The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Do you enjoy Single Serve Coffee? I am a huge fan. I bought a Keurig unit for home 2 years ago and then purchased one for work. It is fantastic.

About a month ago, a forum posted this link on how to get a free Senseo. Since I always wanted to try a Pod brewer, I said what the hell. Well, indeed, I received my free brewer a couple of weeks ago. It’s a $70 brewer and you pay zero. Not even shipping.

I can vouch for it working and I just made a Cappuccino flavored beverage for myself this evening. These reviews don’t write themselves, you know.

Anyway, if you’re interested in getting one free for yourself, click here.

Good morning…

Last night I stayed up way too late, my friend from Japan was begging me to play Doom…so we did video chat and he was very jealous of my camera…so we went to play Uno instead. The cam on Uno was hysterical…we had a Butt-head imitator that was hysterical, although I could have done without the cam of his teeth.

This morning, my son wanted to play co-op Doom. We had a lot of fun. Doom brings back great memories of the early/mid 90s for me and I still enjoy the game. It really works on the console becuase there’s pretty much no aiming required. And you don’t have to do that silly dial up modem connection for game play.

I’m surprised Duke Nukem isn’t on XBLA these days….

I have lot of games to review, and I’m still waiting for Mario Hoops from GameFly. First one got “lost” …. this time of year for the mail buh-lows.

You know I am extremly happy with my 360 console. The PS3 or Wii will really have to bowl me over to win my support, and so far, I haven’t seen that. Meanwhile, I spend $10 to change my Xbox Theme and buy a picture pack. Call me lame.

I have no impressions of NBA Live 07 because EA has yet to send a review build to CGM. Not sure why that is…but it may be because the game is getting blasted in the press right now (on the console anyway). Of course EA didn’t send GameSpy a review build of NHL 07 PC either; I had to buy that myself and ask for a reimbursement. Weird, weird stuff.

NBA 2K7 is a pretty darn good game. I still need to get used to the controls — there’s a LOT to do in this game, and I think I need to learn how to use the lead pass button because my players keep stopping on fast breaks and fast players get caught from behind on breaks a bit too much for my taste. Sebastian Telfair may not be the next great NBA PG, but he IS supposed to be kinda fast.

I think it may need a few slider adjustments here and there — there’s quite a bit of dunking and FG% for both human and CPU is a bit high, but I dunno yet if that’s because players shoot too well or that they get too good of a look in the paint. I need to play a bit more. Fatigue may also need a tweak. I play on 10 minute quarters and subs are rare unless there are foul issues. I may actually go up to 12, though. The game has that good of a pace to it.

Overall, after a handful of games (and getting my ass handed to me on All Star lvl) this is proving to be a hell of a good time.

I’m going to tool around franchise mode this weekend. Tonight is OSU/Iowa, though.

Priorities.

Wow. Fun. Really fun. Well, against another person, anyway. I haven’t played a game against the AI, but Dave came over last night and we played a couple of games on default All Star and took turns laughing our collective asses off at the 24/7 mode. It’s sooo cornball and we made this guy that looks like a chain smoking zombie, but the entertainment value was high in a slapstick, goofy, Midnight Madness sorta way.

The game itself looks fantastic on the 360 outside of the player faces which I think look like crap. (Thankfully on the important meter this is about as low as it gets). The individual shooting techniques, the passing, the flow, and the overall feel of the game is spectacular, though. Dave’s Sixers beat my Celtics 84-80. I hate losing to Dave.

We had one graphic glitch where a player’s shorts turned invisible (literally) and he was running around with only a torso and a head for about 45 seconds. Weird.

I had two questions for Xbox Live support:

1. Where’s TotemBall since it was promised to me with my Xbox Live Vision Camera and
2. How can I transfer the Xbox Links courses I paid for already over to my Xbox 360.

TO which I received two answers:

1. It’s not out yet and we don’t know how it will be distributed and too bad you already bought Uno, we aren’t helping you there.
2. You’ll have to repurchase the courses on your Xbox 360.

Very nice. NOT!

GM exec: We need more Hummers.

Don’t we all? I could use one.

For whatever reason, the local Blockbusters tell me that they won’t be getting NBA 2k7 in until Friday. Actually, the second place told me Friday. The first guy, after I said, “did you guys get NBA 2k7 today,” answered, “Is that football?”

I kid you not. After I said “NBA” the teenaged male behind the counter asked me if it was a football game. What is happening to the youth of America?

I swear, for a state that prides itself so much on its basketball roots, the Blockbusters in Indiana place zero priority on their basketball gaming titles. Last year they took in one lousy copy of College Hoops for the Xbox. One. In the Hoosier state. I don’t know how many of NBA 2k7 they’re getting, but it had damn well be more than that or…

uh…

I’ll complain about it some more, I guess.

Anyway, assuming I do get a copy for rental on Friday, I’ll hopefully have some impressions to post by Monday morning. (I do plan to buy the game at some point, but I’d rather save up some Gamefly bucks and get a discount on it through them.)

In the meantime, I’ve been playing more Guitar Hero. A lot of it. It took all of a day to do all the tracks on Easy. I had some hiccups on Medium when I got to the last track (Bark at the Moon), but after a week of getting better ratings for the songs I could complete on Medium (as well as getting indoctrinated into Hard), I’ve managed to get past it. The only song for which I don’t yet have at least a 4-star review on Medium is Cowboys from Hell.

So for the last couple week or two I’ve been playing exclusively on Hard. It’s aptly named, but I am getting used to having to work in that fifth fret button and I’ve once again managed to get through every track save two: Cowboys from Hell and Bark at the Moon (of course). It’s become clear to me now that I can no longer avoid learning how to do proper pull-offs and push-ons. The skill appears to be crucial to completing those two songs and to getting better than a three star review in the other songs in the last couple groups on this difficulty.

I was ready to trash the PS2 yesterday (I couldn’t, though, since it’s Bill’s) when I had survived 95% of Cowboys From Hell only to bomb out on those last couple sections. It’s a special kind of pain to carry around with you when you get that close to a song that’s been impossible for you, only to fail. I tried three or four more times after that and never got past 80%.

Curse you Cowboys from Hell! Curse you!!!

With the latest X06 show, Microsoft proved that they are in this to win it. The amount of news was jaw dropping:

HD DVD will retail for $199. Now yes, if you include this in the price of the X360, it’s about the same price as the PS3..but at least you have the options.

HALO WARS was announced, an RTS in the Halo universe will be designed by the Age of Empires guys.

Doom is out now on Xbox Live Arcade.

Sensible World of Soccer, widely regarded as one of the best soccer games ever, is also coming to Xbox Live Arcade.

An enormous amount of news, all available by clicking here.

You simply must listen to this Michigan State radio guy after the MSU/ND debacle. (There’s some bad language here, fyi) I feel for the guy, I really do, but at some point…it’s just a game.

I mean…wow.

1. Oops. Although the outside of the vision camera says “xbox live arcade game”..they meant Uno..although the Xbox website says TotemBall is also included…my subscription code only says Uno. I have posted on the XBLA forum and sent an email direct to Microsoft, we’ll see what they say. I think it’s cheap that they did this. If I get TotemBall free, all is forgiven.

1A. Okay, it says Texas Hold ‘em is a Camera game, but I don’t see no stinking camera in it. At least all vision owners have uno. I guess there’s some other Poker game that costs $40 that does have the camera..

1B. Um, why include a headset with the camera? I mean, if for $20 I could have gotten just the camera (no headset/no ‘free’ games I already own), wouldn’t that be a better deal? For $40 more I could have gotten 1 year of XBox Live and Robotron and 200 Points. Boy I got hosed. Since XBL is $50/year, that would have been $10 off. Dammit.

2. Those of you on my Friends list can now see my own personal picture. Don’t worry, I’m fully clothed. And the pic is of my face, doing a Colbert-like point to myself. Taking pictures and sending them via XBLA is fun. One of my Japanese friends now has a picture of me showing off Blood Wake as the best game ever.

3. I am up way too late. I have a meeting in 7 hours.

4. I mentioned I also bought the Weird Al show on DVD. It’s very funny.

Well I had a meeting for lunch in the big city with other work types, I stopped by Best Buy and picked up the new Weird Al CD. I love his genre pieces and the polka song. Normally I would just get it over yahoo, but he did a DualDisc with 5.1 surround and hearing White and Nerdy that way rules.

I also picked up the Weird Al show and the Xbox Live Camera. Good news is that you get a free Xbox Live Arcade game — you don’t have to be stuck with Uno which is good if you already bought it. I purchased the LAST camera. I don’t know why I really got the camera. Maybe I can hook up with all the hot ladies.

I hope to pickup NBA 2k7 as a rental later today. If I can, I’ll try to get some impressions up as soon as possible, though I won’t have a lot of time to play this week (lots homework from the day job to do). In the meantime, there’s a fairly thorough review of NBA 2k7 up at Operation Sports. It highlights a lot of improvements and a lot of areas where the reviewer thinks the game is lacking. It’s a much better read than the cookie-cutter stuff up at the general gaming sites. Here’s a snippet from the conclusion:

I’m going to make this really simple: this is the greatest basketball game I’ve ever played. This is also the greatest one year leap I’ve ever seen in a series. I wasn’t as crazy about NBA 2K6 as many of the fans and other reviewers were. I felt it was a decent but flawed game and it looked great when compared to the competition but average on its own. NBA 2K7, however, fixed almost every single flaw in last year’s game and add an unbelievable amount of animations and features.

1. Desperate Housewives is a crappy show.
2. The Class is pretty good.
3. Yeah, 3-0 fantasy team! Too bad half my team is on bye next week. Looks like an L for me. I’m due.
4. Ultimate Baseball Online is going pay in October. Traditional pricing of $9.95 a month, but I’m not a fan of paying a monthly fee for one game so I will pass. (Xbox Live is my exception, but it’s not really for 1 game, it’s to play a bunch of games online, so there).
5. Watching repeats of Scrubs on Comedy Central is awesome.
6. Check out the 25 worst web sites.
7. Todd may be pretty happy now, but I can’t wait to see the post when Detroit goes 3 and out.
8. One thing about the Brunell record for consecutive completions. I didn’t see the game, I don’t know how many yards he threw for, but I remember when I was a kid playing football and since we didn’t have down markers, we had a 2 complete passes = 1 first down rule. So, as a WR, I would basically sit a foot past the line of scrimmage and just catch the ball. No one would cover me, because I sucked and I would just declare myself down. So I kept catching, we kept getting first downs, although we didn’t really move down the field. Is that what Brunell did?

Ughhh. Nothing like watching your team get bitchslapped and getting home after 2am to make your Monday work day go by fast. Dear Lord..just a few more hours…

Anyway, did I mention how much that game sucked? Denver wasn’t incredibly impressive, but man we sucked. When the game highlight is chanting “Bull shit” at the referee, you know it’s bad.

Just wanted to let you know I’m still alive. I am up 4 points in my fantasy league with both my QB (Brees) and RB (Bush) to go, while my opponent has one play left. I don’t want to get too excited but hey if his WR gets points, my QB gets points…and I could be looking at 3-0..that has never happened before….

Ten.

That’s how old I was when the Tigers last won the World Series.

Thirteen.

That’s how old I was when the Tigers last played post-season baseball.

Now, at 32, I’m on the bullet train to middle-age and finally the odometer on that second number gets reset. The Tigers, the Detroit –baseball- Tigers, are officially bound for the post-season, after 19 years with no October baseball in the motor city! It’s been over ten years since the Tigers last finished the season with a winning record. Travis Fryman was their third baseman back then. Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker were still turning double-plays.

The only way to sum up the feeling of knowing that I’ll be watching the Old English D jerseys take the field in the post-season is to quote the most famous Tiger of them all. Take it away Tigger:

Tigger: Bouncy! Bouncy! Bouncy! FunFunFunFunFun!!!

Today I don’t even care that the Packers once again walked into Ford Field and embarrassed the Lions. It’s the Tigers’ day and nothing can ruin that for me. (Michigan’s win over Wisconsin doesn’t hurt my warm fuzzies, either.)

Credit has to go, first and foremost to owner Mike Illitch. He failed miserably as the Tigers owner for a long, long time. But when he hired team president, Dave Dombrowski, five years ago, he sowed the seeds for this day. Dombrowski has really done the impossible, as the man most directly responsible for turning this team around. He broke down a roster of never-will-be’s in a balls out effort to rebuild a barren minor league system, resulting in a humiliating 119 loss disaster three years ago, and he rebuilt them into a team that (as of today) once again owns the best record in the major leagues. The turnaround truly is historic. Now, if the Tigers can just put the hammer down over these last six games, they can take the division crown as well. (They lead Minnesota by 1.5 games.)

There’s only one guy I feel bad for today: Alan Trammell. He guided this team through the worst of this two decade long drought and while he may not have been the guy to see them through to the post-season, he deserves to take some satisfaction from this day. He helped build-up a lot of the players on this roster (including the risky move to turn Brandon “I Should be a Gold Glove” Inge into a 3^rd baseman) and I hope whatever he’s doing today, that he was happy to see these players get to celebrate (and that goes for Gibby, Lance and the rest of the coaching staff from the last three years).

I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever get to say (or type) this, but it’s a great day to be a Tigers fan!