The Blog for the Sports Gamer

I was trying to see if Scott Bedard was still alive, and first I found that he was on some stupid TV show, and then I found this press release. Scott, I’m still waiting for my share of the proceeds from Game Rankings. It took me 8 years to realize I was a co-owner, even though I wrote the press release. Heh. Craig must have received all the money.

Totally boring VC games this week on the Wii.

Guess I’ll get Castlevania for the 360 this week becuase I feel lame if I don’t. I’m succumbing to peer pressure on that one.

Just got assigned MLB for the PS2, so I’ll get right on it. Finished up reviews of GRAW 2 and SSX Blur over the weekend. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but they’ll be up soon on GameShark.

1. So just to recap, BC knocks off UNH for the Hockey East Championship and yet UNH is still the #1 seed? That makes sense. Not. At least the East regional for hockey is in New York and New Hampshire, which makes complete geographical sense! Of course BU in the midwest doesn’t make sense but hey, you can’t have your cake and eat it or something.

2. While at BJ’s today, I got a Sirius Satellite Radio for $27 with home and car kits. Talk about a frickin steal. Not sure if I will activate it or eBay it though. Tough choice.

3. Also while at BJ’s I picked up Amplitude for $12.99. For those that don’t know Amplitude is made by the same folks who did Guitar Hero. I really enjoyed Amplitude all those years ago, so I had to pick it up just out of old times sake.

4. Has anyone ever burned their foot by putting ice on it for too long? I iced it last night and now it feels like I’ve burned it…or maybe it’s frost bite. Whatever it is, it f’n hurts.

Well, since Wisconsin is the only team that I can talk about, I’ll say that I’m really disappointed with the way that they finished out the season. You can’t keep staking teams double digit leads in the post season and expect to be able to pull out game after game. I loved that they were able to go from 12 down at the half and take a 5 point lead, but their defense down the stretch was really poor and they let UNLV get a ton of wide open looks from 3 point range.

No slight intended for UNLV, they played a great game and hit their shots down the stretch and deserved the win.

I think the biggest issue that the Badgers had down the stretch was when they lost Brian Butch in the 2nd OSU game. When they lost him, Marcus Landry lost his 6th man role and became a starter and clearly didn’t have the legs for it at that point.

I like the program that Bo Ryan has built here in Madison and I think they’ll be a very solid team for years to come, definitely a top tier Big Ten team as long as he stays here.

Thankfully the women’s hockey team won the National Championship, 2nd in a row, against Duluth earlier in the day and that takes some of the sting out of the Men’s basketball loss.

Woke up today, felt like complete shit. Went back to bed, woke up at 1PM. Paid a guy to plow the driveway but still had to do the back and right up front near the garage.

Watched the last 10 mins of Xavier - OSU, even though I’m not a basketball fan. Pretty exciting game to the casual observer. Always fun to root against the #1 team, no matter who it is, as long as it isn’t your team. As discussed in the comments, Oden’s push for a foul was pretty violent, but the victim made soccer players proud with that dive :). Of course, all you had to do was sink two shots and the game was over, right? Oh well. Like I said it’s fun to watch a sporting event where you don’t really care who wins :).

In other news, finally got a chance to play the Virtua Tennis 3 demo on the 360. Graphics are fantastic. Of course I keep forgetting that I have to move my player to the ball (Wii Sports tennis will do that to you). I’m not sure what Japanese rule there is that requires the stupid music while playing a game of tennis. Last I checked, there wasn’t music during a tennis game. Other than that, it plays like Virtua Tennis, and I think I’d pick that over Top Spin…so it is definitely a rental for me.

Unlike Glen, Gamefly did not get Tiger here for the weekend, so I’ll have to do my reviews for GRAW 2 and SSX Blur. I’m really liking the Co-Op mode of GRAW 2. My son is actually doing better than me in the game. The helicopter hunter mode is pretty decent.

In other news, MidnightBox.com is doing a pretty good deal on a 60GB PS3 — $524.95 with shipping included. What’s the catch? It’s the Japanese version — so while you can’t play US PS2 games, you can play all PS3 games as the PS3 games are region free. DVD though would be JPN only. Sorry, but hey, what do you what for $75 off retail?

Whew.

What an amazing game. It’s the worst OSU has looked as a team since perhaps the 2nd Penn State game. Another performance like that against Tenn or UVA and they’ll lose. Thank god for Ron Lewis and the fact that Conley woke up in OT.

Oden had perhaps the quietest double double you can have — 14 points and 12 boards and yet he played his worst game since getting his right hand back. Still, a quiet double double is still 14 points and 12 boards. But Oden was clearly off his game by his own admission; he rarely gets into foul trouble and this is the first game has has fouled out. And please, anyone that bitches about Oden’s hard foul with 9 secs left is simply rooting against OSU, which is fine, but refs are NEVER going to call that an X foul. The only time you get that call is on a breakaway when a player might get hurt. And it wasn’t a tackle or a shove — it was a hard foul. The only reason this is even an issue is because it’s Oden doing it. If Jamar Butler does that the guy doesn’t go flying out of bounds like a rag doll and the play is an afterthought.

Xavier lost that game because the guy missed a FT to ice it and Ron Lewis drilled a 25 footer with 2 seconds left. They didn’t lose it because the refs failed to bail them out with an X foul in that situation. No way will you ever get that call. If Xavier fans want to get mad about something — get mad that the coach even allowed Lewis to shoot that instead of fouling an OSU player before he could get it off.

Anyway, we await the winner of the Vols ans Cavs. Just win and advance.

I got TW Wii from Gamefly today and here’s my early thoughts.

There are some issues with the swing model. For one, your default swing is between 105 and 110 percent, and this happens every time.

As soon as the game launches, it dumps you right into a tutorial that teaches you how to swing. One of the bigger problems that I have encountered has to do with one of the tutorials that tries to get you to hit an 80 percent shot. The tutorial says that you just need to pull the club back slower in order adjust the power of your swing, unfortunately it doesn’t work exactly like it says. You can swing the Wii remote back slowly and sometimes it will bring your club back slowly and others it will not move your club back at all. Perhaps, in time, I’ll be better at it but right now it’s more than a bit frustrating.

I was able to get through my first Tiger Challenge without any issue, but that had more to do with the fact that the female golfer I was playing against couldn’t make a shot.

You’ll find yourself spending a lot of time in the practice swing mode in your first few rounds. Especially when putting. One practice putt is 25 feet, the next which looks the same, is 58 feet.

One thing that I really do like is the hook and slice that are in the game. It’s really nice to be able to twist your wrist one way or the other and get that effect in your swing.

At this point I like the game, but I need to put more time into it and find out if it’s really a control issue or if I’m ‘just not getting it.’

I’ll let you know more later.

Some thoughts to ponder while the SUPERSTORM continues here.

1. I sure enjoyed the 5 minutes of seeing the ground in front of my house before the snow came back. What a great 5 minutes it was!
2. This Brad Delp story is just awful. He killed himself, and combined with the suicide of Richard Jeni…you wonder what is up. Hey I know we can all get depressed, but man, on paper how could these guys do it unless they did have an illness?
3. Can someone tell me please how the NCAA EAST Regionals are held in Spokane, Washington? Even most of the idiot grown ups on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader would know that Washington state is not “East”. I know that every league has these bizarre groupings but this is by far the most annoying thing of any league or tournament. Why not just have the “upper left” and the “lower right” bracket? Hmm?

On the To Do List right now is Badger Basketball at 1:30, Wisconsin Women’s Hockey at 4:00, the other Women’s Hockey semifinal at 7:00, and the Men’s Hockey game against Minnesota at 7:00. Oh… and Wiggle Groove tomorrow morning.

Definitely giving it a workout… that’s for sure.

As for the Badger men’s game at 1:45. It looks like Brian Butch will be playing either in today’s game or the next game, if they win today. That’s great news for the Badgers as it gives them another big body for the tournament. Hopefully he won’t be too rusty after 2 weeks on the bench. At the very least he’ll give them another rebounder.

Either way, I’m all set for today’s games unless my wife has the baby tonight… then I might miss a few things.

In what I would call a big shock, the new 2007 team Toronto FC has sold out season tickets. They only had 14,000 but still, that’s impressive. Soccer in April outdoors in Toronto…sounds warm. Kind of like playing Baseball in Ottawa.

Nice to see Houston beat FC Pachuca as part of the CONCACAF Champions Club tournament. Suck on that Mexico. Of course, it’s a 2 leg series, with aggregate goals, but still, big news to see an MLS team even beat a Mexican league team at this level. I still wish it was the Revolution there….oh welll…

Only in New England can you go from 70 degrees on Wednesday to SUPER STORM 12″ of SNOW RUN FOR YOUR LIVES on Friday.

For X360 owners, you can now grab a download of Virtua Tennis 3. Enjoy! Or not. There’s some new demo out for PS3 owners too, so you can try out Def Jam for it.

Castlevania : SOTN will be the release for 360 Live players next week. 800 points? That’s like $10? For a PS1 game? Well, I guess if N64 games are $10, this is right in the same ballpark. Whatever.

After Glen let me know he is not in fact in labor, we started talking about Super Mario Strikers and Mario Superstar Baseball. I didn’t realize that it would be tough to get the games at bargain bin prices. Gamestop in store had it used at $40, and I think the former owner took a dump on the game case or something becuase it was ‘well worn’….so I passed.

The Board Games are lame ad is so funny, I think I’m going to have to buy a game from this guy’s affiliate program just so he can keep advertising :).

I have a membership in AAA. And because of that I received an email today where I’m getting 20% off everything at the Sirius store, a 7 day online trial instead of a 3 day trial, and free radio activation.

I signed right up for the free trial…and they are a little deceiving…you get the “Sirius Standard” radio, which is right up there with listening to a crappy podcast like audio stream. However, I’ve been listening to the Lithium channel and I am a HUGE fan. I prefer this to Lucy or Ethel on XM…I’ll have to keep listening to see if they repeat like crazy or if the playlist is varied. So far I’m impressed. The other thing about Sirius Standard is that you don’t get Howard Stern. Kinda tough to have a free trial without hearing the good stuff. I mean even porn sites give you a little taste…err, I mean, that’s what Glen tells me (Glen is currently at the hospital with his wife in the 2094328098th hour of labor so he will be too tired to read this).

Any hoo it’s not bad. I’m wicked tired, so I will ttyl.

/wave Duke.

Ohio State looked sharp against the 16 seed, which is all I wanted to see. I didn’t want an Albany/UConn fiasco. My bracket is busted because I had a lot of upsets today and the one that happened…I didn’t have. Ah well.

When I buy board games, I buy them at Thought Hammer.com! (Bill Abner did not get paid for that advertisement. )

It’s the truth, though. Thought Hammer is in fact where I buy 90% of my games. Fast, reliable, and the prices, I think, are the best on the net. TH is now running an NCAA Tourney sale with certain games representing teams in the 64 team field. Here’s the rules and the brackets.

So, Ohio State is Marvel Heroes, a game I reviewed recently. If OSU wins it all, you’ll get $7 off the game. It’s not a *great* deal, because $7 is the max discount, but it is a cool idea.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been playing MLB 07 on my PS3. I have created a virtual memory card which has updated rosters and my pitching career.

Imagine my surprise when I went to create a new LF player and played through a month and went to save and was told my memory card was full. Apparently you have to create a 2nd memory card and put it in another virtual slot in order to have this to work. Greeeatt.

Oh yeah, and of course you can’t create a memory card while in the game. So I just lost 2 months of my LF career. Good times.

As mentioned by one of our blog readers earlier, there do not seem to be any trades in this mode. Now for me, I wouldn’t be complaining about this, unless it also happens in franchise mode. After all, I’m more concerned with “me” rather than hmm, I wonder if AAA Toledo traded for anyone. As I said before, if the same thing happens in Franchise, that would not be good.

For me I like being a ‘player’ more than being a ‘manager/coach/gm’, so this mode works for me. I certainly understand and respect there are others who rather would be a manager/coach/gm. At this point in time, because I’ve spent so much time playing RTTS mode, I really can’t say if this is a great game for franchise mode players.

This game sure does have the “it” factor though. Last night, when I was doing my pitching career, I threw a double play ball. Of course at the AAA level, you never know what will happen so the SS throws to the 2B for the force and then as the 2B transfers the ball from glove to hand, he drops it. The umpire points to the bag, makes a motion indicating the ball dropped on the transfer, and rings the runner out.
Now that is how it happens in real life. It’s stuff like that which MLB does so well at doing — making it feel like a real game. It may not be perfect, but it is fun.

Speaking of fun, I hadn’t been playing much on XBLA until yesterday when the great game of 1989, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, arrived on the scene. BTW, this game in arcade form is still a lot of fun, if you ever make it up to Funspot in Weirs Beach, NH.

Even though the game is over fast, I enjoy the live Co-op play. I wish some graphics got the HD treatment, but still an enjoyable way to blow $5. What I find amazing is that in 2007, you can either buy a game on the Wii for your old NES which you had in 1989 (the then price was what, $40?) for $5, or you can buy TMNT, which was a $2,500 arcade game in 1989, for $5. Kinda odd, don’t you think? Of course, you do miss out on the cool cabinet, but I’ll live.

Getting back to Idol, I read in EW that Brandon was the favorite of the lead singer of 311. Apparently he was producing some songs for the lead singer of 311’s brother. Stick to that rather than singing, ok? Even the lead singer of 311 ragged on the judges for calling 1995 “hip” and “contemporary”.

It’s a good thing Diana Ross has “living legend” status, becuase if that was anyone else on the show last night, they would have been booed off the stage. She seemed so great with the advice on Tuesday and last night she seemed crazy. Shades of Michael Jackson, huh?

Anyone know what the theme is for next week?

I am now in my second season, and now I’m starting to see some issues. First the official scorer is a retard. Lots of dropped balls called “Hits”. Which of course then changes my ERA big time and pisses me off.

Next, there seem to be a lot of hits right back to the pitcher, except I don’t field them and they go out to center field.

I love how you can get “goal succeeded” on getting a grounder that becomes a triple. That’s great.

I see what our reader means about a lack of trades. Still a fun game but not perfect.