The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Where TF are you? Last night, I watched the Rays-O’s game, and there were only like 20,000 fans? Then today, I couldn’t watch (damn you MLB Extra Innings only showing 10 games), but I followed on XM. (Holy crap, they won being down 4-0!!!).

Again, the attendance was less than 20,000 on a Saturday day game? This is a team that’s in first place, has won double the number of games it has lost yet no one is there? I’m sorry, did Baltimore become Montreal? I know Angelos was a pain in the butt, but this team is winning, get back to Camden. The stadium is awesome. $39 one way to BWI on Southwest? Cripes, I’m even thinking of going.

Okay back to whatver Bill the Geek was talking about.

I’ve discussed this topic before but today’s trip to Barnes and Noble reinforced the fact that I’m a sports geek and a fantasy geek. I love sports books, baseball and horse racing in particular, but I love a good fantasy novel, as well. I can talk to you about the origins of the spitball, the importance of On-Base and Slugging %, or the role of a defensive end in a 3-4 defense. I can also ramble on endlessly about the difference between high fantasy (D&D) and low/grim fantasy (Warhammer).

Does that make me weird? I have often wondered about that. In college, I was surrounded by jocks who didn’t know a troll from a troglodyte, as well as role-playing friends that didn’t know Walter Payton from Walter Mondale. I had a few friends like me that could wander into a conversation of either group and hold our own.

“Why, yes, I agree. The 1961 Yankees are terribly overrated. Bobby Richardson leading off? After Whitey Ford, where is the pitching?”

or

“Yeah, I prefer level 2 fireball over level 2 lightning storm. And oh, about your claim that trolls are smarter than ogres…”

I bring all this up because I never know how many people out there are like me in that they love both forms of geekdom. I never have understood how the sports geek can rip on the fantasy geek and vice versa. I guess in polite society it’s ok to talk baseball in public more than it is to talk about the best way to attack a group of Black Orcs. I get that. But how is Fantasy Football more macho than sitting at a table and playing a role playing game? That, I don’t get. I always kept my geek-ness to a minimum, though, as did my friends. At a party, it was totally off limits to discuss the prior night’s RPG session. We learned early on that women DO NOT CARE about how cool the big battle against the Orc Warboss went. They tend to leave skidmarks, in fact. They’ll tolerate overhearing about last week’s OSU game (boys will be boys, and all) but mention an elf - and they’re gone. I guess things could be different today with the success of the LotR movies…but I dunno.

My wife puts up with all of my odd hobbies. I have no idea how I pulled that off, but I’m not complaining about it.

Anyway, back to why I’m mentioning this again. Today at B&N I spotted something that made me extremely excited and $40 poorer. In college, the role-playing games of choice were:

• Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play
• Call of Cthulhu
• Chill
• Vampire

By far the game that received the most play time was Warhammer. Well, today I spotted a brand new version of the classic game at the bookstore. I was shocked because Games Workshop, owners of everything Warhammer, pretty much stopped doing anything RPG related in the early 90s and focused entirely on minatures (Warhammer Fantasy, 40K, etc.) I like miniatures as much as the next guy, but Warhammer Role Play was SO good it was a shame to see it die off. Well, today it’s back and revised and looks extremely nifty. (See link above to the new publisher). So I bought it for $40. Of course, I have no one to play the game with today; almost all of my close college buddies moved away and I’m not one to go to a gamestore to find a new group of players. Like I’m gonna hang out with THOSE geeks. Hah.

So I bought a $40 RPG just to read.

I think that officially makes me a geek.

Well, not really guitar but I received the following in the blog inbox:

“My Name is Sarah Hurt and I work for Cybercamps, a technology camp for kids. I am hiring for our 2005 summer season and am looking for game design instructors. I have been putting the normal feelers out there for camp staff, but the gamers have been eluding me. Any suggestions of where to look? No experience is necessary for this job. Just a love for kids and a passion about technology. Thanks for your help! “

So if you’re interested and would like to have more information, click here.

Breeders’ Cup video game for home consoles set for September release

Bethesda Softworks will release in September a horse racing game called Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships for PlayStation2 and Xbox.

The game is officially licensed by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeders’ Cup Ltd, and game races will feature NTRA member tracks including Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Del Mar, Emerald Downs, Keeneland Race Course, Monmouth Park, Oaklawn Park, Sam Houston Race Park, Saratoga Race Course, and Woodbine.

The game offers more simulation than a typical video game and many aspects of Thoroughbred racing such as breeding, training, racing, and betting are featured. The NTRA work closely with the software company to ensure realistic simulation of those elements, and the game’s betting simulation is designed to imitate typical self-service betting machines at racetracks.

Thoroughbreds such as Man o’ War, Seabiscuit, Ruffian, Personal Ensign, Winning Colors, Silver Charm, Tiznow, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones appear in the game. The voice of the Breeders’ Cup Tom Durkin calls the races.

“Breeders’ Cup will appeal immensely both to horse racing fans and to gamers unfamiliar with our sport,” said Ken Kirchner, senior vice president of product development for the NTRA. “It conveys virtually all of the compelling qualities of Thoroughbred racing to a mass audience in a fun, fresh new way. We couldn’t be more excited about it.”

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Wow. I did not see this coming…

As I watch the O’s in their Friday Night Home O’s caps throttle the Devil Rays (God, this is starting to get addictive…you know…like….oh my god, they are actually doing well), I just read up that XM Radio got the World Cup. Suck on that Sirius. Yes, I’m an XM Fanboy. I have no idea about Sirius, I’ve never listened to it, and I don’t care. I’ve had XM since June 2002, and have pretty big loyalty….except for that time they killed USA Today Radio…and Special X….and NASCAR in 2007. But anyway, I love that Home Plate channel. Just love it. If you love baseball and don’t like the WEEI-like crap trash talking, put it on. Every MLB game every day on radio….heaven…and now the World Cup…all the games…I’ll take that over the EPL…especially since all EPL games are on FSC….yeah, the World Cup games are on too, but you know at work it’s tough…

Anyhoo, good for XM.

I’m a big music fan. My 40GB ipod is full, I have XM and music everywhere. I was thinking about doing the new Rhapsody…on demand songs is kinda cool…I did the trial, I kinda like it…still not all the songs are there, and I hate that. Don’t show the Beatles if all you have is some crappy demo tape from 1959. Ugh.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone out there uses Rhapsody and if they enjoy it..please post.

Yes, today I cancelled my Star Wars Galaxies account. Being a Star Wars fan of about oh..25 years, I was excited when the game was announced a couple of years ago. Bad reviews and word of mouth kept me away until now. Tons of updates and an expansion…surely that would help, right?

Well, sorta. Bugs were fixed and features added but Lucasarts has managed to make a Star Wars game as stale as a dried lima bean. I hear it gets better after you play it for a month, but who wants to spend tons of time just to get to some fun stuff? Ya know, there was a time that when you saw the Lucasarts label on a game that it meant it was going to be good — no questions asked it was going to be worth buying. Today, it’s more like, “Did Bioware develop it? If not — pass.”

First off, congrats to Todd on the coming of child #2. This officially makes him a parent. Me? I have one kid. I’m a dad, yeah, but I’m only half a parent. I like the old Bill Cosby adage: When you have one child and something in the house breaks — you know who did it.

In gaming news, I just finished up my review of Stronghold 2 for GameSpy. Shit game. Take Two rushed this thing out the door and it’s a buggy mess. Best to pass or wait for a few patches. I’m moving on to Cossacks 2 and then Guild Wars, which should take me up to E3.

It’s been a long while since I talked OSU — so here goes.

Being a Buckeye, I usually only talk football when it comes to college sports. Ohio State is a 2nd tier basketball school. That means that every once in a while they’ll show up and make a “Great Eight” (1992) or maybe even a Final Four like they did in ‘99. But OSU is a football school. Most football schools are not premiere basketball schools. Seriously, can you name any? When I think basketball I think Duke, UNC, Kansas, Arizona, UConn. I don’t think Michigan, Miami, USC, or Oklahoma (even though OU hoops isn’t bad). Why is that? Why are there so few dual program schools?

Anyway — Ohio State is close to signing one of the best classes in the history of the program. Ohio State already landed Daequan Cook from Dayton Dunbar, the #2 PG for the 2006 class. (He’ll be a Sr in high school next year.) Coach ThadMatta is also expecting a verbal from the #3 national SF David Lightly from Cleveland. On top of that, Cook’s AAU teammates, the #1 rated Jr. in the country, 7′0 center Greg Oden is close to pulling the Buckeye trigger and Wake Forest and Ohio State are neck and neck with the #1 2006 PG Mike Conley — another teammate of Cook’s.

If the Buckeyes land this class it could be a jump starter for bigger and better things for the basketball Buckeyes. OSU has never landed 4 top 20 players in one class before. If Matta pulls this off…this class would even make Duke a bit jealous. Pretty scary.

Everyone in Buckeye land is still waiting for some kind of apology from ESPN for the coal raking they put the program through last year. OSU Insiders are giving every indication that the NCAA investigation (the second one, which went over old stuff from the first one) uncovered….nothing.

Last year, if you recall, talking heads on ESPN ripped OSU and put Maurice Clarewtt on some kind of bizarre pedestal. The fallout would be:

• AD Andy Geiger would get fired (He retired 8 months ahead of schedule. His time at OSU was nearing an end before any of this happened)
• Jim Tressel would get fired (Uh…no)
• OSU could get the Death Penalty (That would be another enormous no)
• QB Troy Smith would miss the season for taking $500 from a booster (He’ll miss 2 games, which included the Alamo Bowl last year. Hey they’re only 11 games off)

So, where is Mark May? Where is the, “Hey, wow, maybe we jumped the gun a bit on this and made assumptions that were kinda…untrue. Uh, sorry about that, Columbus.” Last fall it was a daily ripping of Ohio State. A 5 day feature on how dirty the program was and how Tressel was some kind of dirty coach? The proof? Well, who needs that. We’re ESPN. We let accountants like John Clayton analyze football tape for us and charge people to read Mel Kiper’s draft analysis. We don’t need facts. We have shows where sports reporters yell at each other. We’re all about the shock factor. And ohh boy did the OSU stories generate buzz. Mission Accomplished.

Everything is not right with the program — Tressel gave Clarett too much rope and he almost hung the school with it. The problem at OSU is the same problem that every single school has — hangers on and old men with too much $$ and too much time on their hands who want to be “part of the program.” Make no mistake: they are everywhere. Yes, they are at your school, too, and they don’t really care about the program or the team. They want to feel important. They want to feel like they’re involved, and they are the poison of college sports.

Well, I guess that’s at least one more time than me, so good for him. Probably the last time now with the kid and all. haha.

Just think, if Todd had that PSP now, he could avoid mind-numbing hours of saying “breathe” by playing MLB online using the hospitals wireless (unencrypted) network.

In talking with Bill today, apparently he doesn’t understand the conspiracy to keep Scott on. Check this site out to give you all the information.

Okay, back to work.

In a few minutes we (my wife and I) will be on our way to the hospital to bring a new baby boy into the world… hence the trivialities of sports, sports games and even poker (gasp!) will be taking a back seat for a spell. Please wish us luck. I’ll post back here once the doctors pick me up off the floor and we get this little guy back home.

Well, maybe a shocker for the 16 year olds but Constantine sucked from day one. Nickelback sucks. Sucks + Sucks = Packing Your Suitcase. Hey, I’m not a huge fan of Scott, but I thought Constantine sucked more. What’s with Paula crying? Did she have an affair with Constantine too? Had she been already over for dinner with mom?

Right now I see it between Bo and Vonzell. Carrie is 1 lame dance routine away and so is Anthony and Scott. Of course, I could be wrong, and a performance can really change everything. I mean god, that Nickelback song has absoulutely the worst of the night. The funny thing was I tried calling from 9:30 - 11:00 Eastern. I never was able to get through to voting for Scott. All busys all the time. I just wanted to piss Simon off personally.

In other news, being the ego guy that I am, I like to find out where our blog gets linked, and I saw this brand new as in looks like it just went up today site. I have no idea who Joey Knuckles is, but I have to say that I have to concur with the whole “this game looks promising” right up until release day when “it sucks hard”. Wrestlemania for Xbox, anyone? Yeah, that looked promising until you went online or turned on the power. I have to totally agree: that’s what pisses me off. I see GameSpot after every fucking post “What do you think about this article?” Who cares. If you’re a reviewer, you write how and what you feel . Have people disagreed with me? Absolutely. I remember having the first Wreckless and RAW review for GamePen. I gave both games horrid scores. They sucked. I remember how I was told I have a warez copy and how I was second tier. Other sites (hi, IGN) gave it a 9. Who plays that fucking game now? Oh that’s right, nobody becuase it sucked. My bad.

Like Simon, I’m not always right, but I write what I feel. When I do a review, I think, how will I enjoy this game 6 months from now, or even 1 year from now. Seaman for Dreamcast got horrid reviews. I loved that game. I think weird sea creatures should ask you questions about your married life. That was a gaming experience for me. Wreckless on the other hand was a gaming experience in the “games I never ever want to see again” way.

I digress. This is the difference between journalism and/or “game writers.” Geoff Keighley is not a good friend of mine, and I’ve always had some concerns about someone who writes as an objective journalist can write instruction manuals for games (Hello Star Wars for GameCube). Geoff’s articles however are great in that in this ‘last hours of’ articles, you really get a feel for WTF is going on within a game studio. You think, holy crap, now I can see why that happened. In those columns, he is truly reporting what’s going on allowing you to make a judgement call. On the other hand, his EW reviews…well, I’ll just leave it with the good parts.

There was another gentleman, whos name I can’t recall, that use to do a ‘post-mortem’ on video games and actually go back to the developers after they were released and see what they did right and wrong. I’m not referring to the EGM column, which sounds neat on paper but doesn’t read well; instead this was something else in the past. Sorry, guy who’s name I forgot. To me I found that very interesting. Again, the stuff was reported and you decide.

I will agree, that in a review, you are actually asking for a person’s opinion, but you also want to know some of the basics so you can make up your own mind. For example, if you read a byline that says Dan Clarke, you will probably know my style of writing…either that or after reading 2 of my reviews you will. You will see that I have a tendency to prefer certain things over another thing. However, when I type up, some people will say I go too much over the basics…I feel that’s the most important thing to go over. When I had to do screenshots, I usually heard from editors about not taking enough ‘action’ screen shots and instead focusing on the ‘options’. However, take a look at those EA game screenshots and what’s the discussion about: is it a)Oh my god the graphics are so good you can see his cup or b) Holy shit there’s a “catch” slider. It’s b. End of argument.

Honestly, I am seroiusly rambling right now. That’s thanks to that damn website I found. So thanks, whoever the hell you are for getting me off on a tangent. Time for bed.

I haven’t had a chance to give this a whirl yet but I found this link over at DSP today.

Shot Online

Shot-Online is not just an online sports game either, but it is a highly accurate simulation and a deep role-playing experience. It is the RPG quality that makes Shot-Online the unique game it is, especially with the community interaction and the enhancement and leveling of your character.

Speaking of community and role-playing, Shot-Online offers both realistic and rare items drawn from the celebrated history of golf. Practicing every day, competing against players with different skills, allows the gamer to advance their characters abilities. Quests and item exchanging and more add to the community feel

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This sounds particulary…different.

Funny story: one of my good friends goes way back from High School. He’s a huge Red Sox fan, and of course you know I”m an O’s fan. We’ve gone to a game at least once a year since..hmm, I dunno early 90s perhaps.

Anyway, every time we’ve gone, I think for the last 6 years, the O’s have knocked the crap out of the Sox. This series, my friend wants nothing to do with me and instead goes with a guy who has season tickets in the left field triangle of love at Fenway. You know, the part that is the furthest possible before hitting the green monster seats…he’s right on the railing.

So, anyhoo, after Brian Roberts comes up, gets a hit on the 1st pitch, steals 2nd on the 2nd pitch of the game and later steals 3rd, I liked my chances. What was even more hysterical was that Mr. .182, BJ Surhoff, “The Wild Eyes Guy”, homers. What’s even more funny is that Tejada nailed a shot to left that my friend saw hit the wall. I could make him out on the HD replay. So I called him and made sure I rubbed it in, especially after the shit I took last week. Well I guess it’s not that funny of a story, but it is for me, so there.

Needless to say, he’s never going to a Red Sox Orioles game again. Now maybe I can get tickets.

GameFly delivered ATV for PSP yesterday. I’m seeing tepid reviews, but I’m enjoying it. So to recap: strategy game with cards (Metal Gear Acid) : Good. ATV Racing: bad. Oh well.

Sony has decided to do a football game in a RPG like environment, it’s called “Road To Sunday” and it involves you playing the role of a young girl named Oanfoaithg. Your parents owned a football team and were killed by mysterious ninjas, leaving you, at age 12, to be running the football team. Of course, the only way to get back at the mysterious ninjas is to win! Let’s Enjoy!

Okay, I made part of that up. I will say the game sounds interesting and I’ll give Sony points for being creative. Something tells me that there will be no Game before the Game at the Super Bowl, however.

MLB still takes up a lot of my PSP time….MVP does the honors on Xbox, although I still despise the boxscores.

On another note, I finally picked up a copy of Spikeout for Xbox. You see, Sega said, hey let’s make an awesome Streets of Rage like game, but let’s only issue 3,000 copies so it will sell on Ebay for $200. If you like SOR, you’ll love Spikeout. It has Xbox live support. Only Sega would do something this dumb as to limit the production run. Well they do hate to make money…..

GameShark has the stuff.

With the extra attention MLB gets from Sony, maybe they are actually going to try to make a good basketball game? Features sound good..

Well, the Lions don’t appear to have fared too badly in the draft. There’s a lot of debate about the merits of picking WR Mike Williams when they need more playmakers on the other side of the ball, but it’s tough to argue that they didn’t get value for the pick. Sure you can’t trust the local media bias, but all reports are this guy is itching to go and certainly, he’s saying all the right things. He could fit in very, very well. And let’s face it. With Roy Williams, Charles Rogers, Marcus Pollard and Kevin Jones lining up the other offensive skill positions, all Joey Harrington has to do is be competent. He’s got a line that can block for him, so it’s just a matter of finding the open receiver. And between all those targets (please let them be healthy), someone’s going to be open.

In any case, Detroit’s later round picks aren’t knock your socks off exciting, but there’s some player worth watching. In the second round they traded up a couple spots to select Shaun Cody, who can play both DE and DT. He’s billed as a versatile guy who can get to the QB, but may not have the size for the NFL. Still, they got a guy projected for the late 1st round with their second round pick, which is getting to be a habit (Sean Rogers and Teddy Lehman come to mind) so I like the choice. In the third round they added Stanford CB Stanley Wilson. Evidently he’s fast. Real fast. Can he cover? Beats me, but they need to take a flyer on somebody at that position. Fernando Rodney is not getting it done, and the guys behind him have yet to distinguish themselves.

I do really like the potential of their day 2 picks. Connecticut QB Dan Orlovsky might be a reach, but they only need him to be a third guy and they can take their time developing him. It’s the last two guys that I think are intriguing late-round steal possibilities. DL Bill Swancutt of Oregon St. and LB Jonathan Goddard of Marshall aren’t great physical specimens (according to the “experts”), but you can’t argue their productivity at their respective schools. Both were sack machines last year, and Swancutt made more than two dozen of his 80 tackles behind the line of scrimmage. I agree with the many folks who say you can’t teach a guy to have a nose for the football and it sounds like these two have got that. Give ‘em a couple seasons and maybe one of ‘em will turn into something pretty great.

Yep today is our 7 year anniversary. My wife has put up with me for SEVEN YEARS. She deserves the Medal of Freedom. We’re going to a Fondue Restaurant tonight….Don’t ask

More NCAA 2006 info is out that that is worth discussing. The good stuff from the article:

1. Drops - This is a question I asked Jeff Ecker as we were playing. He had a good answer which was “do you see any”. He was right, I didn’t see any unusual drops that should be catches. Of course you still see drops in heavy coverage and on big hits which is the way it should be but the wide open short route drops have been fixed. I was playing on the PS2 but also checked out a game going on the Xbox to make sure it was the same.

OK, this is good. I HOPE that player ratings matter and that drops still do happen just not as much as last year. I mean a guy should drop open passes from time to time (see Braylon Edwards vs Ohio State last year) but it shouldn’t happen every single game. There needs to be a balance. I like that they seem to at least have conceeded that it was a problem.

2. Xbox Slowdown – Saw none

About. Damn. Time.

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Oh, yeah, before I forget — no, I don’t think Denver made a smart pick by taking Clarett. That was like taking a 3rd round pick and lighting it on fire. The Jets taking Nugent though — if he’s as good in the NFL as he was in college then that pick will be a steal. He was that good at OSU.