The Blog for the Sports Gamer

It’s always a good sign when your email starts attracting visitors en Francais.

Bonjour, Il me fait plaisir de vous inviter à venir me rencontrer le vendredi 2 avril prochain à Brossard alors que j’animerai une soirée rencontre. Je serai en effet au Skratch Brossard pour participer à une activité parrainée par Reseaucontact.com, le plus grand site Internet de rencontre au Québec. Durant cette soirée différentes animations, dont un speed dating, permettront aux participants de rencontrer entre 5 et 6 personnes de sexe opposé. De plus, grâce à la fiche conçue pour l’occasion vous pourrez savoir si vous réalisez un match c’est-à-dire s’il vous est possible de prendre contact avec l’une ou l’autre des personnes rencontrées durant les différents jeux. Je vous assure que les célibataires auront bien du plaisir vendredi soir au Skratch Brossard et j’espère que vous serez des nôtres. Amicalement, Éric McCutcheon

Well, isn’t that tres jolie. Those of you that don’t parlez-vous francais, rest assured that this is all about speed dating. This must be for Bill but wait, I’m closer to Quebec than he is. And I parlez francais. Well je parle un petit francais. Or something. Needless to say the auther of this email can soufflez moi maintenant. Actually I shouldn’t have said that, because it’s a guy, and I’m not on the other team. Do you have too much information? Okay, I’ll stop. Have a nice evening/morning.

I mention this because Bill has put an amazing amount of time and effort into this MVP 2004 mod. I haven’t tried it, but I trust Bill knows what he’s doing and he explains everything in the readme file. Grab the Progression mod here.

And while you’re at it, head over to Gone Gold.com and read some of his Night Call columns. Good stuff.

Also, SerialMike of High Heat forum fame is planning a data file release that has tweaked the gameplay in MVP. Maybe as soon as tonight and if he releases something I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, our Front Office Football rookie draft is concluding tonight and the York Eagles are on the clock. So far I’m happy with how my team has done, despite drafting 32nd. I grabbed an outside linebacker that is 5′9 226 lbs. Talk about a fire hydrant. Add in a sleeper QB, a pass rushing DE and a RB from Ohio State and I’m a happy camper.

If you have no idea what Front Office Football is, well, you should. Take a look.

EBGames.com is now taking preorders for Unreal Tournament Special Edition. This game is the DVD version of UT 2004 and has a nice Logitech head set for extra oomph. They are selling it for $39.99 with shipping in late April. This is of course better than the $100 that it’s going for on Ebay…hmm, maybe I should buy two…interesting :).

PS — All those sites that say Microsoft had to ‘accelerate’ the Xbox price reduction to $149 are LYING. Why? I just received a Wal-Mart circular. In it, it shows the price ‘rollback’ to $149. There is quite a bit of lead time involved in these circulars. MS was going to roll the price back as of 4/1, it’s pretty obvious they weren’t waiting until E3. As usual the Wall Street Journal had it wrong :).

Okay, this Wednesday isn’t turning out very well. First the Yankees are throttling the Devil Rays, I think they have a two touchdown lead as I type this.

Next, I read in the Boston Globe that pretty much the entire city of downtown Boston will be shut down for the Democratic convention. I93, North Station, pretty much any main throughfare is shut down during convention week. Me thinks that the city of Boston might as well close. Oh well, I’m sure that everyone will be home, enthralled in John Kerry’s speech. If there’s a plus, I guess he’s a better speaker than Wubya, but boy that’s not saying much. I’m beginning to think that anyone who is dynamic just has too many skeletons to even think about running. Or no one would vote for them. Anyway, I’m getting off topic.

Those of you that know me, remember that this other guy named Craig Tompkins started Operation Sports and then asked me to come along. Craig often reminds me that he has now ‘grown up’ and doesn’t play games that much. I know that’s a lie to make his wife happy, because he still talks about games. To his credit, he never bought an Xbox. I kept telling him he was a clod for doing so, but no one ever listens to me. Anyway, with the price drop and coupon he had, he finally bit the bullet and bought one. Of course, he was all ‘why do I need Xbox live’ blah blah blah also. It’s funny, he reminds me of someone who doesn’t have TiVo: you don’t know what you’re missing until you try it. So I gave him one of my bazillion free trial codes and off we went to play Links 2004. For three hours, way past my bedtime, I may add. By the end of our golf games (he won skins and I won match play 3-up mind you), he was looking for other XBL games to play, and he was mad at me that I sold my Top Spin. (which I just re-purchased, thanks to GameFly, so hurry it up with the mailing).

Needless to say, we have another satisfied Xbox customer, although I’m sure he’ll give me crap for writing about it. Now if I could only get him to pick up Project Gotham Racing 2 or Crimson Skies (both now reduced to $29.99)…But I digress…..

We keep getting email about more MVP 2004 PC mods. First off, thanks to everyone sending that stuff in. I was aware of The Bill Harris Project (I know Bill and we exchange emails frequently) as well as the RubberDucky Progress mod and the others mentioned. One that I didn’t know about was sent in by Scott Rudoff.

He writes: (and sorry Scott for printing this without asking)

Hey guys - just wanted to give you a heads up that the CPU steals bug has probably been fixed! The answer lies in the datafile.big file.

Link

This guy released a new datafile with ramped up CPU steals and got 10 in one game! Obviously it has to be scaled back but it looks like a winner. Also, he provided an excel file with all the data you can change - it looks like a Balco Labs enhanced High heat tune file. (I thought this was really funny - B)

Also, you keep mentioning the broken dynasty mode - have you tried the player progression mod that has been posted on several sites? It has much better results than the stock files. Keep up the cool Blog and remember that High Heat out of the box sucked too! The mod community made the game a winner.

-Scott

OK Scott. I give! I’m in the middle of a couple of non sports game assignments but I will make the MVP mods a priority when I get some free time. Believe me when I tell you –I want MVP to succeed on the PC. I would so much rather play a PC baseball game than one on a console and both Scott and Dale are right when they say that out of the box High Heat was a mess too.

The PC sports community is just too cool.

Boy it’s tough to keep up with the blogbag, but here we go. Thanks again for all your responses!

Hey Bill and Dan, I really enjoy reading your site. Bill, I have been reading your reviews for eons. I have always respected your opinions on sports games. That brings me to the point of this email. I am curious why you haven’t mentioned all the modding that is going on for MVP. I know the default game has a lot of flaws, however; the modding community is well on its way to fixing the game. Now if only EA would help us out a bit. — Dale Tuchalski

Bill did reply to this one but I lost it. Actually Bill said something to the effect of he could only write about what he tried and he really hadn’t tried the mods with the whole ASB thing. I’m sure when Bill tries out the mods, he’ll post all about it right here.

Next letter comes from well respected newsgroup poster Hido:

“For your mailbag: How come you guys haven’t mentioned me yet? Great site! Do a forum!

Hido, consider yourself mentioned. For those that don’t know Hido is one of the older comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.sports posters ever. He is also pretty good with the retorts (probably second only to Pumbaa). It’s always good to hear from you hido. As far as the forums go, we’re going to go with the ‘this is a labor of love and not costing us anything to run’ argument. Forums = $$ and $$ is something we aren’t willing to part with yet, being us cheap bastards and all.

Okay, remember, for your question to be posted here, don’t forget to email us — just use the link on the left.

Well, as you see from Bill’s post, what we posted March 16th (link–scroll to bottom) is true. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but hey, if you read us, you would have known about this two weeks ago ;).

In other news, any Tuesday where you can wake up, put on ESPN and watch the Yankees lose live is a good Tuesday. Speaking of baseball, I played some more MLB. Damn this game is fun. I just received my latest issue of GamePro — they review MVP, MLB, and ESPN. I have not yet played ESPN, but they actually rate ESPN BELOW MLB and MVP. MVP is their winner (of course), but they do address some of the issues (broken franchise mode) in their brief review. In my opinion MVP as the whole experience wins so far by default but I personally prefer the RPG like gaming of MLB. MLB does not have check swings, and some other quirks (while MVP has some flat out broken issues, IMHO). For a quick game, MVP might be better. I cringe saying that, but it’s not that MLB is bad. We still have ESPN to go, and I’m going to pass entirely on ASB. I have zero faith in that franchise. Acclaim is going to have to write me and say ‘try it, it is better’ before I go putting that game in. I just didn’t enjoy last year’s at all.

Ok, I know this isn’t a news site but when really important stuff breaks I think we need to mention it.

Link

IGN has the dirt on this. Now this should really shock no one. I mean the MS Sports lineup…well…sucks. These games are Xbox only and NONE of them are platform sellers and that’s what they need to be. Inside Drive’s a nice game, but Fever, Rivals, and Inside Pitch are pretty much dogs and Microsoft doesn’t like playing third fiddle. Read that interview, though. It has a tidbit about High Heat, so maybe they aren’t going to ditch the franchise?

Hopefully MS spends the money needed to make a GREAT sports department because right now, they don’t have that.

I work from home. I have three jobs, really.

1) Play and write about computer and video games and then wait for my check to arrive.

2) Take care of my three year old daughter (this is way more fun than #1)

3) Take care of the house and play the role of Mr. Mom. (Not as much fun as #1)

My lovely wife works in the Real World as a project/help desk manager at an advertising firm. I can relate to that; I worked tech support for a year in the mid 90’s before quitting to play video games. I hated tech support. I liked video games. I had a degree in English Lit from The Ohio State University so dammit — I wanted to write, not help Barb from accounting fix her Outlook task bar.

I do all of the cooking at our house. I really enjoy it. I can whip you up some manicotti or some chicken divan faster than you can say “girlie man.” It’s to the point that when we go out to eat I look at the dinner in front of me thinking, “Man, they should have added some white pepper to this sauce…” I need help. I’m a child rearing, crock pot cooking, video game playing dad. I have reached the conclusion that Ashley (the daughter) will either think I am the coolest dad on the planet or quite possibly the biggest dork/father in Ohio. The jury is definitely still out on that one.

I mention all of this because I’m kinda bored waiting for the water to boil as I prepare tonight’s meal (roasted new potatoes, corn chowder, and fennel crusted pork chops, if you’re wondering). I also mention it because from time to time I plan on going off topic like this and I wanted to prepare you for that. This website (I still call it a website; Dan calls it a blog, but he’s a bigger dork than I am so draw your own conclusions) — anyway this blog/website is about sports games but it’s also about me and Dan and the more we can personalize it the better reading it’ll make for you. This is especially true if you have somehow wandered onto this page and have absolutely no idea who Bill Abner and Dan Clarke are and why you should care what we think about MVP Baseball.

At the VERY least…you’ll get some great cooking tips from time to time.

As I said yesertday, I’m done with ASB 2005. Another baseball game bits the dust. Ah well.

ASB has a lot of cool features but the base running is strictly station to station. To me, this is just as important as a lack of walks or any of the other problems found in the other games. I have never, ever seen a player score from 2nd on a base hit with 2 outs in All Star Baseball 2005. They don’t even try. The outfielders are on the ball so fast and have such rockets for arms that it makes it impossible. The killer for me was when Adam Dunn fielded a ball in LF and a Brewers runner was 10 feet from home plate and Dunn gunned him down with a laser beam that would make Clemente’s arm look like jelly. I mean come on. I was playing as the Reds, and I was still miffed to see that. I viewed the replay and it was just plain laughable.

Anyway, to me, this is a huge, huge issue easily on par with a lack of walks or steals or hit and runs. (Not to mention the ball being hit out of the catcher’s mitt but that’s another story..) If a 2 out base hit cannot score a runner from second, then it’s not baseball. Plain and simple. It’s close to baseball. It looks like baseball. But it’s not baseball. Of course it’s all a matter of what you are willing to live with, but this is one thing I cannot get past in ASB. So off to the pile it goes.

So what does that leave us with? Well, there’s ESPN in April and Out of the Park 6 in either April or May. My money is on OOTP6.

Well, I’m exhausted. I play basketball three days a week and Sunday is usually packed at the rec center that we joined in January. So I’m going sit back, relax, watch some March Madness and maybe take a nap. This over 30 thing kinda blows.

Anyway, I shelved ASB 2005 this weekend and I’ll explain why later tonight or tomorrow. It’s a decent game, but like most arcade baseball games it’s inherently flawed and it pisses me off. I wish I had lower standards but, well, I don’t.

I run a Front Office Football league (http://bmnetwerks.net/~disola/ncfl/index.php) and we’re holding rounds 1 and 2 of the draft tonight so I may not get a chance to vent on ASB until tomorrow.

Time to go through reader mail. Remember to ask a question or what not, click the email us link on the side.

Letter #1:

William, Just curious, are you planning on reviewing all the console baseball games. After introducing you to a bunch of guys at www.maddenmania.com, they praised you for your review of MVP (well, the non-EA fan boys anyways). We are hoping you are reviewing the rest of the baseball games, that way we can get some unbiased reviews. So are All-Star, ESPN , MLB, and OOTP6 on your to do list. Thanks. Jason Whitt

Well Jason, Bill tells me he will do his best. Of course, even if Bill doesn’t do a ‘paid professional review’, you can always check out his impressions here on the blog.

Letter #2:

Jim Cassinelli emails us with news of an MVP PC demo at the following link. You heard it here first. Or something. Remember this download is a mere 250MB. ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/easports/demos/mvp2004/

Letter #3 comes from pacuca:

pacuca here. I’ve known you {Dan} since way back in the original OS days (I was a

soccer nut). I have my own online gaming site that is dedicated to ONLY

serious, fundamentally sound players. Please check it out here.

http://www.eplanetcentral.com/leagues/

P.S. say hi to Bill. Love the new blog site.

Well, in order to get your letter printed, saying how great I am often works. Bonus points for liking the footy. Oh yeah, and your league looks rather interesting.

That’s it for this week’s mailbag. Feel free to drop us a line and maybe we’ll answer your Q — whether it be how to get in the biz, why certain review sites should always be avoided, or anything else. I’d avoid the questions about romance, unless you’re hot and heavy for sports games though.

Does this happen to you? You rush out and buy a game the day it hits store shelves. You play it for a bit, get kinda bored with it and move on by selling it or trading it in. Then you start watching the sport on TV and really get an urge to play the game again.

This happens to me every March.

I play the Sega and EA Sports college hoop games, get completely frustrated by certain aspects of the game, sell them both on eBay, and then as I watch March Madness I really want to play a college hoop game…but I no longer own one. I almost re-purchased the Sega game this weekend but fought off the urge because I know I’d just get mad at the damn thing all over again. Sometimes I wonder if I even like games anymore. Kinda scary.

Oh, as an aside, I saw The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks last night. (I didn’t see it WITH Tom Hanks, but it has Tom Hanks in it. Although it would be really cool to see a Tom Hanks movie with Tom Hanks. Doubt that’ll happen though.) This was just a really bad movie, and the worst Hanks project since…maybe The Burbs or The Money Pit, which is going back a ways.

It’s no Big Lebowski, that’s for sure.

Ok after spending more time with the game I think I can break it down by two basic themes:

-If you are a zone/timing batter then avoid ASB 2005 as if it were a swarm of rabid locust.

-If you like or have the patience to learn cursor based hitting then by all means pick it up.

Zone hitting is just flat out useless in ASB because it’s too easy and you never strikeout.

Cursor based hittng, well, I hate it, but I’m trying to adapt for the time being because ASB has so much going for it outside of the funky batting.

Keep in mind that I have not touched franchise mode yet…

It seems like this year is no different than most years when it comes to baseball games: by themselves they are all kinda ..”ok”. If you could combine them all into one game, then you’d have the ultimate arcade baseball game.

Well today here in New England it’s supposed to hit the big 6-0. The snow is actually melting, which means baseball season isn’t far away!

I received a postcard in the mail from Sega yesterday, talking about ESPN Baseball. The postcard shows 2 baseball games, one some game gear era game and of course ESPN and asking which one would you rather play. I really enjoyed the whole package of last year’s WSB, and hoping that ESPN will be better, but we all know that a baseball game with a “this years model” quite often doesn’t even have last year’s issues worked out.

I’m so bummed that I have thought about picking up MVP for the PC and trying to tweak it myself. This begs the question: if MS is going to kill High Heat, why don’t they release the source code so we can make it a better game. I have received a few emails from people saying despite the lack of online and mouse support HH 2004 is still a superior game (not to mention all the mods/edits available for it online). This to me is what makes the PC a superior platform. You can’t edit stuff on an Xbox like you can for the PC.

In totally non-sports gaming news, my copy of Far Cry showed up. Wow. Games like this are why you upgrade your video cards. I the difference in this game between a GF4 and a GF FX is just amazing. It’s so good, it makes you want to buy more PC games just to see how good they would look. (Of course the gameplay is damn fine too).

I also tried out some Splinter Cell on Xbox. I have to say, I really prefer taking over vehicles and shooting stuff left and right over the whole stealth thing. It’s just something I haven’t gotten into. Pattern memorization of guards going around columns just isn’t my idea of fun. Co-op play is a blast though over XBL. Okay, I digress, enjoy your (warm) Friday.