The Blog for the Sports Gamer

I know I’ve not waxed poetic about the NBA playoffs yet, but seriously, what a great NBA final four. Spurs and Suns. Pistons and Heat. I think these truly are the best four teams in the league and they’re both great match-ups. Of course, that doesn’t stop the nay-sayers from talking about how much they hate watching the Pistons and Spurs play. Whenever I read comments from non-Pistons people about the Pistons they talk about how garish and boring watching their “brand” of basketball is. Miami columnist and professional hairdo Dan Lebetard (http://www.freep.com/sports/pistons/lebatard23e_20050523.htm) said they’d play defense with machetes if league rules permitted. What team are these people watching? Okay, last year I might even be inclined to agree with some of those critics. And while I won’t deny the Pistons win with a defense-first attitude, it simply amazes me how people can overlook the offense this year’s team can generate when it needs to. The names may not have changed, but this is not last year’s team. Take a look at their starting five:

G - Chauncey Billups
G - Richard Hamilton
F - Tayshaun Prince (note to the nation: Tayshaun is not spelled “Tayshawn”)
F - Rasheed Wallace
C - Ben Wallace

There isn’t a guy there who isn’t capable of averaging over 10 points a game and the only thing that keeps that number from being 20 is Big Ben. You put any of the first four on a lottery team where they’d be the “feature” player and they’re fully capable of putting up 25 points a game night in and night out. For all the talk of their defense this team, which uses the entire shot clock more often than any team I’ve watched, averaged 93 points per game this year. That’s certainly no great shakes, but the league average was just 97 (and that’s with the Suns putting up 110 a game), so don’t tell me how these guys are ruining basketball because they only win with defense can’t shoot. (Actually, their 44% FG percentage is right on the league average. Only three teams averaged higher than 46% this season, though four were close at 45.9%.)

After last season many said the league actively tried to legislate Pistons/Spurs-style defense out of the league by calling things like hand-checks. I’ve got no problem with the league changing the rules to increase offensive flow. But the people who thought those changes would kill teams like the Pistons and Spurs are just dopes. These teams don’t win just because they can keep their opponents from getting to the hoop. They win because they’re actually pretty good with and without the ball. Change all the rules you want, but this is still the NBA and last I heard, at this level, you have to play both ends of the floor.

1. MVP for Xbox: On the 2005 schedule, the O’s play Washington? But today they are playing Philadelphia for real…what happened there?

2. MVP for PSP: Is now out, but i can’t find it. MLB is suiting me just fine. Would love to hear anyone’s impressions if they have it..

I just watched Team America from Netflix. Damn…it’s a little long but hysterically funny. This movie should have easily won best soundtrack. “America: Fuck Yeah!” is the best song ever. It sounds like a Tenacious D song. Every song is a winner. Sure, the puppet sex scene was a little over the top, but I was laughing pretty heartily. Definitely not a date movie though….

Hot Shots Golf for the PSP has taken over most of my playing time. It’s quite a fun yet challenging golf game, although I hate the Japanese-RPGesque shit in there like “loyalty bonus”. Stupid!

The Forza commercials are pretty funny.

On another note I had been using Moodlogic’s Music Mixer for some time, but it expired and since their forums are outdated and support non-existent, I didn’t renew. (I liked how it worked for Tivo as well, but the limits it put on Ipods were frustrating). Checking the forum, I saw someone post for another system called the Predixis Music Magic Mixer. Now this thing is cool. You can say I want a 12 song playlist based on uptempo songs, or a 995MB playlist, or however (perfect for the shuffle if you have one). The advanced version is $9.95/yr or $29.95 lifetime. I’m impressed. And it works with Tivo. Check it out!

Blog readership went up 250% for the week of E3. We have a very steady stream of people that read the blog, but this week the numbers spiked because of the show. I hope the new readers stick around.

One thing about E3 is free stuff. These items of wonderment can range from t-shirts to grab bags of mystery. I had not been to E3 since 2000; the free goodies are better now. I came back with:

• A wireless mouse
• A 128 MB Pen drive that actually can be used as a pen as well as a storage device
• Weighted pins of the Chaos Gods from Warhammer (very cool if you know what they are)
• A Breeders’ Cup hat
• An NCSoft backpack that is half pack half cooler

Not bad considering you usually get t-shirts and glowing rubber balls. The show ended for me as I was writing some late articles in the IGN/GSpy war room after the show had officially closed. The cleaning crew that was removing stuff from the room next to us had a huge boom box and they played the entire Let It Be CD. Not a bad way to end the day.

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OOTP 2005 is coming along great. Todd and I got an “exclusive” look at a current build on the SI rep’s laptop. The database is freaking HUGE now. Winter leagues, International leagues, minor leagues, you name it. The release date is now “Early 2005″ and not September but everything looks good so far. The speed has improved, too. I sat there in stunned silence as an entire season was simluated in literally three seconds. GSpy E3 preview is forthcoming. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

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OK, Breeders’ Cup. The game is in early Beta so there were some rough spots, but overall it looks promising. Is it as deep as I personally want it? No. You’d need a PC version to do that. Does it look like a better game than Gallop Racer? Potentially. Stuff that I like more than Gallop Racer as well as other observations:

• It’s not a cartoon game
• No arcade silly kiddie music
• Real betting with Tri, Supers and Pick 3 wagering. I love me some pick 3s
• North American odds (not the Euro stuff)
• Real North American tracks like Woodbine, Belmont, Saratoga, The Meadowlands, and Aqueduct (and they are very accurate from what I could tell)
• Some real American stakes races (including all of the Breeders’ Cup races). Others are pending due to license issues
• Trainer mode, where you hire jocks (fictional jocks), spend money on training, etc. (Your stable can hold up to 6 horses)
• You can’t name the horses that you breed, which sucks. The upside is that there are 4,000 horses in the database and Tom Durkin calls every single one of them. So during a race, Durkin will give real live calls as the action unfolds. This still needs work as it isn’t seamless yet, but when Durkin called a stretch battle between Personal Ensign and Winning Colors…it kinda freaked me out.
• Yes, there are classic horses in the game that you may have to face as your horses improve. The list includes (I think, I’m going off memory here as my notes are incognito) Ghostzapper, Citation, Man O’ War, Ruffian, Winning Colors, Seabiscuit, Personal Ensign, Native Dancer, Funny Cide (ugh), and Smarty Jones (a lesser ugh). I understand why they’d include Funncy Cide and Smarty from a marketing standpoint but they don’t deserve to be in with this group. They want to license more real horses in future versions, and they are indeed planning future versions, so that’s good. No Big Red (that’s serious licensing $$) and no Alydar, Affirmed, Slew or even Spectacular Bid. I was hoping for some turf stars like John Henry, but ah well. It’s a start.
• Rain/mud effects look great. I saw a race at The Spa in the slop and it was awesome.
• The horses are animated well, they do look very good but I think Gallop may have an edge here. I thought the graphics in GR were great. BC looks good but I was hoping for a big leap over GR and I didn’t see that.
• I didn’t get to control a horse during a race although Bethesda reps say that it will be tougher to control your horse than in GR, which is good.
• The races themselves are faster than real races, just like in GR. I personally want a 10F race to take 2 minutes and change but I guess I’m in the minority.

On the whole I liked what I saw out of BC. Still rough in spots but it’s something that I can’t wait to get my hands on, being the horse nut that I am. I know we have some horse players that read the blog as well as GR vets so feel free to ask any questions and I’ll try to either answer them or call the Bethesda guys.

Almost forgot: Some Pics–
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3
Pic 4

First off, what a Preakness. Alysheba flashback! I have no idea how Rose or Alex for that matter did not fall. A truly fantastic effort. My respect for that little colt went up exponentially after that. I hope he comes out of the race OK, he’s prolly cut up all to hell.

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Well I’m back. After a flight from LA that included a seat next to the engine in front of a crying (I mean REALLY crying 2 year old) ..I’m home. Sourness aside I had the best E3 since the first one that I went to with Todd and two other friends of mine. After the first half of day one, the show was just a great time. I stayed very busy but the people at Gamespy are class acts. 100% class acts. They, along with Tom Chick, Tiffany Martin, and Steve Bauman made the trip a hell of a lot of fun. I may even go next year. (Did I say that?)

GameSpy is still posting E3 previews and will be throughout the week but here’s the stuff up from yours truly:

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Pile On (This game…wow)

Heroes of Might and Magic V (This game, too. Wow)

City of Villains

The Witcher (RPG)

Later on in the week my stuff on Warhammer Online, Rise of Nation: Rise of Legends, Breeders Cup (I”ll post that here for you guys later), Blitzkrieg II, Parkan II (think Privateer and Freelancer with FPS stuff), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow, and some other stuff should go up as well.

While Bill and Todd’s Excellent Adventure winds down (make sure you check out Todd’s E3 posts)..some of us in the northern blue states have yet to experience…uhh warmth.

Today is the 6th consecutive Saturday that’s gray and windy and cold. As I type this it’s a whopping 50 degrees.

So anyway, I said f it, put on my shorts and hit the links. Well I went to the golf club and got fitted for custom clubs. After 7 years of playing the BJ’s Wilson Starter Kit special wasn’t doing me any favors. So anway, I went for the full set — 3I - PW, Putter, Driver, 3W, 5W (they threw in a 7w for free), and a golf bag. They also threw in a dozen Titleist NXT’s for free since I pretty much made their quota and maxed out my credit card. I took ‘em right to the covered driving range and brought out the driver. Nailed it. You had to love that sweet sweet sound..if only the other 59 balls I hit were close. Everything I bought was Cobra except for the PW which was Cleveland. At least even if I still suck, I’ll look good on the links!

Anyway it was the first time I swung the clubs so I was rusty (did you know you get a free lesson when you get fitted also)…but also pleased with how I did. I gotta get ready for my first shotgun tournament on June 1st…June is pretty much “working golf month” for me.

Now, if it would just be sunny enough to play…..

I spent the afternoon of on this final day of E3 purely playing three games: NBA2k6, NCAA2k6, Madden 2006 and NCAA 2006. Here’s some expanded impression on these titles, with the usual Abner Disclaimer in full effect.

NBA 2k6:
I finally got to spend some time today actually playing games at E3. After watching the Pistons pull out the game last night, I found myself very attracted to NBA 2k6. I should preface this by saying I played 2k5 for all of thirty minutes last year, but to me, the game just feels much smoother than I remember. The flow of the game felt very authentic to me, including some animations that I believe are new where players push and bump off each other a bit during a play w/o crashing to the floor like my sophmore year college roommate at 4am on a Friday night. Unfortunately, despite being marked as something like 75% complete, the game was limited to about six teams, two 2-minute halves w/no control over difficulty, sliders or camera angles (and the side, close-up camera angle they used sucked rocks). The only thing you could do was play an exhibition game. But even under those limited conditions, I really enjoyed the hell out of it. It just felt like pro hoops to me in a way I haven’t seen with this franchise before. Sidenotes: They have ported the free throw shooting style from College Hoops over to the NBA game, which I absolutely love. I also love the new net animations. It’s a little thing, but seeing the net swoosh so realistically (especially afer a 3-point shot) really works for me.

NCAA2k6 College Hoops:
This one’s really not fair to judge because it’s not remotely complete. Like NBA2k6, you could only play an exhibition game with a small handful of teams. But right now I don’t think it plays at all different from last year’s game. Not one bit. I think I saw a new spin/layup animation. Beyond that, everything I liked and disliked about last year’s gamelay is still there. As much potential as I think the gameplay in this title has, they really do need to smooth out the player animations so you don’t lose total control over your ballhandler the second he starts to enter some pre-rendered move. I lived with it last year w/o much complaint, I’m not sure I’m willing to do the same again this time around. (It really stands out more when after playing NBA2k6 for a while.) But again, this thing was only like 30% complete, so there’s a long way to go.

NCAA Football 2006:
I didn’t get a ton of gameplay in on this, but I stood and chatted with a guy from MaddenMania for about 30-40 minutes as he played around with the recruiting game and simmed through a season. I like the in-season recruiting stuff a bit more than I expected. I had these visions of College Hoops where you spend more time in-season dealing with recruiting visits than playing the game. That doesn’t appear to be the case as you can pretty much designate your targets and let the game take it from there. (You can adjust each week to your taste, based on feedback, but it only takes a couple of minutes and not an hour of micro-managing.) Off-season recruiting appears largely the same as the 2005 version (no way to gauge difficulty on one pass through it), though you can now pitch recruits on your school’s academic program, which I think is a nice touch. I also played around with some of the other drill positions in Race for the Heisman. At this poit it really is just picking your position and then running one specific drill several times, earning points based on your performance. A pocket QB has to complete passes to covered receivers. A scrambler has to run the option w/a couple of defenders on the field. A RB has to run the ball from around the seven yard line and stay within a narrow lane in the middle of the field while doing so (against two defenders). A WR has to run routes, along with a full set of offenseive (skill) players with defenders on the field. There’s no guarantee the QB will throw to you (only threw to me once), but you’re graded heavily on running routes properly and getting open. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to checking out the drills for defensive players. It does appear that no matter how you do you’ll get exactly three scholarship offers. No more, no less. The sim speed of games also seems to have improved (at least on the Xbox), but someone needs to explain to me how it can sim so many games fairly quickly, but take much longer to handle off-season recruiting stages and even longer still to handle the off-season cuts stage. It’s no big deal, but it’s pretty much the opposite of what I’d expect, so I find it rather bizarre.

Madden 06:
This gets another disclaimer in that I’ve been playing ESPN the past two seasons, so I’m going into Madden with very fresh eyes. And to these eyes, the game is impressive. I heard more than one person say it was pretty much the same as last year, but it’s unquestionably a better game than the last version I played. The control over players is vastly improved, and way better than 2k5 in my view. The defensive secondary AI appears monumentally better in terms of not playing to superhuman levels. That said, I was able to throw up a several deep balls (Harrington to Charles Rogers) for big plays. Could’ve been the difficulty level (which could not be changed on the version at Microsoft’s booth), but the secondaries I played against (Lions vs. Raiders and Colts) could not keep up with Rogers in deep patterns. Finally, I remain convinced this new vision cone for QB passing is a terrific innovation. It was *hard* for me to use, but the controls weren’t well-documented at the MS booth and there may be a better way to use it than having to scroll across the field via the right analog stick, which is just way too time consuming when your QB is under the gun.

TANGENT: I’m sitting at my hotel room in LA and there was just a MLB public service announcment commercial in which the Tigers’ Dmitri Young is teaching kids how to catch a home run ball at the fence. Awesome to see a Tiger in a nationally televised commercial, and granted Young does play LF on rare occasions, but it’s funny to see a full-time DH talking about the best way to rob a guy of a home run.

Anyway, the hour grows late and this was way more than I planned to type. Time to get some shuteye before my flight out tomorrow. Hopefully the plane doesn’t, you know, crash.

PS - I’m too tired to proof this thing so my apologies for what is very likely a *huge* number of typos.

No updates from me tonight. I have a 7:10 AM flight and I’m dead ass tired. I’ll update most likely Saturday night or Sunday with links to all my GSpy E3 stuff.

Good night.

While Bill and Todd are getting their jollies at E3, some of us are actually working. Yes, I’m a bitter, jealous bastard.

Anyway, you can check out my Road To Sunday Season One preview by clicking here, and my NBA 06 preview by clicking here.

While perusing the site, I also noticed that ex-VE’er Prophet has posted that the Xbox will indeed be backward compatible. His news post makes it unquestionable…but I have to say…if that’s the case, why didn’t Microsoft just come out and say it in a press release? Maybe they’ll say it’s backward compatible, except for these games: (and then list 20% of the titles) or something…I’d really just like MS to be on the record and say yes, 95% of the games will work. Or something. But the hardware doesn’t seem to be final, so who knows….

So today is the final day. Last night I had a lot of fun at the Guild Wars party and then at a local bar to hang out with some guys from Quarter to Three. Lots of gamers sitting around talking about games. A geek convention with Guinness. Truly heady stuff.

Today I am scheduled to see…(as he tries to find his excel sheet..)

Ah yes, a company called 1C (I have no idea who this is); a game called Sparta from IMC (no clue); and Heroes of Might and Magic V (THIS I want to see)

So it’s not a jam packed day for me so I should have time, once I’m done with my write ups to see some more sports stuff, hopefully some Take 2 stuff as well as get more NCAA and Madden time in.

I’ll write some stuff on the Breeders Cup game when I get back; I dunno when GSpy is going to post my preview because it’s not a high profile game. I think it has potential. It looks like Gallop Racer with much better sound and an American racing slant rather than Japanese.

When I get back I’ll talk more about the show in general. I have the E3 shuttle to catch as I prepare to see 1C and whatever the hell it is that they want to show me..

Oh, Oh I forgot! I got a private viewing of Richard Garriot’s MMO Tabula Rasa, with Garriot doing the presentation. Ultima fans eat your hearts out. I’ll get to more game details as time permits.

There are about three different vendor showing off poker games at E3 this year. 2k Games has a World Series of Poker title that is only a trailer on the floor. Crave brought World Poker Championship 2 (which is neat, but plays too damn slow). And Yahoo! is pimping a redone Flash poker game for cell phones and the web. Obviously the latter is the least notable of the three, but it was for the latter that a Booth Bimbo was passing out passes to a live poker game. So this morning I found myself sitting down to play poker with about eight others and none other than poker TV star/pro, Phil Hellmuth.

I’ve seen Mr. Phil play several times on TV. He’s a hell of a good poker player, especially for a young guy (the youngest every to win a World Series of Poker, I guess). But the way he’s portrayed on TV, it seems like whenever he loses to a less than perfect hand he cannot help but make a spectacle of himself (complaining), earning the nickname, “Bad Boy of Poker.” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him leave a table w/o complaining about something, but the way networks like ESPN skew reality, who knows. In any case, he seems to relish the rep, so I’ll return the favor by complaining about him here. (That’s meant to be read as tongue in cheek. Phil was quite gracious, actually.)

From the moment he stepped up to the table (which was at the heart of the Yahoo booth, and being displayed on several big TVs), he had the crowd eating out his hand. During a Q&A session, someone asked him about folding pocket Jacks before the flop. He went on to relay a story about the only time in a professional event that he laid down pocket Jacks before the flop. It was a nice little tale. Who knew it would be the reason I didn’t make the final two at my table (garnering me a spot in a mini-tourney on Friday)?

This was a funky game, where the blinds were doubled after each hand in the name of ending it quickly. That made it important to win a hand early, so it felt good to take the very first one with a pair of Aces (10 kicker). Two hands later, what should appear in my hand? Pocket Jacks. Not wanting to tip my hand, and fearing an Ace draw on the flop, I called the big blind. The person to my left then went all-in. Normally, I’d say screw it and call. I had the chips. But with the camera on me and my face plastered on Yahoo’s big screens, I did not want to blow my chips stack recklessly and blow my the opportunity to hang around awhile. I was on the fence and about to call, when I remembered Phil’s story about the time he folded jacks. Surely that was a sign? Surely I heard that story specifically because I needed to fold? So I did. I don’t recall the exact flop, but there was a jack in it. So I was pretty bummed, but that’s poker. But to add extreme insult to injury, *another* jack appeared on the turn (4th card). I just about fell out of my seat. Here I am, at a table with Phil Hellmuth, playing in front of like 20-30 people and I just threw away what would’ve been four-of-a-kind. I said nothing, but I was just dying inside.

A few hands (and folds) later I was all but blinded (forced bets) in with a mere 9-4 of diamonds. One player called (he had a huge stack) and the flop came up 8, 4, 3. Given that it was a huge call by the other player, a pair of fours looked pretty good to me with such a weak flop. So I threw in my last four chips (knowing that the other guy would put me all-in if I didn’t). He had A-J. The turn was a Queen, and all of a sudden I thought I had new life, with only 4 players still at the table. Instead the river (final) card comes up an Ace and just like that I was out. What junk. It was the third time that guy had sucked out on a river card. I briefly laid my head down on the table, forced a smile, and left the table as quickly as my wounded ego could carry me.

So instead of playing tomorrow in a “final” tourney I got a “I played poker with Phil Hullmuth” t-shirt. Yeah, that’s almost as good. And it’s all because of Phil Hellmuth and his story about the time he folded pocket Jacks.

Okay, so I’ve posted a grand total of zero E3 impressions. Part of that is that I’ve been busy being a (business) card collector and not getting access to anyone but the on-hand PR folks who really only know what’s on their fact sheets. (That is really *not* meant as an insult to these hard-working individuals.) Part of it is because most of the games look like the same stuff we’ve all seen before… just prettier. Part of it is because of poker pro, Phil Hellmuth (a story for my next post). And part of it is because I just plain suck. Who knew? Unfortnately, I’ve gotten to spend very little time playing any games. Not that it would matter if I did. I agree with Bill that E3 game impressions are worth about as much as a match on the surface of the sun. That said, here’s some impressions:

NCAA 06: I did get about 15 minutes with NCAA 06 and am on the fence a bit. I didn’t mess with the sliders at all, so that may have something to do with it. I saw some really great plays. A couple of drops, but only one that I’d call over the top. I also had another human player bust his DE through the line, practically untouched three times in four plays. Not sure what to make of that. Is probably nothing, but I bring it up anyway. I started up a Race for the Heisman campaign. I expect to like this feature, but I hope the early going is a little deeper. For my schoolbound slacker, I started a pocket QB (but you can choose any position and a copule of variations in skill types within some positions). Cool enough. But I was a little let down that -at least for a pocket QB- there’s just one drill, throwing passes to defended receivers. You run it several times and earn scores based on several aspects of the pass (completions, touch, etc.). But it only lasts a couple of minutes and based on that you’re offered scholarships to various schools, which to seemed a little to fast. I don’t know if there’s a limit on scholarship offers, but I got three from schools in various conferences (including Iowa; Big Ten baby!). There’s definite potential here, which to me is good news.

Xbox 360: I sat through about 40 minutes of Xbox 360 game trailers. Some of them looked extraordinary. I have no idea, which, if any, are actual gameplay (vs. pre-rendered material), and I don’t remember many of the titles, but there were a few titles where the visuals belayed the potential for some killer gameplay. One such title is an RPG called Lost Odyssey, which is done by “some of” the creators of Final Fantasy. Not to cop out, but that’s really all I know. But the presentation in the game trailer was just wicked cool in a way I find hard to explain. Of all the next-gen titles, this is the one I want to find out more about. (There’s a Gamespot preview here: http://www.gamespot.com/x360/rpg/lostodyssey/preview_6125134.html). I really think it may be something special. There’s also a Car Wars style of game called Full Auto, that looks it’d be quite a bit of fun. The demo felt a *little* like GTA, only in cars loaded with heavy weaponry. Probably a popcorn title, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun.

Top Spin 2: I liked what little I played of the original Top Spin. This one is certainly sharp looking on the 360, and it is only something like half done. But to my eye the tennis has quite a ways to go. I never really felt in control of the action. It was more like running and swinging w/o being able to dictate the direction of my shots to the extent that I would’ve expected. This one gets the Abner Disclaimer. It’s E3. It’s early. These impressions mean absolutely dick. But right now, I’m underwhelmed.

I also spent very little time with NBA 2k6, NHL 2k6 and Madden ‘06, but not nearly enough to say anything even as wishy-washy as my thoughts above. I do like the passing cone in Madden. I like the feel of the game *very* much. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to sit (or stand) and really play it for at least a little while. (The PSP version was also fun as hell, btw. But I didn’t get to check and see what modes of play were featured in it.) NBA feels very much like the last go round. I’m confident NHL will remain the best hockey title on the market.

All in all, it’s been a fun show. Pretty much the same as I remember from years ago. Loud music and effects. Big screens. Prettier pictures. If not for Phil Hellmuth, today in particular would’ve been one heck of a day.

It’s frustrating this year at E3 because I am here to cover PC games and only PC games. I was able to see Bethesda’s Breeders Cup game horse racing game on the Xbox but other than that, if I want to see a console game (including sports) it’s on my own time, which is very much stretched at the moment. Today, however, I had an appointment cancelled because a company didn’t bring a build of a game I was sent to see (whoops) so I was able to saunter back over to the EA booth to play some more football.

The impressions from yesterday I still stand behind — Discipline is still going to be an issue from what I understand and dropped passes might piss some people off (at first, stay with me) but after spending more time with the game today I learned a few things:

• Waiting in line for 2 1/2 hours to get my media badge really pissed me off.
• I went into the EA booth in a seriously bad mood because of that and the fact that another company dicked me over because of a scheduling snafu on their part. I walked into NCAA 2006 really ticked off and I think I may have let that cloud my judgment a bit. Hey it happens.
• It’s still a lot like NCAA 2005, don’t get me wrong but I think I was a bit too quick in dismissing the new features. Well, maybe not so much the new features but the gameplay tweaks.
• I played the game yesterday on Varsity level and NOT AA level. This ended up making a huge difference in how the game plays.
• Today I spoke with a new EA guy from the NCAA team and not the dude from yesterday, who was about as helpful as a fruit fly.

Today I was able to tweak gameplay sliders on AA lvl and I am much more hopeful that the game is going to be good; a hell of a lot more hopeful than I was yesterday. Today I saw how much an Impact CPU HB can dominate a game. The CPU will indeed try to run the ball when it knows it has a horse in the backfield. The Impact players are actually pretty cool; they don’t turn into supermen but appear to not only be better players but the AI knows that when they are in the “zone” that they should get their hands on the ball as much as possible.

Slider adjustments seem to fix the dropped passes, unlike last year. A couple of clicks and I had no issues at all today.

On AA lvl the game is a lot harder than AA lvl last year. I think this is good. I didnt see any weird AI cheats; in fact I saw a DB NOT break on a deep pass the nanosecond I threw the pass. I was really surprised to see a WR actually BREAK A TACKLE after catching a pass. Have you ever seen that happen in an NCAA game?

The CPU QBs go underneath. This was not the case yesterday on Varsity but today, whoever the QB is for Ole Miss was throwing 5-8 yard passes to WRs and TEs up and down the field on me. It was really cool to see the QB look under first, then look over the top. The EA production guy I was playing with made a point to tell me about that. He said that a big part of the design this year is to have the CPU mount drives rather than just big plays. I certainly saw that today, which was really, really nice to see. As a result of this, CPU completion %, at least in the AA game I played today, was around 55%. That’s a hell of a lot better than the 35% from NCAA 2005.

I still have not looked at recruiting; I had to run off to see some other stuff. I’ll try to get a look at it tomorrow if I can, but I’m fairly booked.

I’m pretty upset at myself for jumping the gun on NCAA 2006, espcially the fact that I didn’t make sure to check the diff level. Ah well. Still, use a salt shaker when reading these impressions — be they good or bad. It’s way too soon for anyone to put a stamp of approval of a stamp of dogshit on seeing a game at E3. It’s a trap that way to many people fall into every single year. (Remember Postal?)

I’ll try to get more time with NCAA and/or Madden tomorrow.

Sheesh. I post a few rambling thoughts about NCAA 2006 and all of a sudden I’m reading these bizarre flame posts on Operation Sports about how I hate the game, how I’m somehow biased against the NCAA series and that I have some weird ax to grind with EA Sports.

Some people are just fucking stupid.

Look folks. I spent 20 minutes with the game and my first impression was pretty ho hum. It didn’t bowl me over and it didn’t lead me to think it was going to be shitty. It was just “ok.” Now one can chalk that up to a lot of reasons. Mood, lack of sleep, noise, whatever. Maybe I’ll get it home and fall in love with it. Maybe I’ll get it home and think it’s dogshit. That’s the thing about E3. It is the WORST place to even try to hint at approaching a true evaluation of a game. It’s impossible. So for cryin out loud take all E3 posts, including mine and stuff from other websites with a huge grain of salt.

Now I remember why I hate this show.

Some things I’m pondering while listening to KC beat up on the O’s on XM:

1. KC has beaten up on the O’s a lot, but the O’s have come back. Here’s hoping….
2. The biggest pita about E3 is that I want to read Bill’s posts like the rest of you, but as I type this, Bill’s probably just waking up (noon Pacific). Come on Bill, post already.
3. No surprise on American Idol. The “let’s sing the song from last night” thing is old. My son even thought the Ford commercial sucked.
4. I got Lost. Thanks to the private emails for that.
5. I continue to play and enjoy Hot Shots Golf for PSP. I really like reading the green. Of course winning tournaments gets you things like “new shirt” Joy.
6. MLB for PSP is more fun to me than MLB for PS2. I don’t know why, it just is. Maybe becuase you can poop and play at the same time, I’m not sure.
7. Do you think the journalist geeks are playing PSP via ad-hoc mode on the E3 floor?
8. Thinking about that Nintendo press conference, how many people really think a journalist would have brought their DS and Nintendogs (JPN) with them?
9. If you haven’t read Steve Kent’s History of E3, you should.
10. At the time I started this post it was 6-0 KC. Right now it’s 6-4.