at this great new Nano where we took the Camera out of it but it’s better because it’s a touch screen” and people would clap.

Seriously, that press conference was lame. The big thing was a “facebook for itunes” thing? And a massive round of applause for the damn icon for iTunes 10?

Hey, I love my iPod classic and would take it’s 160 GB storage anyday over a $400 64GB touch. I just leave my ipad for apps and video, no music because I have Rhapsody on it.

Surprise!

A new episode of Riding the Pines for all of you out there.

Earlier today, I conducted an interview with ESPN.com Page 2 columnist, Patrick Hruby.

In that interview we discussed the following

- More on his article about the history of EA Sports Madden franchise

- How Lebron seems to need motivation now

- The world of competitive Madden playing (and how much money can be made in it.)

- NBA2K11 talk

- Playstation Move discussion

- A story about how Bill Raftery’s son is helping street children in South Africa

- And what he is working on next

Patrick is always an awesome interview, so I think you’ll really want to check this one out.

Here’s the link to the interview.

Enjoy!

- Quite a day here as I got my daughter off to school for the first time.  It’s amazing how stressful catching the bus can be… especially if you haven’t had to do it in… well, 20 some years.  We eventually got there though and she got on the bus without any problems.   She had a great time on her first day and didn’t set the place on fire, so we’re already off to a good start.

- I picked up Metroid Other M yesterday and I’m very impressed with it. It’s amazing how they made a 2D platformer and still added some of the elements of the Metroid Prime games.  One thing that I have to say is that there are a ton of videos in the game… tons.  More story than they have ever bothered with before.  Not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s just something to be aware of.

- I’m down to the final 3 missions in StarCraft II as well.  I know that some people have said that the story is not all that great, but I have been enjoying it… simply for how campy it is.  The missions are still quite fun and varied all the way throughout.   Still not sure if I’ll venture online after finishing it up… too many other games to dive into.

- One of the other things that I am working on is efforting a conversation with EA Sports in regards to NHL 11 which ships next week.  I haven’t heard anything yet, which usually isn’t a good sign as far as things like this go.  Such is the life of a blog site though.  I keep on knocking on the door and if they don’t answer… I knock some more.  heh.

- So, the Big Ten announced it’s new divisions for football.  Here’s the layout, if you haven’t seen it.

Division 1

• Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern

Division 2

• Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin

I can’t say that I’m thrilled about the fact that Iowa and Wisconsin will lose their rivalry game, but I think the rest is pretty good.  I would have liked to see the Badgers face Nebraska more, but it does give them a chance to play Ohio State and Penn State every year, which is a good thing.

As Glen mentioned in his post, I too rarely play games online with the 360 any more. My son however is on it all the time. As such, not having a Gold Membership is really not an option for us. That does make me wonder about the Family Pack that Microsoft announced a little while back. It is suppose to be available in November. I wonder if it will be launching November 1st when then new pricing goes into effect. That also brings up the point of the Family Pack pricing. It is being advertised at $99, but also says “Enjoy four Gold memberships for the price of two”.  I’m no mathematician, but based on the new pricing it can’t be $99 and the price of 2.

Speaking of the Family Pack.  Has anyone seen anything that defines a “family”?  I definilty don’t need 4 gold accounts, but between my son, myself, my nephew and my brother-in-law we could use all 4.

- One thing to note about Craig’s post with the Xbox Live pricing increase is that you only lock in the $39.99 price for one year if you renew now.

As for me, I’m really debating what to do as far as the Live renewal stuff is concerned.  I have a card here that I picked up for $29.99 a few months ago that I am going to add to my account, but after that I’m just not as sure about the value for me.

Typically, I’ll play maybe… maybe… 1 or 2 online games a month on my Xbox, but I spend more of my online time on my PS3.   And when you consider the fact that the PS3′s online fee is, well… free.  It’s hard for me to think about spending $60 a year for that same ability on the Xbox.   I guess I’ll have to see how the ESPN integration fits onto the Xbox and how much I actually use it.

I do all of my Netflix streaming onto my PS3, so I don’t really see that value.   I have never used Facebook or Twitter on my 360, so that pretty much leaves me with online play… and well, I’ve covered that already.

I guess I’ll revisit this next year when my account is about to run out.

- So, I’ve been working on a landscaping project at my house that involved the killing of some grass, laying down plastic to ensure the grass doesn’t grow back and then covering the whole thing with river rock.  It’s going to work out to be about 300 sq. ft. of space and we’re going to cover it with about 2″ of rock everywhere.  What I didn’t put together when doing the math… was the weight of that rock.

The project is about half complete right now and I’ve already lifted over 3,000 lbs of rock… twice.  (loading it in the vehicle and then unloading it and placing it at home.)

Let me tell you how much my back doesn’t like me right now.   Oh, well.  Part of owning a home and trying to make it look nice… right?

- One of my first big moments as a parent comes up this week as my daughter starts school.

It’s silly, but I’m excited to see how much she enjoys her first day.  I almost wish I could be there with her to just watch the whole thing take place.

Lately she’s begun to ask questions that are beyond what I would have expected for her.  For example, she was looking out her window on the way to daycare the other day and noticed the moon was still up, she started to ask me about what happens when the moon moves in front of the sun and we had a great discussion about eclipses for the next 15 minutes in the car.  Stuff like that always catches me off guard as I just never know what I’m going to hear from her next.

I’m certain that she’s going to enjoy herself in school and can’t wait to try and answer every question that comes up as a result of it.

- My last item for today is a question for you all.  I’m debating replacing the monitor in my office and was curious as to your thoughts about using an HDTV as a PC monitor solution.  I’ve been looking at 24 inch monitor, but have been curious about people’s thoughts about using a 1080P/60 or 120Hz HDTV instead as the pricing for them is getting closer and closer.

Thoughts?

I’m not sure if this is new news or not, but it’s new to me. I received an email overnight last night from Microsoft telling me that there is going to be an increase in the price of Xbox Live Gold memberships. This was actually for one of my account that only used the 1 month trial membership on and never bought a Gold account (this 360 is used only as a media center extender). I have not gotten this email for any of my other accounts yet, but I have to assume they are coming.

1-Month Gold Subscription

$7.99

$9.99

3-Month Gold Subscription

$19.99

$24.99

12-Month Gold Subscription

$49.99

$59.99

The email does mention you can save some money by renewing now via this page.

- Thanks for all of you that attended the Sports Gamer Blog draft last Friday night.  It was a quite a fun event, and being able to podcast it made it interesting… to be sure.

One of the great things that I can see about the live draft aspect is that you can look at the draft board and see who took the longest to make their picks by the end of the night.  (me.)  Hope we can all have a great time with the league.

- The Madden league will be starting up this week as well.  I’ll be sending out emails to everyone tomorrow to let them know the league details.  If you want to join, there is still plenty of time.  Just send an email.

- Have you seen this hit that Suh put on Delhomme.  Good grief.  Hard to think he won’t get a fine or possibly a suspension out of that one.

- Ok.  Going to sit down and watch a movie with the Mrs.

More tomorrow.

DJ Hero is only $39.99 with turntable, today only. Grab it!\

Xbox 360

PS3

Wii

We have a very special episode of Riding the Pines available for you this time around, as we did a live recording of our Fantasy Draft.

Joining Dan Clarke and myself tonight were, two of our loyal readers, Richard Lawler and Joe Disano.

Oh, we covered it all tonight.  Fantasy football… um… and other things.

You can grab the MP3 here, check it out on iTunes here, and on Feedburner here.

Enjoy the show all!

Dan is a huge fan of this series, and they are running the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the title for $19.99 today.

Here are our affiliate links, so we get a bit of Cashy-money if you do buy it.

PS3 version

Xbox 360 version

How in the world does Dan get the 2nd pick, Glen gets 3rd and I get LAST?  Thank God it’s a snake draft.  And oh yea, 1st pick: My Brother-in-Law.  Looks like Craig is going to make some risky picks this year!

We have an RSS feed for the forum page as well.

That way you can be notified via whatever newsreader you use when there are posts in any of the categories there.   It’s what I’m using to keep track of it and it works pretty well.

Here’s the link.

RSS feed for the ‘Forum for the Sports Gamer’

Ok, this might only be interesting to me, as I loved the first game… but there are some great songs on this list.

Naughty by Nature’s “O.P.P”?  House of Pain’s “Jump Around”? Warren G’s “Regulate”?  2Pac’s “California Love”?

There were some mashups in the first game that were a bit annoying, but others were absolutely great.

Jay-Z’s ‘Izzo” and the Jackson Five’s ‘Want you Back‘

‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and ‘Rock the Bells’

Those are just a few of the mixes that really were great in the game.  Considering the fact that you can find the game (at the Toys R Us deal) for as little as $20, you really should give it a look before the next one comes out.

- As we were reminded yesterday, the Blog fantasy football draft is taking place tomorrow night at 8:30 EST.   Here are a few of the rules that you need to be aware of.

90 seconds per pick

The league has a draft robot configured for it.  (One of the features of the free league from CBSSports.com)  If you miss one pick, it will auto draft for you for the rest of the draft.   So, it’s a good idea to have your draft list ready, just in case….

It is a snake draft, so my team is picking 3rd in the first round and 10th in the second round.

That’s about it, as far as the draft goes.  If you check out the league page, you can see the rules for scoring and such.

Next year I might take a look at a different fantasy site that allows us to customize the rules more, but I have stuck with CBSSports for the past few years, just for simplicity’s sake.

See you tomorrow evening.

- I see that we have 5 owners locked into our Madden 11 online franchise and I know that at least two others will be joining… (C’mon Dan… just grab the Pats already…)

Plenty more room if you want to join in.  It’s a very casual league, so just drop me an email if you want the details on it.

Same goes for the online NCAA Football 11 franchise.  Just send me an email and I’ll get you an invite.

- I received Mafia 2 yesterday from Gamefly and I have to say that the atmosphere in the game is quite impressive.  A few of the reviews for the game have really disliked the pacing of the game, but I have always liked the way that Mafia handled it’s approach to the police and the fact that if you break a law when a police officer can see you, they’re going to try to arrest you for it.   If you speed, they will try to arrest you.  It’s actually refreshing to have a game where you have to commit crimes in the game but still have to abide by some laws to avoid attracting more police attention to your character.

Lastly, I love the character dialogue used between the two main characters in the early stages of the game.   The interaction between the two of them in the car while you are driving from one event to another is quite impressive.  It’s the first time, that I can recall, where I actually wanted to spend more time with a character in a game, just to hear more about them.

- Another preseason game for the Packers tonight.  This time matching up against the Colts.

Again, nothing to really look for in the game other that individual performances.   It would be nice to see Woodson play for a bit tonight though, just to see him match up against Wayne a few times.  Stopping the passing game is going to be a huge key to this years success for the Packers.  Something that they need to prove that they can do consistently.

- Former head coach and current athletic director for Wisconsin, Barry Alvarez, has confirmed that Wisconsin and Iowa will not be in the same division in the new Big Ten football conference layout.  Add that to the rumors that Michigan and Ohio State will not be in the same conference and you have a good idea of what the Big Ten is looking to do with their new alignment.  It’s all about creating divisions that will generate the most hype and build to the best possible matchup in the conference championship game each year.

- I’m curious as to what some of you think about the leaked MLB financial docs that have appeared over on Deadspin.

There is no appearance of anything “wrong” with what is being done, but the concept of amortizing salaries seems just a bit shady, even if it is an ok practice.  I mean, is every player losing value, like a printer or a computer?

Hopefully some of you are more well versed in accounting practices than people like me are.

- For no good reason, here’s an old You Tube chestnut with Bert and Ernie rapping.

- Anyone try out NHL2K11 on the iPhone or iPod touch?

I’ve been doing my best to try out sports games on the iPhone when they come out, but I just have such a hard time with the controls.  Certain games seem to work so well, but the virtual joysticks that they use just seem so wonky to me.

Thoughts?

- As a football fan, I was bummed to see Sidney Rice go down for at least 8 weeks with his hip surgery.   As a Packer fan, it was nice to see the Vikings have one less weapon on offense.

I do have to say that the signing of Javon Walker is an odd one.  He was completely out of football last year due to a surgery… that he couldn’t even have done in the United States or Canada (that links him to Dr. Galea, who sent him to Jerusalem to have the procedure done.)  Javon does have a history of big games with Brett (the game after Favre’s father passed away, being the biggest one,) so there is some connection between the two there.

Still, the Vikings are in a tough place as far as their receiving core goes.

- Reports today have the DJ Hero bundle for $19.99 at Toys R Us for the next two days.

Personally, I loved the game and got well more than 20 dollars worth of gameplay out of it.   Opinions may vary there, but I thought it was well worth that kind of price.