The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Don’t ask me how it happened, but I’ve changed from a complete EA Sports hater to an EA optimist. Ok, it’s not hard to figure out how it happened. Madden 07 for the Wii pretty much did me in. They took, what in my opinion, has become one of the most stale gaming franchises and through the Wii controller made it a fun game to play again.

I’ve always been more of a 2K Sports guy, but playing Madden Wii really made me enjoy the franchise for the first time.

In the next few months we’re due to see versions of Tiger Woods and SSX ported over to the Wii as well.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at how these games will be controlled with the Wii remote and nunchuk, I recommend that you take a look at these videos over at Gametrailers.com.

Tiger Woods “HD” Quicktime video

SSX Blur “HD” Quicktime video

I had really high hopes for Tiger Woods until I saw this video. The guy looks like he’s taking a chip shot and is snapping off 300+ yard drives with Eldrick. That just worries and annoys me, but hopefully it can be adjusted. Hell, even Wii Sports Golf allows you to “gesture” a real swing. Maybe he’s just adjusting because of the fact that the camera is focused on his crotch as well… who knows?

SSX Blur, on the other hand, looks like it might be a ton of fun. Carving in the snow with the Nunchuk controller could be one of the most fun control options for an SSX title to this point.

So, is Nintendo helping EA to re-work some of their game franchises, or is EA just porting over titles to the Wii with a controller gimmick?

Took a late lunch and went to GameStop today. The Nintendo floodgates seem to be pouring in now. Lots of everything Wii. Nice of them to discount the Wii SD card $50 only after I bought a PMITA bundle. But it was so worth it, unlike that thing that ends in “3″.

They had plenty of classic controllers also, so I picked one up cuz I just got tapped to so a Zelda review (yay!). It should be a fun review to write becuase I never played Zelda on the SNES before.

I was able to see an eyes only list of PS3 games coming out..the page was not even 3/4ers full. What a dearth of games. And most of the list was stuff I already played on the 360. I don’t have a lot of hope for MoH Airborne, but maybe I’ll be wrong…

Well, leave it to Dan to introduce me to the site by bringing up my darkest days on the Interwebs.

Man, GA-Sports… that brings back memories. The painful, searing, therapy-inducing memories. Good times… Good times.

As far as for what I’ll be posting, you’ll probably be hearing more than you ever want to about Nintendo, Wisconsin, Green Bay, and Milwaukee sports than you ever cared to. Oh, and I’m a liberal too. Go figure.

Anywho, enough about me. Let’s get back to the normally scheduled programming.

I am pleased to announced that Glen Haag has joined our blog. Glen has been around for about 10 or so years…I remember Glen from his days at GA-Sports (Tony Wyss anyone), and I don’t let him forget it.

I’ll let him talk more about him…he should be posting here shortly. Give him a big blog welcome.

I just realized that his gamerscore kicks my ass. I gotta get back to inflating that. Time for some hot NBA Live 06 action!

Two pretty darn good games from Fantasy Flight:

Marvel Heroes and The Fury of Dracula. Upcoming (non PC/360) reviews include Pirate’s Cove, Arkham Horror, Railroad Tycoon, and the World of WarCraft board game.

Missed this over the weekend, but IGN has a hands on preview of MLB2K7 on the PS3. The way they described swinging using the SIXASSES controller does not sound great to me, but I think it’s one of those things that you have to try before you can pass judgement.

First off, all you Wii owners will be happy to know that the old SNES Zelda: A Link To The Past game is now out on the Wii for a mere 800 points. I never played the SNES , I was a Genesis freak, so I’m going to try it. You need either the classic controller or a GameCube controller to play. While blowing 2000 points, I also picked up Super Mario 64, a game that I never played either. I wasn’t very pro-Nintendo in my forumlative years…what can I say.

Has anyone tried the Battlestations Midway demo for the 360? Part of me likes it, part of me feels like it’s Battlefield: Pacific Campaign. Looking forward to the Crackdown demo also.

Wow, sure is a dearth of PS3 news. I can’t believe I wasted $600. It’s not even earning me money as there are NO NEW F(*&KING GAMES out for it. And no way I’m paying $60 for a Sonic game. Now if Sega sends it for review, that’s another story :). College Hoops does come out on 2/12, and I may get that just because…I have played the 360 demo and liked it. 2K’s MLB 2K7 comes out in early March according to EBGames, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

The new Game Informer (aka EBGames shill mag) does have a very interesting article about EA Sports games decreasing in quality. Of course EA says that the sales numbers show people enjoy the games. Of course, you can’t return a piece of shit like NBA Live for the 360, so I think the sales numbers are crap. Game Informer contacted all of the big sports people but they generally say they are pleased with the quality of the games. NFL says they can get out of the contract if they wanted to with EA but don’t have plans to do so. Their loss, I guess. But after yesterday, I no longer follow the NFL so it doesn’t matter much to me. (Joke there). Thought the article was interesting..although it didn’t really add much to the discussion.

Okay, I’m sorry for the confusion on the last post. I just wanted to clarify, I still had the game on the radio (WBCN), while the game continued to record on TiVo just in case it was worth watching. The reason was because I was rather superstitious — last week, when the Pats won, I had turned off the TV and they came back as soon as I did it. I was hoping that if I didn’t have the TV on and instead heard about the game some other way that there would be a chance. As you all know, Tom Brady’s play is dependent on how I watch/listen to the game. And don’t tell me you’re not superstitious. If your team wins a big game, don’t you stick to that ritual? The game was worth watching, and I guess I took the superstitions a little too far. I did quickly delete it from my TiVo though, as I never want to watch that game again.

Anyway, while continuing to talk about the Super Bowl, I see that both coaches are African American. They are also friends. Here are two angles that won’t be beaten to death!

I won’t call this loss the decline of Western Civilization — but you know that things are changing in football — it is about time for a regime change and it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

Now just give me an Orioles championship and a Revolution championship and I’ll be happy. I don’t ask for much. Oh and a Colts loss, of course, but I think the chances of that happening are very slim.

Well, I turned it off when the Colts tied it. Jim and Phil can say historic all they want, but the Colts did this before in 2003 — I have the game TiVoed.

It was an incredible back and forth game, just like it was in 2003. And you knew the Colts with over 2:00 left in the game were going to come back.

Congratulations to the Colts in one of the best games I think I’ve ever seen. Yes, it hurts, but I can’t complain. The Patriots gave everything they had. The Colts had more tonight. Of course, I’m very depressed becuase a) the Pats lost and b) The Colts are going to the Super Bowl..but I have to say, I just felt this time it wasn’t going to work out.

This cable internet connection perplexes me. Either there’s some sort of caching going on at the cable head end or my connection just is on and off. When I use the netflix video on demand it says I only qualify for basic which is a speed of 500k or less down. I have 10x that speed! When I go to DSL reports to do a line test, the speed can vary between 1500 and 6000 down. When I download a file the sucker ramps up quickly to over 600 KB/sec, which would be a line speed of 5400 down, which is good. Other times I’ll get 80 KB/sec down, which sorta blows. I’m downloading the Battlestations: Midway demo and in the type I’ve typed this the 446 MB download is only 28% complete. That seems slow to me, but the bottleneck could be on Microsoft’s end.

When I had my Xbox 360 die a few months ago, I swapped the console at Gamestop but kept my hard drive. When my DSL went out I noticed a problem — specifically the XBLA games are locked to the GamerTag and or console. So, if you can’t sign into Xbox Live and you don’t have the same console you purchased the games with, you are screwed and can’t play the full version.

I called MS, and after only a mere 7 weeks, what they’ve done is give me all the MS Points I spent on the games to re-download the games again. But I have to do so with a different GamerTag becuase if I’m logged in as me, it thinks I already bought it. What a huge pain. I have to create a 2nd XBL account and then have that one purchase the games all over again. I guess every new console is like this — the Wii locks it at the console level as well. I have no idea about the PS3.

Speaking of PS3, I just received from Sony a survey about what I think of the PS3. I thought that was rather interesting. I did let them have it and said it was a great BD player but a crappy game machine with a crap controller.

I wonder if this survey is a way to fix things. The lack of rumble is very, very annoying. I have still only played one PS3 game, Resistance, and just use it to watch movies at this point. That will change with MLB The Show and maybe that Dragonriders of Pern-esque game, we’ll see.

When I woke up this morning and checked my email, I had a message from Hillary Clinton saying she’s “in it to win it.” Why would anyone be in it to lose, exactly?

You have to say the Democratic party is really showing some diverse candidates. Yes they are all pretty much saying the same thing, but you have a woman, an African-American and a white southerner. What more would you want? (Insert your own James Watt comments here). Thankfully living where I do, I’ll be able to meet some of them and make a decision.

In other news, how many of you were affected by the TJ Maxx thing? Talk about a big deal…

Only 25 days until Pitchers & Catchers report so let’s talk some baseball. 2K Sports has released the official trailer for the game, and if I can use embed tags right, it should be right here.

Drool. I have no idea about the gameplay, but graphics whores of the world, unite. That is incredible.

Update: It’s a wide screen movie on a standard HTML page. Want to see it better? Click here.

According to their site, this game will have online league support. If it really has a league, count me in.

I’ll post thoughts on MM 360 as soon as I get a copy from EA Sports. I am not going out and buying this simply based on the franchise’s track record. I’ll wait. I’m also supposed to review Football Mogul as soon as it arrives so I’ll do that in the meantime.

It’s the slow period for games right now and I haven’t felt much like general blogging of late, so that’s the main reason I have been incognito this month.

I should have a Fury of Dracula review go live sometime today. I have been in full boardgame mode of late without too much desire at all to play a videogame of any kind other than to do an assigned review. I’d much rather sit down with Mary and a few friends and play Fury of Dracula (awesome game), Marvel Heroes or the finally obtained Arkham Horror with ther Dunwich add on than to play something on the PC or the 360 in my spare time. I think it’s a mild case of burnout.

I just finished a review of the PC edition of The Shield for CGM and…yeah…boardgames are just more fun right now.

I’ll be leaving for D.C. on the 24th for a 3 day event showcasing Warhammer Online, and I’m pretty excited about that. I hope they do Warhammer justice. After that it’ll be about time for the yearly baseball games because nothing says baseball like February in Ohio.

Looking at the Netflix watch now gallery, I was a little disappointed at the selection available. The “Comedy” section reminds me of the crappy movies on HBO in the mid 1980s. What’s even worse they aren’t even “adult comedies”….I mean we all know a movie like “Bikini Airline” is as much of a comedy as a PlayStation 3 is a “video game system”. But all that’s there is the Tom Hanks comedy “Nothing in Common”…now why not put up Bachelor Party? There’s a “Comedy” and it’s actually funny. On the plus side, Jackass the Movie was available, so maybe I’ll check that out.

You get 1 hour per dollar of membership, regardless of the # of movies out. So if you pay $5.99 you get 6 hours of download viewing. Not a bad way to do it. Next I have to download the player and try it out.

On another note, 1 in 3 Americans watched American Idol this week. The singers, in a word, sucked, but that’s what everyone is watching it for…however Rosie O’Donnell can’t believe that producers would “exploit” these disabled people. I mean come on Rosie, these people know they suck and they play it up so that they’ll get airtime and hopefully show up at the final to embarass someone else. Seriously, there aren’t that many dumb people there.

For me, I have to say I’m finding it sickening. I’d rather see people they are hemming and hawing about passing on to Hollywood then to spend 5 minutes with someone that obviously sucks.

What are your thoughts on Idol so far?

Hey I have to do this becuase the people have spoken so no Pats content :).

I’m stunned, and happy that Netflix has activated my watch now account. I will check it out once I’m out of work.

You probably saw that EA is planning on releasing it’s first Xbox Live Arcade game, which will be designed by Bizarre Creations. Sounds very interesting. I just hope that the cheats required to play the game won’t cost more than the game itself. We’ll see…

Tried the new Live Arcade game. Blech. Talk about boring. I enjoyed it more when it was called Air Sea Battle for the 2600.

Thanks to GameStop they did hold Wario Ware Smooth Moves for me. Nothing new here, if you like the series you’ll love this game.

You know for a cable modem that swears I’m getting 6.0 MB down, how come all the videos are watching are buffering more and more? I’m not a happy camper.

Just watched Inside the NFL…Costas and Collinsworth are picking New England…Marino is picking the Colts. Interesting…