The Blog for the Sports Gamer

He just left me a message on Xbox Live. “Finished Call of Duty 2. SPOILER ALERT: Hitler Loses.”

Those of you who think that paying $100 to connect your Xbox to the wireless network is too much, don’t fret — MidnightBox.com, today only, while supplies last is offering the Logitech Wireless Network Extender for $32.95. Check it out here.

OK folks, if you want to get in on the NCAA tourney contest, I need you to supply me with an email address. Please only one bracket per person. I am using CBS Sportsline and I have the “league” set up but in order to play I need to manually invite you. You can email me an address or post one in in the comment section if you want to play.

Also known as the SBMMAG!

I’ll be reposting this every few days so that everyone has a chance to see it, but here’s the deal:

The blog is holding a March Madness contest, where you’ll fill out your NCAA bracket in order to win a nice little gift basket courtesy of Grey Dog Software and, well, me.

The winner of the contest will receive:

• A signed copy of the 2006 Gamer’s Tome of Ultimate Wisdom
• A free copy of Total College Basketball
• A free copy of Bowl Bound College Football — both games are digital downloads courtesy of Grey Dog.

What I need from you guys is a reliable online bracket website. I assume there are plenty out there — so I’m open for ideas here.

For those of you who missed it, You Tube has posted the Family Guy Police Squad/Naked Gun parody. Check out the Doom reference.

Perhaps you have to pray just to make it today. If that’s the case, check out the new MCHammer blog!

Finally those of you that are female (heh, as if) probably enjoyed Ace’s “Father Figure” from American Idol. Well the original singer of that song apparently was wacked out of his mind when he was arrested in London yesterday.

So there you go. Time to get ready for work.

Just FYI, MLB 06: The Show is released this week for PS2 and PSP. Although for the most part my PS2 is picking up dust, I’m going to give both games a shot. I enjoyed the PSP game last year, but didn’t really enjoy the PS2 version — although I was a fan from other years of the game. I think someone will assign my the games as well .

In gaming news, I’m still fighting my son for Xbox 360 time. The one good thing is that we have found a game we can enjoy together: Full Auto. Racing + Crashing + Weapons = Fun. Yes, there are some frame rate issues from time to time, but not enough to affect the gameplay. If you like carnage and firetrucks this game is for you. Talk about connecting with your kids — Wow a firetruck! I crashed into it, etc. So we’re having fun. It’s mindless fun, and sometimes you need that, especially in a dangerous world…the world of the Knight Rider.

Many times, a TV-to-DVD set isn’t released because of a lack of music clearances. That’s why you’ll never see WKRP in Cincinnati on DVD. Every piece of music that they used on the show would have to be paid for. Of course in 1979, that wasn’t a big deal. Today, it is huge. Kinda like how all those samples on the Beastie Boys album Paul’s Boutique could be done, because it was the late 80s….now you’d never be able to pay enough for all those samples.

Anyway, I digress…as we watch yet another Knight Rider episode, I was astounded by all the music in them… there’s Love’s Been A Little Bit Hard on Me by Juice Newton…and then You Were Always on My Mind by Willie Nelson…except, upon further review, it wasn’t by either one of them…they used sound alikes.

Hey, this isn’t a bad idea to get through all those clearances they needed for the DVD — but then it struck me…one of the things I despised about this show when I was 11 was that they used ‘fake’ songs during it. So to recap, they were too cheap to pay for songs in the first place, which is kind of funny. But if they did pay for the songs to air, they probably wouldn’t have been able to release the DVD set because of the clearances…so kind of ironic, don’t you think?

So there’s my anecdote. Hope you enjoyed it.

My fascination with my childhood continued this weekend. I continued to watch the Electric Company and marveled at how The chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy helped me read. I didn’t realize that one little girl in the Short Circus sang Fame and Flashdance (What A Feeling).

What’s even more amazing is that my pre-school aged son is just loving this DVD set. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen him this curious in reading before this show. Really.

Then for my daughter, there’s Knight Rider. We now have to use the show’s sign off when we say good night — “Michael Knight, a lone crusader in a Dangerous World…the world of the Knight Rider.” Not that anyone really knows WTF that means, but still. I think I have seen enough Knight Rider this weekend though. Between the Pilot and the ‘sequel’ called Knight Rider 2000 — which really sucked (they killed Devin!), I’m tapped out.

Now, Easy Reader, I could keep watching that. That’s heavy….

So, here’s what I did last night:
* Watched the 2 hour pilot episode of Knight Rider
* Watched 2 Electric Company episodes.
* Played Call of Duty 2
* Played Fight Night Round 3
* Bought some new Gamer Photos
* Reinstalled Windows XP on my new 250GB HD.

Did you know that XP (old) doesn’t recognize disk space over 137 GB? So I had to go through all the windows update downloads before I had to show another partition of the Hard drive. Talk about annoying. Still have loads to install and I have to work now. Ugh.

Electric Company rules. Morgan Freeman stars as “Easy Reader” with a song that’s heavy for all the cool cats out there. Love of Chair has to be the best soap opera ever. I already think my 5 year old son is learning things from it. And it’s just three episodes. Why PBS didn’t keep this show on the air is mind boggling. I mean the 70s factor is in full effect in the first three episodes, from the guitar feedback to the graphics….wow.

Fight Night Round 3 is a lot of fun to play. I totally agree with Todd — just like other sports games — buying clothing should not enhance your attributes. Gee, if I only bought shorts, then I could move around faster? WTF! Thankfully the game is a lot of fun — definitely not perfect. Madden has better commentary. By the start of my first Ali-Frazier rematch I’ve heard all the comments already! Ugh.

Alright, gotta jump in the shower, ttyl.

Well, I broke down and purchased Fight Night for Xbox 360. I haven’t been able to play it because it’s my 5 year old’s school vacation this week and he’s been playing NFS Most Wanted, Call of Duty 2 and Full Auto more than I have.

While there may be some debate about him playing a T rated game, I have seen Call of Duty, I don’t think it’s any worse that what he sees on TV, and I was there with him going through the game the first time, although, he can now play it on his own. Family controls are very helpful here .

I picked up a 250GB HD from CC today also for $149.99, but with $80 in rebates. If I get teh rebates, that’s certainly not a bad deal at all.

While at CC I also picked up Knight Rider seasons 1 and 2, just becuase the kids were asking for it. I got home a little early from work today and we watched the 2 hour pilot together. Great family viewing. It was a little weird seeing the pilot, as I hadn’t before.

I then went over to BB, picked up the Electric Company DVD and finally found a car charger for my Blackberry. You’d think these things would be easier to find, but noooo.

Interestingly enough I went to CC to find a new MP3 player now that my wife has taken my Iriver T10. I saw the Sansa M260 for $199.99, but on CC.com I saw it for $159. I can then use my simple rebate account to get more money back. So that’s awesome, but I have to drive the @#$ck back down there tomorrow. But you also get an $80 rebate if you sign up for Rhapsody, so it’s all good, i guess…..

Evidently Big City Baseball did an interview with the creator of Out of the Park Baseball Manager (Markus Heinsohn)last month (I only just found it). While it is on the short side, they do ask some good questions about the upcoming version and get some good answers from Markus. If you’re fan of OOTP it’s well worth a look. Here’s a taste:

BigCity : I understand that GM and manager “personalities” now play a part in what happens with AI teams. Could you tell us what kind of things these personalities effect?

Markus : Every coach/manager/GM has a set of prefered strategy tendencies, both for in-game strategy and roster strategy. That results in a lot of different styles. Manager A for example builds in speed and batting AVG, while manager B looks for OBP machines and strong starting pitching. These preferences are used throughout the entire AI.

This one’s on my short list of highly anticipated sports games for the first half of the year.

The adrenaline tank I’ve been running on for nearly two weeks with all the craziness at work finally ran out last night. I’m talking absolutely dead on my feet. I don’t really even remember driving home at the end of the day. Naturally, Ana picked this night to act out every bit of her two years: stomping, throwing, hitting, the whole nine. Finally, I turned to Angie and said if our daughter was going to be like that the whole evening that I needed her to handle it. Passing the buck with my kids is something I’ve never done in the two years I’ve been a parent, but at that point all I wanted to do was smack her, and obviously, that wasn’t an option.

It was however, a good mood to be in to test out Fight Night. Beating the snot out of some lame amateur boxers was a nice tonic with which to finish off the day. FYI – for those on a budget, Fry’s is selling it for 47.99 instead of 59.99. Since I had a Best Buy Reward Zone coupon I went with BB and had them price match the Fry’s deal, so it was nice to save a little coin there.

So far the game’s chief selling point is the graphics (on the 360, anyway). Not much has changed from the demo, but they are still stunning. This is the game to show people who haven’t seen a 360 in action. I continue to be impressed with the range of emotion in each boxer’s features. The actual gameplay, however, feels more refined than revolutionized. It’s too early to see how well the game’s been balanced compared to Round 2, but it does feel smoother in terms of combining bobs, blocks, counters, etc. The sound, to my ear, is also improved. You can tell how hard a guy is trying to hit (or how tired he is) from the sounds he makes while punching. You can hear a fighter breathing heavy if he’s getting gassed. Etc. All-in-all, if you liked previous versions, I think you’ll like this one.

That said I remain under whelmed in terms of improvements to the career mode. You can do more with creating a fighter in terms of his look (though I still can’t make a truly pale white guy to match my defining characteristic). It’s not to the Tiger Woods PC level, but it’s better than in most sports games. It was also cool, in an embarrassing way, that I could create an amateur consistent with my build (scrawny and under 130 pounds). However, once you get into career mode there’s not much new.

You can spar during training, but it’s more for your own practice and has no effect on your boxer. The other training modes are all the same (dummy, heavy bag and weights) and they affect the same set of attributes (power, speed, cuts, heart, etc.). Although, when you pick a training method it now has a slight negative impact on the attributes that method doesn’t improve. So if I hit the heavy bag I’ll get a hefty bonus to my endurance, but my speed will drop slightly. I don’t remember the game doing this last year and I like the idea since it prevents you from completely ignoring certain any of the training methods.

Rankings, however, appear to be completely gone. Now your boxer is graded on his popularity, which seems to increase via your overall record or by taking on higher-profile fights. I like the notion of a popularity rating, but aren’t rankings a significant part of the sport too? How is it that the feature can just be dropped?

I’m also still not a fan of the degree to which your equipment (your shorts in particular) affect your attributes. Seriously, the pro shop section of the game doesn’t have a toe hold on reality (which is nothing new). I mean who spends middle six figures on trunks and whose trunks make them a better boxer? It’s a minor thing, but it remains silly. And from a game design perspective, I think it’s a lazy way of trying to “add” to the gameplay. What’s more frustrating to me is that you still have to scroll through the various pieces one-by-one for each category with no way to sort based on price, manufacturer, available items, etc. It takes forever to scroll through the various trunks and you can’t see anything beyond the description (which tells you diddly) without pressing the preview button. It was monotonous in FN Round 2 and it appears exactly the same this time around too.

I also don’t get why you still can’t put your own damn music in the game. (At least not from what I can see so far.) Given the rather limited selection of tracks you can choose from (in terms of genre), it would be nice if my lanky trailer-trash cracker of a boxer could cruise into the ring listening to Van Halen or something. I get that a lot of people like rap music and that’s fine, but it ain’t exactly my cup ‘o afternoon tea and I’d like to have my boxer enter the ring to the tune of something that I find at least remotely palatable.

At this point I’ve gone through four amateur bouts (all KO’s). From what I’ve read Round 3 follows the familiar pattern of being quite easy in the early going and then stiffening up as you establish your record as a pro. (Too me that’s very much appropriate and a decent reflection of the actual sport.) My next match is for the amateur title that, if consistent with last year’s formula, will open up the pro opponents. I’d have liked to get through all the amateur stuff last night, but frankly my opponents weren’t the only ones ready to hit the canvas by the time I set the controller aside. Hopefully tonight I’ll have a little more energy and will actually be able to enjoy playing the game on it’s merits rather than imagining the heads of certain other people on my opponent’s body as I land a haymaker.

Quibbles aside, Fight Night Round 3 is still monumentally entertaining and worth every penny (if you can get it cheaper than the ridiculer 59.99 conventional pricing).

While I do try to avoid waxing political too much, this one I’ve just got to put out there, if for no other reason than there appears to have been no public debate about it (unless I slept-in on the day that this was the scandal dujor). This from an article at Salon.com:

“On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president…

“By his extraordinary order, he [Bush] elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.“

Now Salon is hardly a bastion of independent reporting. In fact, I’ve largely quit reading them because I don’t find them any more trustworthy in their bias than Fox News. But this strikes me as unbelievably significant for something I’ve not seen reported once in mainstream news sources.

Given that I’m far from an expert mind in understanding the ramifications of this amendment to an existing executive order, I put it to you dear readers (or at least those of you who may have a deeper understanding of these matters than I do): Is this a gross overreaction by Salon or a legit concern that the chief executive has unilaterally granted undprecedented power to the office of the vice president?

This isnt’ a political axe-grinding post. I want a better understanding of this one.

This is hysterical. I love the legal terms this guy uses to get his potential wife to sign it, like “ingestion of c!m”. How many of you guys out there got your wife to sign this? Can you buy this at Staples, like with a Quicken Family Lawyer, now with Contract of Wifely Expectations?

First off, I’m thrilled Todd still has a job. Now, Todd, get a move on man — we have another Gamer’s Tome to publish. Oh, and in Tome News, it is now being paired with Penny Arcade’s Attack of the Bacon Robots on Amazon so if you like Penny Arcade you can get both for $24, which is really a helluva deal.

My blog time, as knew it would, has slipped to almost nil of late due to the new house construction. My WoW time has slipped too and I have let Bauman get ahead of me by like three levels with our new Taurens — that will not do!

We have water in the new basement (tile has broken around the foundation) and the well, septic, and final electric is all being put in — and we painted the whole damn thing in like four days. I am gassed.

On top of that, we have had the furnace running almost non stop for 25 days to dry out the house. As a result, our electric bill, in a house we aren’t even living in yet, was $276. Ahhhh!!!!

Man I hope it’s that high just due to the lack of carpet, the non stop furnace running, and the fact that builders are going in and out all day letting air escape. I dunno if I can swing a $300 power bill each month.

Oh, and did I mention we have a mouse or mice in the attic and/or walls? I didn’t? Well, we do. Whee.

We also owe taxes this year to the tune of $670.

So, to recap — I am slowly starting to implode.

On the plus side we’re going to be running a Grey Dog Software contest soon — as soon as I get my head on straight.