The Blog for the Sports Gamer

What sort of sick twisted world do we live in when the USA beats Mexico in World Cup Soccer, but Mexico beats the USA in baseball?

Many thanks to all the USA players who stayed in Spring Training and made the US look like a laughting stock.

I watched the WBC today and it was pretty good. The Dominican Republic vs Cuba sounds like an awesome game to watch.

Well, when I had shipping notification of the Mystery Box and it was via USPS mail, I knew I hadn’t won the magical Xbox 360.

Instead, I received a USB Massage Ball. I shit you not. Who was the person who said, you know what would be awesome? A personal massager that you plug into your PC to use! THey also show a picture of a car. I’m not sure of any USB enabled cars around here. Typical Japanese shit. What’s even funnier is that they show the other massagers. One is of an arm with two fingers showing V for victory (heh) and then another one ..well…let’s just say it’s in a shape the ladies would love. Of course I can’t imagine any lady going onto a computer, and using this thing. If they do, could they PM me please? I’d love to talk to you about that.

Anyway, all pervness aside, it was good for a laugh.

Before you laugh hysterically at my NCAA bracket please note that it was only this morning that I realize I hadn’t locked in my votes, and it was 11:58AM and the picks were due by noon. As you can imagine, in order to play I started going click happy. So now I have a final four of Gonzaga (I can live with that). GW (not so much), Michigan State (meh) and BC (which I can live with although it was kinda scary earlier today).

So I’m an idiot. I wish I could change some of them. Of course if I win, then it will all have gone according to plan. Is anyone really working this afternoon? Just checking.

Well, I placed a phone call (see the comments section of my “Bugger” post) to MS last night and that guy thinks the issue was with my 360. Per Dan’s suggestion I hope to ship mine out to MS on Monday and get a replacement by Friday. Credit where credit is due, the tech support guy was very easy to talk to and didn’t screw me around in the least. I could also understand him when he spoke, which puts him in the upper echelon of support people I’ve talked to in the last year. Bravo, sir. You have exceeded the bar (granted, it’s set embarrassingly low).

Bad news: A week without a 360. Good news: I no longer felt like I had to blame 2k sports for the problems I’ve had. I was happy, in a way. You see I don’t like bashing 2k. Actually, I don’t like bashing MS either, but it’s easier to blame them (and they’ve obviously had problems with these consoles). I think 2k does marvelous things with their games (especially NBA and College Hoops). Even when some ideas fall flat there’s no question that they try to innovate with the gameplay experience. It’s not like a lot of EA where they seem to focus more time coming up with a cool-sounding name for a new feature and then forget to actually do anything remotely cool with said feature. (Paging Race for the Heisman, you have a call on the red courtesy phone.) So the notion that is was just my console was appealing to me.

Then I finally paid a visit to the College Hoops glitches thread at Operation Sports. Guess what? Forget everything I just wrote. The game is just buggered. Now I’m not saying some of the problems aren’t still with my Xbox. It appears that most people haven’t had the NBA problems I get (though some do), for example, and the MS tech was still very quick to decide it should be replaced. But there’s still a horde of problems with College Hoops (several VC-staff confirmed in the OS thread; their involvement in the thread starts with post #64 on page 7):

- Players disappear on replays such that you see the court, the hoop and the ball, but no players (and the camera eventually wigs out and jumps around the center court area).
- The shooting stat bug is still there. It’s evidently quite random, but some games a player for one team (could be human, could be AI and it strikes all positions) will start out an automatic 0 for x (where X is a number between 10-20; not sure if attempts value is “random” or not).
- The game has a problem streaming to the hard drive such that halftime replays and post-game wrap-ups show still shot highlights instead of full-motion replays. (This may be related to the replay bug.)
- If you edit a player using a specific method (read the thread if you want more detail) it causes the game to become wildly unstable with Legacy mode crashes and the like. (Something about edited players all receiving an “A” potential.)
- Online play is just jacked.

This is all bad enough, just on spec. But it’s even worse when it’s a port from the Xbox/PS2 version to the 360 that had already been delayed several months. Can you imagine what condition the game must’ve been in back in January? Scary.

Again, credit where credit is do. There are VC people posting in the forum seeking information and promising that a patch is in the works. That’s more than I recall seeing with the Xbox version of NBA. I’m glad those guys are out there, taking a few lumps, and indicating they’re trying to fix the issues. And I’m not blaming any specific groups at 2k. I mean if testers don’t have the time/resources to identify/address problems, or the publisher has the developers tied to a drop-dead date, what can they realistically do? You can’t draw water from sand. But that doesn’t make it okay that people are paying $60 for a game that doesn’t work as advertised.

Sorry, but on a console, system crashes are flat out unacceptable. Stuff like the stat bug happens. But I should *NEVER* be playing a game of Hoops with the fear that it’s going to crash in the third quarter or that I’ll only be able to sim two weeks into my legacy before it crashes. I should not have to worry about making multiple saves, buying a memory card to copy saves to while I reformat the hard drive (yes, some users are being advised that they should reformat their drives), or be told that things might work better if I station my 360 vertically. The Microsoft support guy said that pet hair might be getting into the system and causing it to overheat (I have two cats). I mean sweet Jesus, at what point does the madness stop? Should I buy the console some chocolates and flowers too? Whisper sweet nothings into the air vents? Maybe it would help if I perform an ancient Native American ritual to bless each disc before I play a game.

Bottom line: When this junk happens then somebody, probably a bunch of somebodies, screwed up. Doesn’t matter if it’s bad console design from MS, bad parts from an MS supplier, bad testing, bad publishing decisions or a bad cup of latte. But the fact that these problems continually crop up with 2k games in particular is damning. Other games have bugs and other problems, but for example, I’ve never worried about Fight Night locking up in the middle of the 8th round. I never worried that King Kong would crash just seconds from a save point (although it might’ve been best if it had).

Guys (2k), I love your games. I love the attention to detail and the obvious effort that goes into making them. I do. I don’t think these problems have anything to with unspeakable carelessness or a lack of passion to produce the best game possible. But something in your design, testing, manufacturing or publishing methodology isn’t working and it hasn’t been working for *years*.

Identify it. Fix it.

I’m a little late getting to this one (three games are now underway), but what would March Madness be without some shamefully bad tourney predictions. (Disclaimer: I watched about six games of college ball this year. All predictions are probably wrong and were made based on reading “expert” analysis from pseudo-gurus at places like SI, CBS Sportsline, etc.)

- Game I’m Most Looking Forward To: 2nd Round – Michigan State versus North Carolina. I’ll be shocked if this game doesn’t happen. SHOCKED! It seems all the bracketologists (woe to anyone who self-applies that word, unless they’re joking around) have MSU since, you know, sure they lost a lot, but they had a tough schedule. And I see their point, but they still lost those games, right? And it’s not like the competition gets easier in the tourney. From what little I’ve read the Tar Heels sound like they’re peaking at the right time. I really think this could be a fun game to watch and I think it’ll be the Tarheels who walk away with the win.

- High Seed That Won’t Reach the Sweet 16: This one’s gotta be #2 Tennessee, right? The team that has multiple double-digit losses to other top teams. I say they fall to Wichita St. in the second round. (Okay, in the blog pool I picked them to reach the Sweet 16, but I’m gutless.)

- Most Underrated team: Kansas (#4). I wanted to pick a team not seeded in the top four seeds, but I just don’t see it. There are a few I think could’ve made a bigger splash if they weren’t destined for second round matchups with #1 seeds, but I want my underrated team to have a real shot at making the Final Four. I don’t think they will (I’ve got either Memphis or Gonzaga), but I think they’ve got a better shot than the other seeds ranked #4 or higher.

- Final Four: I have two brackets. In my “good” bracket (the blog one), I’ve got Duke (blech), UConn, Gonzaga and Villanova. Note that I had no intention of putting the Zags in the Final Four, but when I look at the matchups I expect them to have (Indiana, UCLA and Memphis/Kansas) it’s hard not to think they’ve got a real shot this time. In my “work” bracket I’ve got Texas, Memphis, UConn and Villanova (I’ve got the Zags slated to lose to UCLA in that bracket). I know, three #1s and a #2 seed. Boring.

- Finals: Blog-bracket – Duke vs. Villanova with Villanova winning 82-75. In my work bracket I’ve got Texas and UConn with UConn taking it 81-76.

- Gutshot champion – The last couple years I start out picking a gutshot bracket where I just pick winners on pure gut reaction, before I do any “research.” That bracket puts Iowa, Memphis, Michigan St and Villanova in the Final Four with Villanova taking the crown over Iowa. Yes, my gut puts Iowa in the Finals. I also have Illinois over UConn in the Sweet 16. This is why I don’t go with my gut.

She’s scheduled for surgery at 9:45AM tomorrow and it will, hopefully, be an out-patient procedure. There’s a 5% chance that this won’t help her double vision, which she only gets when looking directly up or down and not in her standard field of gaze. Still, we’re hoping this works.

We’re set to close on the new house March 22nd. So, there’s some good news.

On the game front, I haven’t been in much of a gaming mood of late so aside from my late night WoW sessions with Steve Bauman (he loves it when I drop his name like that) I’m just sticking to work stuff. GalCivII is next on my plate followed by Battle for ME II and then Oblivion for the PC.

I’m actually kinda happy MLB 2K6 was delayed because I’m getting loaded down with stuff for late March.

Alright, maybe I should just swear off 2k basketball games. That or it’s time to call Microsoft for a replacement 360 (much more likely). Last night I got started on my College Hoops legacy with Sacred Heart. Before the end of the top 5 presentation for the season preview the game locks up with a dirty disc error. When I opened and closed the drive tray (twice) I got errors that the disc should be put into a 360. Only after I powered off the box and restarted it did it load the game again. All appeared okay, but in the one game I played last night I no longer get full-motion replays at halftime and to end the game and the players totally disappeared from the in-game replays. You see a shot of the court, the ball floating around, but no players. I know this (the replay SNAFU) was a problem for some users with NBA2k6 360, but I forget if anyone identified the cause as being the game or the console.

I also know I’ve read about the “not a 360” problem before, so I’m leaning towards this being an issue with my console. It’s odd, however, that of the games I’ve tried it’s only happening with NBA 2k6 and College Hoops 2k6. To add to my wild speculation my brother-in-law said this weekend that Microsoft was having problems with getting bad memory from one of their suppliers so I suppose it’s possible that the 2k games just happen to access a memory address or some such thing that many other games don’t (I’ve had zero troubles with Fight Night, Kong, DOA4, etc.). Not sure how plausible that theory is but it would explain a lot.

If anyone knows anything authoritative about this problem and can confirm that it’s my 360 please do let me know. In the meantime the one game I played last night (Sacred Heart vs. the University of Rhode Island) was another enjoyable loss. I’m a touch concerned that bad players are just not allowed to make certain shots, however (a recurring issue in this series). I can’t count the number of blow shots my 57-rated point guard made from within 5-feet of the rim (including a number of very lightly contested shots). I think at one point half-way through the 3rd quarter my team FG% was around 22. Yowch. My hope/guess is that if it is a problem it can be tweaked with sliders.

On a sidenote: NCIS was fantastic last night.

I really enjoyed the MS GamerScore on the Xbox 360. It was a fun little indicator of your playing performance. Then GameSpot goes and publishes an article about how easy it is to get to a GamerScore of 6000 with the games lamest acheivements like “shoot a basket” and so forth. Now the 6,000 doesn’t seem like much of a big deal at all, especially if you like sports games.

Of course, since sports games are not that big of a genre outside of Madden, if you’re reading this, you’ll probably have a leg up on the competition. Personally I’m torn between filling my GameQ with NHL 2K6, College Hoops 2K6, and NBA 2K6 when I have heard middling reviews just to increase my gamerscore, and filling my Q with stuff I actually want to play like Burnout, The Outfit and others….

Apparently “Take Two Accounting Errors” are not to blame for the delay in shipping MLB 2K6 to stores, now due late April for the 360. It’s just that they want to get the game right. Let’s hope they get the game right before NCAA Football comes out. Thankfully, unlike with Madden, you do have other options for baseball. Well, I mean if you have a PS2 or PSP.

MLB for the PSP is just plain awesome if you ask me. Some new modes vs. last year. more depth and some issues fixed. Well worth your time if you need a baseball fix.

I’ve been a member of Gamefly for over two years, and they just started this rewards program that gets you 10% off their already low used games that you buy. Now they also give you a $5 coupon for every 3 months of use. Not a bad deal. With all those discounts I just bought Burnout for the Xbox 360 for $37.29! Only $22 below list. I’ll take it!!!

If you signed up for the Sports Blog NCAA Contest please fill out your brackets online. You should have received an email with instructions.Good luck.

Sad news this morning — Peter Tomarken, host of the game show Press Your Luck, has died in a plane crash. He was the pilot of the plane.

In other news, Isaac Hayes says he’s leaving South Park.

In actual gaming related news, I rented Burnout 360 from Gamefly. As usual, let me say that the reviews are moronic. As someone who had the original Xbox game, I read the reviews and they all basically said, it’s not worth it if you’ve already bought the Xbox version.

What a complete and total load of shit. The graphics on this game in 1080 are in-friggin-credible. I cannot believe how smooth the game is. It is simply amazing. Oh yeah, and they fixed crash mode. One of the things I HATED about the Xbox game was the new “meter” where you had to get your engine at the right speed and stuff…well it went back to old school now. Thank god.

Bottom line: if you have Burnout for the Xbox and loved it, then go run out right now and buy the Xbox 360 version. If you’ve never played Burnout, then you’re in for a real treat.

I often wonder, do most reviewers have HD sets? Most freelancers I talk to (ie people that are like me and don’t work in an office for a print or online magazine) do NOT have HD sets. I’m not saying I talk to everyone, but let’s face it — freelance reviewing doesn’t allow you a lot of luxuries, like an HDTV. The difference on the Xbox 360 is night and day. Editors should require reviewers to review on an HD set for the X360. HD on the original Xbox seemed more like a gimmick to me…anyone else still playing MX vs ATV, the one game that’s 1080i? It’s nice and all, but nothing like the 1080 on the Xbox 360….

Update: Stardock posted a well-written statement on this issue here. If only every company behaved as responsibly at the people at Stardock…

There’s an interesting article at Ars Technica today on copy-protection. Stardock Software, the makers of GalCiv II (looks great, but I can’t break free from CivIV), have taken a rather unique path in implementing copy-protection for their game: There isn’t any. None whatsoever. Seems they didn’t want to get in the way of their legit customers actually being able to play their games unhindered (all signs indicate this tact is doing quite well for them too).

And for this “crime” of putting their gamers ahead of software piracy hysteria, the developers of Starforce, the makers of multiple copy-protection schemes for games, have responded as any rational, well-meaning and responsible company would: They posted a link to a BitTorrent download of GalCiv2. Bravo boys. Well-played indeed. This from a company whose code has caused any number of legitimate users significant headaches in that it jacked up users’ PCs in one form or another. Congrats to the men and women of Starforce. You’ve earned my inagural Cheap Hacks of the Week Award. Tell me, you monosyllabic band of walking cliches, do you all wear black hats and have mustaches that you’re fond of twirling? Schmucks.

CivIV aside the only reason I haven’t purchased GalCiv2 yet (I enjoyed the first one) is that my gaming budget is going to be short for a couple more weeks, and despite the fact that it could be obtained illegally for free, the thought of doing so has never even entered my mind. Nevertheless, Starforce’s cheap tactics make me want to make an exception to my strict budget and go buy the game anyway. A company like Stardock deserves to get my money. If you’re into 4x turn-based strategy, GalCiv 2 is well worth a look.

EDIT: The original link Starforce posted to the BitTorrent location has been pulled. (No surprise there. It’s just step 1 in the PR spin control handbook.)

Predictably, Gamefly delivered College Hoops about twenty minutes before we had to blow town for the weekend. I was non-plussed with the timing to say the least and partially regretted not choosing to stay home (the sacrifices I make for family). And unfortunately, I only managed to get one game in (and to dink around in the Legacy options a little) before calling it a night after we got home on Sunday.

I’ll refrain from getting much into gameplay. I mean it was one game, but here’s some stuff I noticed.

- It sure is ‘perty.

- The sounds effects are tres cool (love the sound of the ball going through the net), but seem oddly balanced. The PA announcer voice is absolutely booming, for example. But it’s the loudness balance of sound effects that’s a little troubling. The sound of a dunk is really quite loud, yet the ball dribbling on the floor is very, very quiet and the sound a ball swooshing through the net is somewhere in between. I hope this can be tweaked from the menu settings, but the fact that certain sound effects seem quiet, while others very loud may make finding a happy medium difficult.

- Fight songs for the Big Ten are indeed in the game. Yeah!

- It’s only one game, but my guard didn’t start the game shooting 0 for 20 or whatever that odd bug was in the Xbox version. Again: yeah!

- I’ve read some complaints about commentary, and while justified, I don’t think it’s really any worse than the initial version and I don’t think it gets in the way of gameplay. Could it be better? Probably, but I’m fine with it.

- I’m a little worried that, like NBA, foul calls are balanced against the AI. I drew *FAR* more whistles in the lane than the AI did. In fact most shots from inside or near the paint drew a whistle. Again, however, it was just one game.

- Free throws are considerably harder. The stick is really touchy about left-to-right movement when you draw it back and let it go forward, which I think is new. Honest to god, I was something like 5-28 from the line and that’s after making three of my last four to end the game. I think this is more a getting used to things problem and is probably a plus for the game since I think FT shooting has been too easy in NBA 2k6 (Xbox and 360) and the Xbox version of College Hoops.

- I still think the coach’s clipboard is the best new usability feature in any basketball game in years.

The one game I played was U of M at home against Michigan State on the Superstar level with 10-minute halves. I do reasonably well at this difficulty in NBA, but I got absolutely crushed last night. Something like 60-30. My shot timing is either off or I’ll need to do some slider tweaking because I couldn’t make a jump shot to save my life (and I had more than a couple open looks). It’s probably a little bit of both, but generally it was a good first impression and its nice to have the game in time for March Madness.

I probably won’t get any more time in tonight (we have guests coming to watch last week’s 24 on TiVo and then watch tonight’s right after that), but I plan to start a Legacy this week. I’ll probably sim out most of the first few seasons and just do the recruiting part until I start to build up my coach a little. I’ll post more impressions as I play more.

Wow. I did not see that last scene coming last night. I figured it would have been Paulie that gets it but not the person that did. It’s kinda like seeing Jack Bauer get shot. Then again, in 24, Tony can be shot right in the neck and 2 hours later he’s working at CTU, so you never know what will happen, right?

Speaking of 24, that’s tonight. It’s non-stop TV excitement!!! lol