The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Yes, I know you know where I stand, but I honestly went into this like a reviwer, desperately trying to be objective.

I thought Kerry did very well. I think Bush did better than I thought he’d do at the beginning then faltered something awful in the middle. The debate comission said that camera couldn’t look at the other candidate during the debate, but that didn’t stop the split screen (as well it shouldn’t). I honestly thought that was put there by Kerry’s team as though they were afraid of Gore-itis again. Interestingly enough, it was Bush that looked like steam was eminating from his ears while Kerry was talking. I was rather surprised with that.

Bush didn’t surprise me with his talking points over and over again. Questions weren’t answered on both sides and they tried to spin their ways. Hey, does anyone think Iraq is hard work, because I don’t think the President mentioned if it was all night. It was a real crutch for him, and it didn’t work at all in my book.

I still was impressed with the debate, it exceeded my expectations. I really thought it was going to be a big polished event. Both candidates excelled in some areas, I think their bases got what they wanted. As far as that goes, I think Kerry exceeded because we got more out of him that what we’ve heard before. It was more of the same with Bush, but if you’re voting for him, I think you do want to hear it. So basically both sides go home happy, but I wouldn’t surprised to see if some undecideds go to Kerry off of this one. Then again, I think that if you’re undecided by now, you need some help. Either that or you like all the attention, which I can understand too.

I hate polls, but you know I want to see the next one. Does that make me a flip flopper?

You know what though — I really think that this might be the first time that people will watch more debates (usually people watch the first one and then it drops significantly)..I don’t think that will happen this time, even on Fox News. Then again, next debate is on a Friday.

WOW..just watching NBC and they are talking with undecideds in Ohio…all of them (ALL OF THEM) just said Kerry was more compelling….are you kidding me? I mean, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He was that good? Damn……maybe I underestimated…guess we’ll find out tomorrow!

OK seriously guys, this is the worst NHL game EA has produced in YEARS.

YEARS!

Not only is the gameplay poorly developed, check this little franchise mode ditty out:

As a Blue Jackets coach my “goal” was to get the first pick in the draft. Hmm. ok. Odd..but ok. So I sim the season and end up making the playoffs! 7th seed. Owner is ticked.

“I said I wanted the #1 pick!” Sim season 2. 5th seed and make it to round 2 beating the Red Wings! Fan loyalty goes way up! I’m pulled into the boardroom and fired, Trump-style. This guy REALLY wanted that #1 pick…

This might be the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a franchise mode. Ever. The game ends at this point, my franchise left in ruins. Are we having fun yet?

** Political rant **

Hey, you know how our President/Liar George Bush says that Kerry is a flip flopper? Well, maybe he should look in the mirror. Kerry isn’t alone in that department.

Unless you’re living in a rock or don’t care about politics (which is unfortunately a lot of people), the big event is tonight. Kerry vs Bush in a free for all. Well not really free for all because both candidates are such wusses they had to work out a 32 page ‘agreement’ that goes over everything for the debate. So much for spontanaiety.

Of course, the Kerry camp is praising Bush’s debating skills, and the Bush camp is praising Kerry’s skills. This way, if one candidate decidedly wins, the loser can say ‘we told you he was good, but we’re focusing on blah blah blah.’ Now I see why so many people don’t care .

Anyway, if you can watch some, please do.

Speaking of TV, damn that LOST show is good. The twists in last nights episode were amazing, and it’s only freakin’ episode 2. If you’ve missed any of the show (and shame on you), ABC is showing the first two episodes back to back on Saturday. So watch it.

Initial Impression:

What in the hell did EA Sports do to this game?

NHL 2004 was close–as close as EA (with Blackbox at the helm) has ever been to providing a hockey game that actually plays somewhat like…hockey. Quite honestly the gameplay in 2004 I was pretty happy with, with some reservations. My big issue was that the franchise mode was totally useless.

So I fire up NHL 2005 and I’m greeted with Rockem Sockem Robots. The sliders will have to DRAMATICALLY change how it plays in order for me to get any fun out of this thing. There are more bone crunching, knock a player on his ass hits in one 5-minute game of NHL 2005 with the default settings than you’ll see in the NHL in one week. Any game that allows Cassels to smack the hell out of Sundin, sending him flying in mid air is Tecmo-Hockey. Once again, EA’s answer to good defense is to just body check a player to his knees.

Maybe with major slider tweaks it’ll be different, but the initial impression was total and complete crapola.

I’m still set back with this whatever-the-hell I have. Let’s just say I was up for a while last night with gastro-intestinal issues. My ears are plugged something awful but I can breath through my nose and taste. It’s really bizarre.

Speaking of Bizarre, you need to watch the show “LOST” tonight on ABC at 8pm eastern. The show is awesome — it’s from the creator of Alias and so far it’s damn impressive.

Nice to see more people got their league games in, please please please finish up by Friday. Thanks! Oh and for those that don’t know, our league page is here: http://leagues.espnvideogames.com/t/league.php?l=36942

Bill has to update the front page. He’s so damn slow with stuff like that. lOL

Things are staying busy for me right now, so here’s a list of what I’m working on and what I’ll be talking about over the next few days.

• NHL 2005 PC – I’ve heard bad things about this year’s NHL but we’ll see…
• Chaos League PC – Loved the beta. This is currently only a UK release but you can mail order it, and it might be worth it. They are looking for a new US publisher since Strategy First has filed Chapter 11.
• Eastside Hockey Manager PC – The so called Championship Manager for hockey fans. I’ll be shocked if this isn’t great.

In the pipeline I’ll be doing the NBA Live 2005 PC review for CGM and the FIFA 2005 PC review for GameSpy. That will take us into the holiday season where I’ll hopefully be reviewing some A-List strategy games. Maybe Axis and Allies. Woo.

Got an email from a blog reader asking “what the hell is CGM?” CGM is Computer Games Magazine (used to be known as Computer Games Strategy Plus, which was a really, really bad name.) Anyway, it’s a print mag and more info can be found here. Subscribe today! Keep one of Bill’s freelance outlets in business!

Last Sunday night I was flipping back and forth between the USC/Stanford game (damn it Cardinal) and the 2000 Presidential Debate on CSPAN. I had no idea they were replaying that but I stumbled on it while surfing during halftime. It was really weird watching that debate 4 years after the fact. Both guys said things that were pretty much bullshit, which I think is a huge reason so many people are turned off by politics. After a while, you know you are being fed a line of shit, so why bother?

Bush in 2000: “It’s not the job of the US Military to police the world. I would be very cautious to send in troops to a foreign land. Unlike my opponent, the Vice President believes in Nation Building. I believe the only job of the army is to fight and wins wars, and winning wars brings peace.”

Four years later this statement…some would say…is a flip flop of the highest degree. If Iraq isn’t a textbook example of Nation Building, then I dunno what is.

Bush again: As Gov of Texas I reached across party lines on every issue, and I worked tirelessly with Democrats, many of whom support me today.”

Do even Republicans believe that Bush is an “across the aisle” kind of President?

Gore: Gov Bush’s tax plan gives the richest 1% the largest chunk of tax relief.

Bush: That’s Fuzzy Math.

Turns out, it was just math.

Of course Gore had some doozies too.

Gore: Rowe vs. Wade is absolutely on the ballot!

Well, not really.

Gore: This economy will remain strong throughout the decade. There’s no sign of a recession.

Uh…Al?

Anyway, after watching the debate again..if Bush was actually the kind of President that he presented himself to be in that debate I’d have very little problems with the guy. I mean there are fundamental differences that I have with him on certain issues, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it is now with Bush running so far right that he’s falling into the Atlantic Ocean. I get really scared when a politcian leans too far left or too far right. Extremism just scares the shit out of me, be it religion, politics, whatever.

Oh well, at least we have Wife Swap on ABC.

***

I’m finishing up a Madden PC review for CGM and I’m highly unimpressed with the PC version. The console version is much better because the control in the PC version is just off. It’s like the players are running on glass. They did patch the fatigue bug for online play, though. Still, the game just seems so stale and almost too familiar. Time for a new engine, boys. But I guess that has to wait until the new consoles come out, eh?

Well, I just read the Boston Globe this morning, it says:

“Sunday’s NFL TV lineup leads off with Patriots-Bills (Channel 4, 1 p.m., available in high definition). CBS follows with Jets-Dolphins (Channel 4, 4 p.m., also in HD), and Fox brings in Falcons-Panthers (Channel 25, 4 p.m., also in HD)”

Now this would be totally awesome…if my @#$$@#ing cable company carried CBS HD. At least I have Fox HD, so I can watch that.

We have 11 games yet to be played in our league. So, hello, get off your duffs and get playing.

How about that Cowboys – Redskins game? Pretty exciting stuff.

How about Jay Leno retiring. Thank god. How does this guy keep winning in the ratings when he’s unfunny and no one watches him? Conan is pretty darn funny. So, we just have 5 years to go. Leno doesn’t want any animosity this time around. Yeah, right. If he didn’t want any animosity, he would have yielded to Letterman 10 years ago. Okay, if I had a shot at the job, I wouldn’t pass it up either, but did you really think Dave would be ok with it? Come on.

I needed a new power shovel for my deck as snow should be arriving any moment. Of course, like flip flop Kerry, it seems to be summer now that it’s fall, although we really didn’t have a summer.

Anyway, I just received my order confirmation from Amazon:

Shipping estimate for these items: June 2, 2005

Delivery estimate: June 9, 2005 – October 12, 2005

“Toro 38360 Electric Power Shovel Plus”Tools & Hardware;

This after it says “usually ships in within 2 to 3 days”…well I doubt this will get much use in June 2005. Then again, I did a separate order for the new Daily Show book, it’s not shipping until December. WTF is going on over there?

Sega has said to EA, it’s on bitch. After EA knocked the price down from $49.99 to $39.99 and bumped the release date to 10/5, the same day as ESPN NBA 2K5, Sega goes one further and releases it tomorrow 9/28. Oh yeah, and it’s $19.99.

First off, for those of you looking for weird Japanese non-sports games that involve rolling clumps over everything, check out my review of Katamari Damacy over at GameRankings.

I did lose my first league game over the weekend, which kinda sucked, but I enjoyed the game and the comraderie, or something like that which people say when they have their ass handed to them.

** Political Time **

A look at today’s polling proves yet again how stupid polls are. Now, Florida shows Kerry with a lead. I find that great, but how can you do this poll when everyone doesn’t have electricity? Either that or the hurricane took out the Republicans 0r something, it just seems odd.

Speaking of odd, I can’t believe the amount of red on that map. That’s not a good sign. That being said, there are very few ‘commanding lead’ states for either candidate. Every vote counts and stuff.

Here’s an interesting column from a woman who was USAF (Ret). Obviously retired because there’s no way that column gets out if she’s enlisted. Another interesting article shows that most states in the “red” get all the money from the ‘blue’ states. Talk about your entitlements!

Debates are on Thursday, if you can actually call them debates and not ‘pre-orchastrated questions with pre orchastrated answers.’ I’ll still watch, after all, there won’t be anything else on (oh PLEASE let it be in HDTV), but seroiusly if you really need to have this debate decide your vote, you haven’t been paying attention the past 4 years.

** End of Political Rant **

PlayStation.com has Burnout 3 for the PlayStation 2 for $21.33. That’s right, twenty-one f’n dollars. Pick this one up NOW. It’s worth it at $40, let alone $21!

I’d like to also throw in my two cents about reviews and payola.

The same thing happened to me for the PC Gamer gig. The sports editor then, a guy named Rob Smolka, had read my newsgroup posts and work at Operation Sports and said, hey you want to review, and I said sure. So I started to get assignments. I will say that the editor did change some of the words I typed and the score I originally gave a game and I only found out about it when I read the magazine myself. (Different editor than Rob). I fully understand editors changing (ie editing) the review, but to not even let you know about it until you get an email saying “thanks for the 89″ when you gave the game an 84 is a little off-putting.

That being said, we’ve all been on press junkets. One I recall is Papyrus sending me to the Daytona 500 in 2002, yes the Daytona 500 where #3 died. It was my first NASCAR race, and boy, that was quite the eye opener. Just for the sake of a conflict, I didn’t end up reviewing that year’s NASCAR game for GamePen and instead had another reviewer do it.

Most magazines have an explict policy that says that if you go on a ‘junket,’ you have to pay your own way to avoid such a conflict. Of course, some reviewers really don’t get paid much and consider the ‘junket’ their payment for their work, which I can certainly see. I’ve seen some reviewers demand all kinds of things on these junkets that I would never dare ask — you’ve probably seen some reports online about this. It’s up to the individual outlet, but there really isn’t a better way to get information out about a game than to have a junket. Especially with those genres that are hard to experience — such as a Rogue Spear campaign or what not.

Now, let’s move along to the mailbag:

Bill Lysse writes:

“I was just wondering what you guys thought was the best online gaming rental site. I have read in your articles that you use Gamefly, but i was wondering if there are others that you have tried? I am in NC so Gamefly takes a little long to get games to me. Thanks”

Bill, I feel your pain — I in fact cancelled my GameFly subscription because the mail was so painful in delivery (I too am on the East Coast). I have been using another site lately called Gamerang. They have a mail house in New Jersey, I have seen a much faster turnaround by 1-2 days on games — however, although you end up mailing games back to NJ, it seems a lot of the new releases still ship from CA, so it can take some time in getting to you. Like Netflix, they give you an estimate of when you should receive a game — usually 2 days after they ship it. On 4 of the 6 titles I’ve rented, I’ve received a game a day after the estimate (which is still shorter than Gamefly).

Gamerang is also less expensive than GameFly. I’ve used it for less than a month so far, I have the 3 out plan at $27.95/month, they haven’t been ‘out’ of a game yet and I’ve rented for multiple platforms. I would love for other readers to add to this thread — I’d love to hear what your online luck is for rentals!

Sorry for the hiatus. This is the busiest time of the year for me, so free time ramblins on the blog take a hit in the fall. As a freelancer, this is the time of season that I make most of my money for the calendar year.

I did win my opening ESPN League game against Buffalo 24-3. Woo. To everyone that is playing in the league, the Buffalo owner is a very cool fella. If every owner is as nice as Craig then the league will work out great.

I’m finishing up my CGM review of Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. It’s a great real time strategy game that is agonizingly short. How many strategy games do you know that has an 11 mission campaign and no map editor or random map generator? I finished the campaign in 3 days. A real bummer, despite the fact that playing the game is like watching a Warhammer 40K tabletop game to to life. It’s looks fantastic.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about GameSpy of late on game forums and it seems that no one trusts a GameSpy review because they feel companies “buy” reviews for GameSpy. In other words, if you advertise on GSpy or if your game uses GameSpy Arcade then your game is sure to get a good review. Conspiracy theories are really fun, believe me, I love a good History Channel UFO documentary as much as the next guy, but this is pure fiction.

Unless I’m on the list of freelancers that no one talks to, I have never been approached by GameSpy or a game company to fudge a review…ever. Not just a GameSpy review, but in the 9 years I have been doing this, I’ve never been bought. I’ve never even been approached! I mean come on! Bill needs a new pair of shoes! At least give me the chance to turn you down…sheesh. Am I not good enough to get free shit for giving a game 5 stars?

The closest I have ever come to being “greased” is on press tours. EA Sports flew me out to Vancouver back in 1999 to see FIFA 2000. The press members there got the royal treatment man…a trip around the sound on a yacht, free shirts, grade A food, etc. I think that was the most buttered up I’ve ever been by a game company but even then it wasn’t like “nudge nudge..give Fifa a good score.” Like EA Sports needs good reviews to make lots of lots of loot.

Here is how reviewing games works at GameSpy and at Computer Games Magazine:

Situation #1:

“Hey *Insert Editor Name Here* have you assigned Game X?”

“No, you want it?”

“Yeah, sign me up.”

“Cool. ”

“Woo hoo!”

Situation #2:

“Hey Bill, I assume you want to review Sports Game X, right?”

“Sure”

“Woo hoo!”

After that, I get the game in the mail, play it, write about it, capture some screenshots, zip it all up and mail it back to the editor. And…that’s about it. I then wait for my freelance check to arrive a month later. So I hate to bust the conspiracy bubble out there about bought and sold reviews, but either it’s all hot air or I’m doing something wrong because I’m not retiring anytime soon.