The Blog for the Sports Gamer

One of my favorite Michigan blogs (for often pairing the rare duo of being funny and right at the same time), the M Go Blog, has posted a must read Big 10 preview. If you want to bone up on what to expect from the best conference in all of the Midwestern United States, this is as good, and detailed a free analysis as you’re likely to get. (Make sure to click each school link for the full write-up. The link posted here lists only the summaries.)

I’ll be the first in line to say I have no idea what to expect from the Wolverines this year. Last year was such an abomination that it’s tough to find optimism for the coming season. But they lose just six starters (three of them a bar or two less than notable), still have a boatload of talented players, and gain back some big players from injury. (Oh, Jake Long, how we missed thee. Please blocketh well for thy brother, Mike Hart. He’s electric, but fragile.) And the more I read about the new defensive coordinator, Ron English, the more faith I have that this team will be able to hold onto a fourth quarter lead, which was the bane of last year’s nightmarish season.

Todd and his family are making the trek from Indianapolis to the comfy confines of Columbus this weekend. Should be a good time, as long as his 2-year old sleeps through the night. I’d hate to have to send him and his mom to the car at 2AM. I’m a tough host.

This weekend also starts off the college football season as the Bucks take on Northern Illinois. This first game should be a nice test for OSU as the Huskies are a good team with a steady QB and a fantastic running back. The edge to OSU is one of size; the Husky defense in particular is mighty mite small (DE’s at around 225..) but seeing as how OSU’s defense is young and in need of a good test before going to Texas, this is the ideal opponent….as long as OSU wins. I was going to go to the game with my dad who is coming up on Saturday (it’s his birthday) but we have hit a small financial hurdle because we close on the old house (finally) at the end of September and we just got the home inspection “fix list” which has some things on it that has drained the “OSU Ticket Fund” for the time being. Yeah, I am an alum but I’m still “new blood” as far as that is concerned and we get crap seats..and I just don’t want to go to a game just to go..I want to see what the hell is going on, so we usually have to go the scalper/eBay route and OSU fans being insane — good tickets are not cheap, particularly when we are preseason #1.

Finally, my Madden PC review is online. It’s the best PC version of Madden maybe ever and, I feel, is better than the Xbox or 360 versions.

Oh, finally (2x) I’m to play my round 2 game this afternoon. I have barely touched the 360 version of NCAA in over week– this could get ugly.

Well thanks to PB4201′s whipping of me, I”m now out of the tournament. Good luck guys! It was rather funny, as I picked BC — the only problem was that BC wasn’t my tournament team. I forgot I picked Mississippi State. It only got worse from there, as I remember saying “How the F@#% is Florida State a B” as I lost 35-21. Yikes.

Because I pretty much buy anything Live Arcade related (hey, I do get to review the games, so that’s good), I picked up Time Pilot last night. Checking the usual haunts, I was rather flabbergasted by this Hilary-like review of Time Pilot, giving it a 5. Compared to the original release of Frogger and Street Fighter, this game was much better to me.

Of course, I am a little biased — I enjoy playing the original on GameTap and have fond ColecoVision memories of the game. I remember how much easier the Coleco game was vs the arcade . The HD graphics are one of the better improvements I’ve seen. You’ll have to wait to read the rest of my review, but I’m enjoying it.

Now keep in mind this is the same site that ‘held off’ on a review of Hold’Em until the camera was released. Do they really think everyone will buy a camera to play that game; further, do they think the camera will be on that person’s face?

I know, a lot of people will be “why are you an IGN hata” etc, but let me explain. IGN and GameSpot are probably the two biggest sites that “commoners” go to for game news and reviews. I think they should set the standard high for writing and quality. Now, I’m not going to make fun of anyone if they defend their reasoning for the game, but to me on Time Pilot it seems there was a hatred of the game before they even got to play it on arcade.

Gah.

The Opposable Thumbs gaming blog at Ars Technica has put out a quick and dirty review of the DS Lite that touches on a lot of the issues I was most interested in from an implementation standpoint. It looks like vintage EA fare: a lot of good ideas and a lot of mixed execution. It’s worth a read if you’re thinking of giving the DS version a shot.

Well, I played a couple more games of Madden 07 on the 360 over the weekend and I’m just not feeling it. The interface, as it has for a while now, just feels awkward (and not particularly responsive), and I think the on-field gameplay isn’t nearly as engaging as NCAA 2007. That’s purely a matter of opinion, but I just can’t justifying throwing Madden into my 360 when I have NCAA sitting right next to it.

Truthfully, I can’t say I gave Madden an overly fair shake. I didn’t really touch the sliders to see if anything could be done with QB Accuracy, DB coverage (and pass deflections), etc. But when I’m having plenty of fun with NCAA, why bother trying to enjoy a game that I know isn’t in my wheelhouse. I played an end of season Michigan vs. Ohio State game on Monday that was an blast. Now, it was a little nutty that the win landed me (10-2) in the National Championship game against an 11-1 Louisville team. I had the #3 and #4 rankings in the RPI and coach’s polls respectively, yet somehow the BCS poll had me #2. God bless strength of schdule, I guess. (The number two team in the other polls was 11-1 West Virginia. Penn State, who got the tie-break against me for the Big 10 title was ranked #3 in the coaches poll and #4 in the RPI. I bet both those teams feel pretty well snubbed. As well they should.)

Last night I played the National Championship game. I was really thrilled to see the crowd coloring representative of both teams. I was less than tickled when I pulled out the win to see all the players on the field just freeze in place while the booth crew yammered on with their generic, “They won it all, blah, blah, blah.” Talk about underwhelming. Seriously, how much effort could it possibly have taken to have the players run around the field, arms in the air, celebrating a little?

All that said, I will be giving the Madden franchise a second look (hopefully in a few days). I’ve got the DS version of Madden up in my Gamefly GameQ. I’m not exactly holding my breath for it, but I’ll take a look and see what it has to offer. My hope is they came up with some juicy ways to use the stylus to manage rosters and personnel and such that’ll make the franchise portion of the game a more enjoyable to work with than the tedium of roster management on the 360.

I’m enjoying this game so much that the fine folks at Capcom have said I could give the game away…so email sportsgamer % gmail.com with your name and I’ll take submissions until Friday September 8th. Winner will be announced shortly thereafter!

The new patch for Street Fighter on XBL Arcade really is a marked improvement over the original release. So much so I’d consider giving a better review grade. I still prefer GameTap (I mean hey for the same price you can have 620 more games for one month), but it’s nice to see the follow up. I think that Capcom was told by MS to release what they had and then work on it later, because there’s no way that the game should have been released as it was….

Hey, Gamefly has a new referral program, get 5 people to sign up, they’ll give you a DS Lite. You have to be a paying subscriber, no free trial stuff, but hey, I might as well post a link and see what happens. It’s the official online rental service of BSG ..

While attending a live fantasy football draft on Sunday (I’m an expansion team in a keeper league, so it wasn’t pretty for me), I got my first indoctrination into the much beloved world of Guitar Hero. I’ve read more praise for this game than, quite possibly, any title in the last twenty years. And for the first time, I actually regret not owning a Playstation 2. I played just three songs, Sharp Dressed Man and Bark at the Moon on Easy and another track on Medium (the title of which, I don’t recall) and suddenly I’m looking on eBay for a cheap PS2 purchase. I sit in the car listening to my Tom Petty mix CD and seeing the beats show up in the game’s interface in my head and thinking to myself, “I could totally play this.” Too bad I’m so damn cash poor after the week in Florida because if not, I might own this game already.

Maybe this is just stating the obvious, but even having played just three tracks in the game, I think I understand the genius of Guitar Hero now. It’s not just any one thing that it does well. It’s that it takes something incredibly complex (playing rock on the guitar) and makes you feel like you can just walk up and rock out for real. That brilliance in its design can’t be understated. The game makes you feel like you can play. Not just play, but play at a high level. And for somebody like me, who is as untalented -musically- as youc an get, that’s just amazing. The Easy mode is an incredibly simple way to get indoctrinated and to the novice player (like me), just watching the Expert level makes one break out into a cold sweat, thinking, “I could never pull that off.” But even on Easy, when you get on a groove and you’re hitting every note and you suddenly you’re really hearing the music and not just trying to keep up with symbols on the screen, it’s like amazing. It’s like hitting the perfect golf shot.

If you’ve got a PS2 and don’t own this game yet, shame on you.

I filed a support ticket with Microsoft. I had purchased the two premium courses on my original Xbox for $4.99 each for Links 2004. Apparently when I convert to the 360, I have to re-buy those courses?? WTF!!!

Looks good though on the 360. Glad it’s there. One of my favorite golf games…

Major Nelson has posted a new backcomp update. Yay! Burnout 3 Takedown! And all of you dying to play All Star Baseball 2003 will be thrilled too.

Full list is here. I am happy about Links. It’s still one of my favorites. I would still like to know why they stopped releasing courses. That game ruled.

(This post relates specifically to Madden PC and Xbox since I haven’t played the 360 version yet)

Remember back when Madden went head to head with NFL 2K? Specifically NFL 2K4 and 2K5?

Remember what the universal mantra was?

NFL 2K5 may have the edge in gameplay but Madden kills it in franchise mode.
I remember that mantra; I sang it myself in reviews of both games and in a head to head feature for GameSpy.

And I still believe it…from a certain point of view. Most of us know that NFL2K5 franchise mode out of the box was an utter mess. That’s been documented. Madden’s really won by default and by not doing anything particularly dumb.

So now it’s two versions later and a few odds and ends have been added to Madden’s franchise mode, things like the Player Roles, which on the PC version are next to impossible to find a definition for what the symbols mean. You have to go to roster, right click on the player, choose “edit” and then “roles”. Now that’s intuitive. Why does an “underachiever” lower the ratings of other players? Most of the roles don’t do anything but alter trade value or give a +1 boost to AWR. It’s all kinda trivial, really. Still, why add a feature and make it impossible to get info on it?

Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant on the Role thing, since it’s really a minor feature. Here’s what bugs me a bit:

Madden’s franchise mode, as far as franchise modes go — in text based games like Front Office Football, OOTP, etc. sucks. It sucks hard.

The reason is in its details. Now I know damn well that the focus of Madden and other games like it is in the on the field action. I get that. But Madden has had a franchise mode for how long now? Six versions or so? At what point is it “ok” to start to criticize its lack of attention to details? And I don’t mean really minor stuff…I mean basic shit that anyone that plays the game for more than one season will notice?

For this example, I want to look at player progression and rookie progression and rookie busts and rookie sleepers.

Player progression in Madden is very poor and it shows up in the game’s very basic player retirement model. Players retire in Madden when they hit a certain age or get hurt. So a player like Lorenzo Neal retires at the age of 36 with a 96 overall player rating. That should be a red flag that something ain’t right. It’s very, very rare when an NFL player hangs up the cleats when he’s still an elite level player. You see this happen all the time in Madden, though. Players 36 to 38 years old with high 80 to low 90 ratings calling it quits because the game sees that he’s a certain age. That’s silly.

This all goes back to the aging model — it’s busted. If it were a text game fans would eat this thing alive. I know that it’s not a text game, though, and I also know that “fixing” the franchise mode that most people deem to be fine and dandy probably isn’t high on anyone’s fix list, but I guess it just bugs me that you have a company like an EA (although this is not a problem exclusive to them) rarely goes the extra step to make aa feature like this from decent to great.

The big problem, at least from my PoV, is one of predictability. You can set your watch by Madden’s franchise mode.

1st round picks are high 70s low 80s rated players, 2nd rounders a shade lower and right down the line — and they all progress, ratings wise, at a snail’s pace. After simming five seasons the incoming rookie classes have barely moved up or down one way or the other. Some have, but every single one of the “99″ rated players in 2010 are players that are currently in the league.

In fact, every single player rated 95 – 99 (which the game considers its elite lvl players) are real players. No fictional incoming players have progressed to that level…in five years. If you really want to sink your teeth into the game’s franchise mode…that’s a problem. A very big one, I’d argue. If you plan on playing a long franchise, what will happen once most the real players retire? I didn’t sim long enough to see–maybe I should.

Along the same lines, in that same five year span there are virtually no rookie sleepers; those 6th round picks that end up being solid or even All Pro level players. (Tom Brady…) On the Browns, the players I drafted in that five year run, the vast majority of the drafted players have the same OVR rating they had when they were drafted. Some have improved — most of them 1st rounders. As is, I see absolutely no reason to keep a 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th round player on your team.

On the plus side, it seems like a player doesn’t need great ratings to play well, particularly in simmed games. The Browns 82 OVR RG made the All Pro team. Of course you’d expect to see him get a nice ratings boost the following year, right? Well, he lost a point of AWR. That was it.

I’d get into the trade AI but no game has ever gotten that right — even a lot of text games. Granted, the Bills offering me their 1st round pick for my 4th and 5th was a tad (ok more than a tad) insane, but hey..I can always decline them, right? Teams are quick to give up that 1st round pick…I didn’t even ask for it.

As a gamer, I get upset when I see this kinda thing especially when the game is so mega popular and I think the t’s should be crossed and the i’s dotted.

That said, I cannot fathom the level of pressure that is placed upon the people that actually make Madden every year. It must be enormous. Just enormous. I know that “fixing” franchise mode is not going to help fill the coffers, which is why in reviewing a game like this; I don’t think it’s all that fair to rip it up and down for not being as deep as Front Office Football, and I’m having a lot of fun playing the PC version, which I guess is the point of all this in the first place.

It doesn’t mean I think it’s OK for it to stay in this shape or that EA shouldn’t fix it.

They should.

The NCAA 360 tourney is chugging along as we are almost done with round two. Get those games in, guys. (Yes, I am fully aware that Dan has not played his next game..and that I haven’t either..)

And for the record: Using “WTF” in a review isn’t by itself a bad thing if used properly. I didn’t think Dan used it the right way (remember..my rules, I make ‘em up!) so I raked his knuckles with a ruler. See, that’s right out of High School English 101.

I think it’s fantastic that the guy who wrote “why videogame journalism sucks” put together a review of Madden 07 X360 that’s full of run on sentences, incomplete thoughts and starts a sentence with a preposition. Other than that, it’s great though.

It’s funny, Bill and I, both editors at one time as well as freelancers, usually discuss games, but we also discuss editing. We had some dialogue on my review of Dead Rising, specifically my use of WTF in a review. You see, Bill and I come from the old school style guide where you write three instead of 3..we are straight out of High School English. So, we had a debate about the use of WTF. Yes, we are that anal. But that’s how much we appreciate the craft.

Do you think the IGN editors are sitting around and discussing the review, or do you think they are a review factory…oh yeah, and IGN=Fox. ‘Nuff said. I will say one thing about IGN. Either they took my comments about Hilary’s Wreckless review for the Xbox to heart, or there were a lot of people that thought Hilary wrote the Wreckless review. No comment here, I just thought it was funny. I wrote the 1st review for Wreckless on GamePen — I had it early and there was no embargo and I posted it on a weekend. I said it sucked. Hard. But IGN had a second opinion and I swore Hilary wrote it. I piled on the shit in the newsgroups, forums, anywhere I could. Either I wasn’t alone in thinking Hilary wrote it, or I singlehandedly created a monster. I’m guessing it’s the former, but Hilary, I apologize.

Okay, so if you have a girl under the age of 12 living in your household, you’ve probably been subjected to the Cheetah Girls. What’s the deal with Raven anyway? I mean she’s in the movie as a Cheetah, but not when they go on tour? WTF? Why do I care? I can’t get the damn “Strut like you mean it” song out of my head. Well done, Disney, on brainwashing me. You know that Monty Python skit…”And for those of you who don’t like sport, there’s sport..” well for those of you who didn’t see the Cheetah Girls yesterday or today, it’s on tomorrow! Wee. Six hours of hell = High School Musical, Cheetah Girls and Cheetah Girls 2.

Oh, Maker’s Mark how I’ve missed thee..I”m sorry I cheated on you with Knob Creek. It sucked, it definitely wasn’t something to ruin our relationship for….and you’re on sale. Thank god for State Liquor Stores!

So around here, I hear nothing but jet planes…I keep trying to figure out why. Then I remember that W is over here in Maine with dad. Great. Don’t let my life get in the way of your vacation. I’m a huge fan of F-15s flying over at 3am. It’s fantastic. The way they fly at like 200 feet is just awesome.

Nice to see the O’s pull one out. Yeah it was against Tampa Bay, but we take what we can get.

I have a confessino to make: GameTap is just pure fun. Seriously, I don’t normally play Yar’s Revenge that much..but damn.. 2600 games, Genesis games, arcade games and PC games…for $9.95/month, it seems like a plan. Yes I know you can get Mame, but damn, I think these people should be compensated for making me play a game 25 years old that is that good.

I’d rather pay $9.95/month for this version of Street Fighter and get 600 other games than the turd that’s on XBLA.

Still no good answers regarding no time out display on the 360 version of Madden. Consider me shocked.

Oh, a birdie told me that the PGR 3 Uno pack is still on the agenda, just a little delayed…