The Blog for the Sports Gamer

There’s a new impressions thread at DSP for the PC Version of Tiger Woods 2006. The first paragraph from dbdynsty25 reads:

“So…I picked it up this afternoon and installed it. First of all…I’m pissed. EA gives you two choices if you want to play the game online. You can pay them $2.00 to activate your subscription with EASO or you can have ESPN.com pay it and they will send you all kinds of spam and promotional material…“

I don’t know why I even find this kind of thing surprising anymore. Pretty soon you’ll have to sign up for a 3rd party advertisting advertising package just to install and play a game. I mean, really, how big a leap would it be from the kind of tactic EA has adopted here? I’m starting to miss the days when companies at least tried to be subtle about whoring us all out for advertising purposes.

Anyway, the rest of the initial impressions were generally favorable. Sounds like they decreased the margin of error for a good shot in TrueSwing (making it more difficult), which was sorely needed in Tiger Woods 2004 (I skipped 2005). Hopefully there will be more good stuff to come. It’s going to be a long wait till October when my discretionary spending budget gets refreshed and I can finally pick this one up.

Anyone watching a new show this fall? I’m not much of a network TV guy. I used to be, I guess we all used to be, but most of my TV watching is on cable or HBO. I think my TIVO only catches 24 and West Wing on regular TV. Well, that and The Apprentice because Mary likes that show and I watch it with her. The Apprentice is, at its core, very stupid, but it’s not bad time killing TV. The new season started last night and the Donald fired this insane Latino woman. She was so bad that I thought she was paid to act the way she did. Would that surprise anyone? A paid actor to get on a show like that and behave like a monumental dick/bitch?

I decided to give “Invasion” a chance the other night. It’s the one about the aliens that invade during a hurricane in Florida. It wasn’t bad. Not great, but not bad. Network TV dramas just don’t do it for me anymore unless the writing is top notch. We have so many more outlets. The glory days of The West Wing was network TV at its very best. I just watch it now more out of habit I think. Same with 24. To say that 24 has top notch writing is like saying the Browns have a ball hawking defense; it’s not only a lie but a really blatant one at that. I regret not giving Lost a shot because I hear it’s good and it has one of the hobbits from LotR in it. That’s always a plus.

I do love The Shield, but that’s on Fx so that doesn’t count as regular TV. The Shield kicks all kinds of ass.

However, I did start watching Rome on HBO a few weeks ago and I totally love it. It’s political, violent, debauched, and very much like how I imagine that era of Roman society.

I wouldn’t even get HBO if it wasn’t for the original programming. The movies on HBO, as a rule, kinda suck. But man..when you start rattling off the Grade A shows on HBO: Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos, Real Time, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under (which just ended), and even the sports stuff like Costas Now and Real Sports — hell who has TIME to watch regular TV?

Not all HBO shows are up my TV alley. I don’t get into Def Poetry. I just don’t relate. And even as a snooty English degree carrying academic…I don’t like modern poetry. Never have. I also skip anything with “P. Diddy” in it just as a general rule. That rule has served me well over the years.

In thinking about this..wow I don’t watch one network TV sitcom. Do they still make those?

There are three things, thus far, that NHL 06 PC does better than NHL 2K6 on the Xbox:

-Better graphics
-Play by play calls players by their full name, which is kinda cool
-Rosters are much, much better

That’s it. I have yet to mess much with the slider settings but on a 10 min period game, default medium difficulty, to see the Jackets beat Carolina 11-7 with each team firing 65+ shots…my god EA. I’ve played about 5 games on default medium and it’s just hilarious to watch this game in action. It resembles NHL hockey kinda like how the Arena League resembles the NFL. It’s technically the same game…but not really.

No need to harp on it, but if you like hockey and want a videogame that plays like it, get NHL 2K6. Unless the sliders can drastically, and I mean drastically, alter the way this game plays — it’s shelfware. Again.

I’m 31 years old and I have discovered what it is to feel pure joy. There’s a million variations, but quite simply, it’s having your 20-month old daughter sneak up on you while you’re doing other things (washing dishes, picking up, etc.) and wrapping your legs up in a big old bear hug. Not sure why I feel the need to post about this, maybe it was this week’s episode of House, but I just feel compelled to say what a daily joy my daughter (Anastasia; Ana) has been to my life. My son, Kyle, is almost five months old now and I grow more attached to his silly grin each day, but adolescent fits aside I’ll take a laughing, loving, running around the house and climbing everything 2-year old any day of the week. Simply an amazing experiene and nothing -nothing- compares to it.

—–

I finally got around to watching the movie Sideways on Monday. Once I got past the fact that Lowell from Wings (Thomas Hayden Church) is in a movie I was able to settle right into this one. Maybe a touch overrated, but highly enjoyable none the less. I just wish they hadn’t included the scene right near the beginning where Paul Giamatti’s character ripped off his mom. His character may have been something of a loser, but that was a bit much. Anyway, I’m not a big wine guy, but I immediately identified with Giammatti’s failed attempts as a writer and thought all the dialog about wine in the movie was interesting as hell. A copule memorable lines:

“I am not drinking any f@#ing Merlot!”
“Do not drink too much. Do you hear me? I don’t want you passing out or going to the dark side. No going to the dark side!”
“Try to be your normal, humorous self. The guy you were before the tailspin. Do you remember that guy? People love that guy.”
“It tastes like the back of a f@#ing L.A. school bus. Now they probably didn’t de-stem, hoping for some semblance of concentration, crushed it up with leaves and mice, and then wound up with this rancid tar and turpentine bulls#@!. F’n’ Raid.”

And the scene where Giamatti has to get Church’s wedding rings back from some married woman’s house left me in stitches while at the same time scarring me for life. Good stuff.

—–

I’ve been waiting all week for something really bad to happen (to me, personally). I was always a big fan of the short-lived TV series Sports Night. In one episode there’s a run of dialogue about the song Eli’s Coming by Three Dog Night. In the show one of the characters heard the song as kid and didn’t understand the song was about a womanizer and instead regarded “Eli” as a portent of something dark. So whenever he felt a sense of impending doom he would utter the phrase, “Eli is coming.” I liked the sound of it and I sort of adopted the phrase for my own. This week the song, for the first time in my memory, ended up playing on a local radio station on the way into work and now I’m expecting to encounter disaster around every turn. Yes, I know. My mind is a scary place sometimes.

I’m not much of a fan of the so-called, “sweet science.” Never have been. Occasionally I’ve tried to sit down and watch a fight on ESPN or (when we still had it) HBO and never got into it. At the end of the day what I see is two grown men trying to beat the snot out of each other for a paycheck and that doesn’t appeal to me any more than watching cars circle an oval for four hours. Hell, I don’t even like to watch fighting in hockey. So it was with a certain amount of skepticism that I rented Fight Night Round 2 a couple weeks ago. But I figured what the hell. I did enjoy Mike Tyson’s Super Punch-Out for the NES, right?

I held onto FN-R2 for a week before making time to toss it in my Xbox last weekend. Since then I’ve not gone a night without at least one trip into the ring. I mean, damn, is this game addicting as all get out. For me this has been like “discovering” a movie that’s already been on DVD shelves for five years. I flat out cannot get enough of getting into the ring so I can dodge a slew of haymakers and jab away at the AI boxers.

I ended up jumping straight into career mode with a fighter that best represented me… a scrawny featherweight with decent speed and a punch that wouldn’t strike fear into the heart of your average girl scout. At first I thought the game was going to be criminally easy as I cruised through the amateur circuit. I was getting a little to proud of my boxing game acumen until I dropped by GameFAQs and learned that the amateur ranks are intentionally a bit of a joke. So after cruising to the amateur title I moved up to the pro ranks, using the money I earned form the move to nab a suave pair of trunks, new gloves and a pricey mouth piece. Seriously, $5k for a mouthpiece?

My first pre-fight training session was a riot. I chose to hit the heavy bag for a bit and on the following ratings adjustment screen I couldn’t help but laugh at how quickly I’d managed to develop a rock-hard six-pack. If it was that easy in real life or I’d pick up a heavy bag for my garage on the way home from work tonight. Anyway, as any fan of the game probably could’ve told me ahead of time, mauling your way through the 35 to 50 ranks isn’t much more difficult than beating up on the amateur mode competition. You have to be a bit more defensive and generally play smller, but these guys just don’t protect themselves very well at all.

Over the last couple nights, though, I’ve started to crack the Top 30 and it’s starting to get obvious that the climb from here is going to get steeper. (I’m something like 11-0 right now with 10 KOs.) It really feels like a very well balanced game, and my last two bouts (including my first win w/o a knockout) really forced me to bear down and watch my opponent’s patterns and habits. I’ve still only lost a total of about 3-5 rounds and I have yet to get knocked down, but if I suspect if I don’t get better at conserving my energy and blocking haymaker counterpunches that I’ll eventually get myself in trouble. Or maybe that stamina bonus you get from having a music video model appear in your entrourage is really all the difference. Funny, the woman in my real life entourage is much better at sapping my stamina. We may have to have a talk.

But I digress…

With all that said I do have questions for any of the FN vets reading. What’s a good pace to set in terms of deciding how far up the rankings to pick your fights? Is it ever a good idea to fight a lower-ranked opponent? How many weeks should you try to give yourself between fights and should you enter the non-ranked events that always seem to be 24-48 weeks out but that unlock more equipment? Can you add your own music to the pre-fight announcements? Is it worthwhile to try and move up a weight class? Should I even bother trying to throw or upgrade my special punches or illegal blows? Does taunting an opponent have any strategic merit in the game or is it window dressing?

I can probably go back to GameFAQs and get most of those answers, but honestly, I’m more interested in hearing from you guys.

Baseball stars gone wild. Oh look, there’s Mr. Ponson before drunk driving arrest #234980235. You’ve gotta check this out.

Credit for link goes to Fark, of course.

Lots of stuff going on in Casa de Abner. Ashley has started pre-school. She absolutely loves it, too. She goes 4 days a week which allows me a 2 hour window to get some work done without having to stop to play hide and seek, freeze tag (2 player freeze tag totally sucks) or watch another episode of Blue’s Clues. Mary has poison ivy, which is just a barrel of fun. After a month long hiatus, my 3-point jumper came back last night in my Tuesday night basketball league. I swear the hoop looked 10 feet wide. ‘Bout damn time. I am teetering on the edge of getting back into shape thanks to the fact that we can play full court now rather than side court. I tell ya, playing five 15-minute games of full court basketball three nights a week will get your physical mojo back. My ankles still suck, but I have accepted that.

Next week we go to the home builder to pick out siding and trim colors for the house as well as carpet and inside paneling. I have been given the green light to turn my work room into a Buckeye room. I have free reign on the colors and the decor in it, so I have that going for me.

On the work front, I’m about 80% done with the book’s first draft. I finished up entries this morning on Infected, Project Gotham Racing 3, Full Auto, and Call of Duty 2. As you can see I have entered the “Holiday 2005″ portion of the book. After that I move on to the “2006″ stuff and then I’m done. This is when Todd tells me how much stuff I messed up and I get to write parts of it over again. Yeah!

On the work front I should get a copy of Breeders Cup for the Xbox any day now and will post some impressions on it. My NHL2K6 review should be online at GameShark later this week or early next. (I gave it a B+, the only major issues being the occasional bug and the rosters) I’m also working on the NHL 06 review for CGM and then I will finally get to Fable the Lost Chapters after that and will finish up the current schedule with the Dawn of War add on review for CGM. So still lots of work to do and zero free gaming time, so my Fate playtime has dwindled of late.

Just read Bill’s interview. Very interesting stuff. I highly recommend you also check out the ‘unofficial official’ site of blitz, at www.blitznewz.com. Check out the new exclusive license announcement. That’s some funny stuff.

In the ‘more pimping’ department, my review of Burnout Revenge is now available for your viewing by clicking here. Fun game..some new additions, but a major bummer deletion in crash mode. That golf meter…it buh-lows.

Here ya go.

Well, the Browns won yesterday. Basically that breaks down like this:

Cleveland’s offense is actually pretty decent. A vastly improved Oline, very good receivers in Bryant, Northcutt, Jackson, and Braylon Edwards (who took a quick slant 80 yards). Rueben Droughns is showing people that it wasn’t just the Denver system. He’s good. And a serviceable TE in Heiden. Dilfer is Dilfer. He’s quite possibly the easiest player to root for. A superb guy and a locker room gem. If he avoids making critical INTs, which has been his MO in the past, the Browns will score points.

The Browns defense is atrocious. It’s expansion team bad. The fact that the Packers only scored 24 points and 7 of those came when the Browns were in 100% prevent mode shows much more about the Green Bay offense than it does the Cleveland defense. I have never in my life seen an NFL team with a weaker pass rush than the Browns. Next year we need to draft 8 defensive players and hope a few of them stick.

It was great to see them get a W. I still expect a 6-10 season because most teams will score 30+ on this defense. That way, we can draft A.J. Hawk next year and I will be extremely happy.

Speaking of Ohio State, a 27-6 win over San Diego State on Saturday was a classic case of a Texas Hangover. Coaches and former players said that this was the worst week of practice by a Tressel coached OSU team in 5 years. It showed. San Diego State scored on the first play of the game on an 80 yard flanker screen. That woke up the D and I think SDSU had like 3 first downs the rest of the game. The Buckeye offense stayed in neutral all day, but still won handily. If we were going to have a major letdown I am glad it was against SDSU and not Iowa.

This brings me to one of the things I hate about college football. There are few things that I hate but this is one of them. Polls. The polls themselves are bad enough but OSU wins its game by 3 touchdowns and Louisville, who beat Oregon State 63-28 leapfrogs over them because, I guess, OSU didn’t beat SDSU bad ENOUGH. So if OSU scores in the final seconds and wins 34-6, would that have been enough to keep Louisville at #9 rather than jumping over Ohio State?

I certainly will not argue that the OSU offense looked lackluster on Saturday, but the defense gave up 1 score on the game’s first play and SDSU didn’t get into OSU territory the rest of the game. It’s not like OSU beat SDSU on a last second FG.

When we start penalizing teams for winning but not by enough points it encourages Spurrier-like coaching when you throw 50 yard TD passes in the 4th quarter of a blowout. That’s good?

If that’s going to be the precedent then Louisville better blow teams out every week. There are cupcake schedules, and then there this:

at Kentucky
Oregon State
at South Florida
Fla Atlantic
North Carolina
at West Virginia
at Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
at Connecticut

If these are the rules the coaches poll is going to play by, fine. But the week that Louisville beats one of these weak teams late in the 4th — they better get leapfrogged by someone else. If OSU, for example, beats #21 Iowa next week and Louisvile only beats South Florida by a few scores, then they should drop.

Right?

Either people have completely overestimated the talent level of the Detroit Lions or the coaching staff has absolutely failed to do its job. Receivers breaking off routes, the offensive line hasn’t allowed Kevin Jones to hit the line of scrimmage w/o breaking a tackle, the defense is letting Thomas Jones run through them like he’s Walter Payton and Kyle Orton looks like the next incarnation of Drew Brees as every damn receiver on the field gets ridiculously wide open. I have seen more than my share of embarrassing losses from the Lions, but this may be in the top three or five. And I’m paying DirecTV to see it. Absolutely pathetic.

All that crap about furburger not playing, so I didn’t start him, whihc of course he gets 234094 fantasy points. Then everyone wanted to veto my Culpepper trade, so I did as commissioner. Of course, Culpepper is now at -2 and going down.

This year is a total failure now. Ugh. And what’s even worse is that I have to watch Dan Dierdorf with the Patriots. OMG how can this guy be still doing commentating.

Found this blog today called Eye of the Storm which has a ton of never before seen pics of the the damage left by Katrina. It’s worth reading too. Go back to the August archive. These two guys (reporters) have been there since before the storm hit.

do i dare sleep? the wind and rain are starting to make noise now inside the building. i guess i should save myself for what will surely be a long day of playing scrabble, shouting above the din and fearing the storm surge.
ah yes. i suppose i oughta, even though there is more pound cake to be eaten.
damn, my brain hurts, maybe i am tired. last look outside before sleep: torrents of rain and over an inch of water covering the parking lot. here we go….

NHL 2K6 has failed the realism test. The Blue Jackets won their opener in OT 4-3 over the Caps.

I kid.

What I like about this game is that not only do the games feel different but each period feels different. In most sports games you rarely have to change your strategy throughout the course of the game. I’ll use NCAA as an example. I can tell in the first quarter if I will be able to run on the CPU defense. I could take my Akron HB and run dive plays and if I was getting runs of 5, 6, 8, 10 early in the game I knew that I’d be able to do the same thing in the 4th. Asking the CPU to bring a safety into the box to stop the run is like asking Tammy Faye Bakker to lay off the rouge.

This isn’t something that is solely an NCAA issue — most games are like this. NFL2K5 was like this. Madden has been like this since John Madden had hair. Almost every basketball game not called Inside Drive is like this. EA’s hockey game has ALWAYS been like this.

I only have about 10 games under my belt for NHL 2K6 but each period thus far is like its own chapter. For example, in my opening night win last night with the Jackets, I was up 3-0 in the first period. Sanderson, Nash, and Cassels scored three straight goals and it was shockingly easy. Now, in most games, this had blowout written all over it because I’d just keep doing the same thing and over and over and win big.
At the end of the first I think I had 19 shots on goal. I ended up with 40 for the game.

The Cap defense adjusted to what I was doing and completely took away the centering pass in front of the net, forcing me to try a different approach. In the meantime they rattled off 3 goals to tie it. I won the game on a Sanderson slapshot from just inside the blue line in OT, which was just total luck. The fact that I scored three goals with ease in the first and then struggled to even get a quality shot off for the rest of the game I think is just awesome.

I have read about some franchise save bugs, which seeing as how Kush made the game is by no means a shock, but I haven’t seen them yet. I have seen the “face off” bug which is just plain weird. (The CPU will not have a guy in the circle for the face off.) I’ve only seen that once, though. I haven’t installed the PC version of NHL 06 yet but I will be utterly amazed if it is in the same league as this game.

Did you know that Microsoft made a tilt controller for the PC? No one bought that either. Good job, Nintendo!