The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

PS3 Update loaded

All 2 of you that own PS3s, don't forget that there's a firmware update that allows you do have background downloading. I have to say, I was impressed with the load time of this update.

However, the whole @home thing, which you can download and install to harness the power of the PS3 to solve world issues, does not let you download the 50MB in the background.

Go figure.

Bauman’s Blog

Steve Bauman, the former Editor In Chief of Computer Games Magazine, now has a blog here for your reading enjoyment.

Kids games, CGM, Staying Busy, and Vassal

Gameshark posted two articles of mine today: a look at a handful of kids games including Blink, Chicken Cha Cha Cha and the always fantastic PitchCar as well as my take on GalCiv II Dark Avatar. (Awesome game)

The freelance world (my freelance world anyway) was turned upside down last week with the sudden closing of Computer Games Magazine. This sucked for several reasons and staying true to Blog for the Sports Gamer form, I'll list them in bullet format.

• CGM was a decent chunk of my freelance income. Print pays well. Or, at least it used to pay well and I was also starting to do work for its sister magazine, MASSIVE, which focused on MMOs. That's all gone. Freelance writing is like that. It's a tough gig.
• Steve Bauman, the EiC, is a good friend of mine. I hate seeing my friends hung out to dry like that. I won't go into the whats and the whys as to the closing, but this was not CGM's fault.
• It was a great magazine. I thought CGM was the best PC gaming magazine on the planet -- going back to the days when it was called CGS+. It's rare in life when you can attain one of your personal goals. It's hard to do whether it's dropping 20 pounds or writing the Great American novel. When I started in this industry, my goal was to write for CGS+. Not PC Gamer and not CGW. CGS+ was my focus. This is back when I was just starting out (around 1995/96), not getting paid to review games, going to E3 on my own dime and just trying to make a name for myself -- along with former blog-mate Todd Brakke, starting at the low rung of doing work for small websites that took volunteers. Four years later, and several jobs later including paying stints at GamePen and WarZone and running my own site called The Gaming Nexus, I was named PC Sports Editor of CGS+. (A job that I truly loved..until there were no more PC sports games...heh)
• So, this really is an end of an era for me and one that I didn't want to see come to an end. And it sucks.

Thankfully, the good people at GameSpy are picking up the slack and I'm going to be doing more work over there as well as at GameShark, which is keeping me above the water line. I'm working on GSpy reviews of OOTP 2007, Genesis Rising and I should get a review copy of the PC version of Battlestations: Midway shortly. For GameShark I have Silverfall, Draft Day Basketball, C&C 3, as well as several board game reviews including a really cool interview with the designer of Arkham Horror, Richard Launius.

Speaking of board games (not bored games! cute ad..real cute. heh) I finally discovered the VASSAL engine today. This website allows you to play certain games online or via email. If anyone wants to learn BattleLore, for example, let me know and we can start an email game. I don't have time to play live online, but email games -- I'm all for. Hammer of the Scots is there as well. I assume that these games are complete, but I haven't tried this yet -- just read about it. Dan S.? Any wisdom re: VASSAL?

OOTP 2007 impressions

I was lucky enough to get a chance to look at OOTP 2007 for the last day or so and I've been very impressed with what I've seen of it thus far.

As I mentioned before, I didn't get a chance to try out OOTP 2006, but I love the interface changes that they've made since 6.5. Navigating the game is a great deal easier then it ever was in the past.

I started up a career and took over as the manager of the A ball club for the Red Sox and I've gotten a chance to play through 5 games thus far. The in-game interface is much smoother and it's very easy to make defensive shifts and adjust your lineup and pitchers.

Another thing that has stunned me is the how quick the sim engine is now. In my sim, there are 17 leagues involving 210 teams and it's managing to simulate a day in a little less than 2 or 3 seconds. It's absolutely amazing how fast the sim engine is running considering how much data is being created on a game by game basis.

I need to run a few season sims and see how good the data looks for accurate simulations, but if that looks good, I think I'll be spending a good deal of time with this for the next few months.

NOOOOOOOOOOO! PS3 MLB delayed

Thanks to blog reader and poster Glen who let me know that GameStop and the official PS3 home page have changed the release date of MLB 07: The Show to May 15th, 2007.

This has MLB 2K6 turd game written all over it.

What a major, major disappointment. They can't win now. Either it's rushed and shitty, or it's released 1/2 way into the season and no one cares.

I am crushed!

Obligatory Friday Night Lights Reminder

Don't forget, tonight on NBC 9/8 Central is an all new Friday Night Lights. It's a great show and on the cancellation bubble. All of you readers with PeopleMeters, make sure you tune in!!

Brushes with sports fame

One of the nice things about living in and around Madison, and working near the university, is that you see a lot of the athletes from the Wisconsin sports teams. After their careers are done, a lot of them stick around the Madison area and you run into them from time to time.

Last night I had a chance to play goalie for a men's group that I've played with in the past. I've only been playing in goal for a little over a year now, so I'm still learning a ton about what angles that you need to give to the shooters and I spend a ton of time working on my technique and trying not to flop like a fish when making a save. Honestly, it's the most challenging position I've ever played in any sport and probably the most dangerous one as well, but I love it and really enjoy playing a few times every week.

So I get to the rink last night and see that a former Badger player is going to be skating in our group for the evening. I was excited because he was one of my favorite players on the championship team from a year ago, not because of his scoring ability or anything like that, but because you could see that the guy was 100% hustle all the time.

I won't go into the whole details of the night, but I was happy to make a few saves on him and get beat.... very badly a few times as well.

So, after the game and having a few beers with him, I wondered how many of you have gotten to play with some of the athletes that we all get to watch, in person and on TV.

I can say that the first time that he was skating down the ice, I wasn't thinking about trying to show him up or anything. All I thought to myself was, "Don't screw up... don't screw up." After that, he was just another guy. Another guy that could probably crack my sternum with his slapshot, but just another guy.

Cheap Bluetooth headset

For those that have a PS3 and need a headset, woot.com has a bluetooth headset for $19.99 w/shipping included.

Appeals to Bono!

Check out this article, which says that some people are writing to Bono to stop Mercenaries 2 from being released.

Idol, Wrestling and Games

American Idol, for those that care: Hey, Sanjaya was better than Gina. Best singer this week goes to Blake. People who I think will be gone: Phil, Gina. Take your pick.

So this is a SHOCKER: apparently wrestlers have been implicated in the latest steroid scandal. Wow. Who would have thought.

Oh for the record, I take steriods. Technically, flonase is a steroid. Guess I won't be playing Major League Baseball anytime soon. I don't do it for the performance enhancement, I do it so I can breathe.

Sega was kind enough to send along Virtua Tennis 3. Should be giving that a whirl later.

NDA Lifted on Shadowrun

Just received word from Microsoft that the NDA has been lifted on Shadowrun, which I may/may not have been playing for some time (although there was an NDA, you could always see what game I was playing on the gamertag list -- so whateva).

I've been enjoying the game. It's an interesting take on the usual first person shooter. I like how you can purchase different items and use a tree of life to get healed. I like how if you die, one of your teammates can rescue you -- but if your teammate gets killed, you start dying as well...interesting idea. Graphics are certainly bearable but definitely still a work in progress. Online gaming with it during the stress testing was a lot of fun.

I keep forgetting that Wednesday is release day while Tuesday is ship day. It gets me all f'd up when doing this stuff. Oh well. Not sure what, if anything I'll be picking up tomorrow....

And just to be fair… (Baseball Mogul 2008)

Baseball Mogul 2008 is due to be released today.

I just looked over at their store site and don't see it available for purchase yet, but the Mogul 2008 page does list that it will be for sale today.

Two baseball sims in a week. Not a bad deal.

Get OOTP 2007 one day early

If you pre-order OOTP 2007 by the end of the day on Wednesday they'll let you download your copy one day early. (It releases on Friday.) Not a huge benefit, but getting the game a day early isn't a bad thing if you were planning on buying it anyway.

I had a chance to talk with one of the developers of OOTP last week and he made it sound like this years version was going to address some of the issues that people, including Bill, had with the previous version.

I haven't had a chance to look at this years version all that much, but I'm a big fan of supporting the text-based sim guys. If you're planning on buying it, can't hurt to pay for it one day in advance, I figure.

Wii golfing and other gaming thoughts

I can't say that I hate Tiger Woods for the Wii as much as Dan does, but I can safely say that I wasn't a huge fan of the game either. After playing it a bit more, I found that I really couldn't over look the issues with the swing model.

The way I looked at it, the main thing that you have to get right in a golf game is the swing. If you can't get that right, the rest of the game doesn't really matter all that much.

Based on Dan's recommendation, I picked up Super Swing Golf and wow is that a great deal more fun to play. It's cartoony (which is a style I actually enjoy in a golf game) but it's so much easier to play and enjoy, plus the swing makes sense. The only thing that does cause any issues is the fact that you have to look at the screen during your swing to make sure you have the right amount of power for your shot, which is a bit awkward when you're in mid-backswing but you get used to it. Also, the putting grid is different than most golf games, so it takes a while to get used to lining up your putts. I played a few rounds last night and loved it. If you're curious about it, it just dropped to $29.99 and it's well worth a look. Here's Dan's review if you're on the fence.

If you were ever a fan of the Tecmo Bowl series, pick it up on the Wii Virtual Console. I grabbed it last night and it just felt like I was riding a bike as I trounced San Fran with the Raiders 49-7. I didn't mind the names being removed from the rosters at all, and to be honest this was the best version for them to release without the names as they aren't a major part of the gameplay. Also, the Wii remote works great as a controller for it. The d-pad is terrific and it just felt like I was playing with a larger NES controller. My wife walked into the room and said, "Why are you playing Tecmo Bowl?" I replied, "How does this surprise you? The intro song is the ring tone on my phone."

In non sports gaming news, Please take a look at the demo for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. It's an RPG that uses Bejeweled for it's combat mode. Once you try the demo, you're sure to be hooked. Thanks to Bill Harris for mentioning the demo on Dubious Quality. If I can find it around town, I'll probably be picking up the DS version later this week.

Monday Night RAW

Sorry, no actual wrestling content, just wanted to say it.

Received Tiger Woods today for the Wii. I'm not getting the review so after 5 minutes, this turd is going back to Gamefly. Reminder: if a big site gives a game a 7.x, it's a turd.

First and foremost, the graphics are complete ass. I mean seriously, it's like they took the Xbox game and just ran it on the Wii to see what happens. I think the graphics could be better. The text looks like crap and Tiger is pixel-ly. Madden's EA Trax text looks fine, but this just looks terrible.

While it's fun to swing with the Wiimote, it's easy to cheat, except in putting which seems to be insanely difficult without any sort of depth perception.

I think I'll stick with Wii Sports golf and Super Swing Golf on that console...

Now I would agree I only spent five minutes with it, and it's not enough time to do a full or comprehensive review, but I'm glad I don't have to. Maybe if you spent a whole lot of time with it you could try to convince yourself it's good, but I have other more worthy games in my queue waiting for me.

Oh and finally, what's the deal with EA games on the Wii? Apparently they ran out of money to make the discs colorful so you get a silver etching on each disc. It reminds me of the way Netflix sends you those 'for rental only' DVDs. I thought it just might be a Gamefly thing, but the same thing happened on a store bought copy of Madden.

This week I'm debating about purchasing Virtua Tennis, but I'll probably just get the rental. I'm very curious about Cooking Mama for the Wii..UEFA comes out for the 360, but I'll probably pass...sounds like a bunch of rentals. Godfather comes out for Wii and PS3...IGN gave it an 8.0, so I wonder if it's good. I think 8.0 works out to a C+ or B- on my new IGN conversion scale....

Wow, Modest Mouse now has Johnny Marr of the Smiths as a member of the band. I'm picking that CD up tomorrow. It does come out tomorrow, I hope.

Those of you near a BJ's Wholesale Club -- they have the MS Wireless Wheel for the 360 on clearance for $105. Great deal if you can find it.

I had something else to say but I forgot. Maybe I'll think of it later. Or not.