The Blog for the Sports Gamer

FedEx got the game here from Hong Kong in less than 48 hours. Absolutely terrific service from them and Play-Asia.com

My hope is to put in a few reports about the game later tonight (I’m at work now, but I hope to get some things written up after 9PM, depending on the kids.)

Before you make that decision to trade in your existing 360 for the Elite, may I remind you:

1. Any Xbox Live content is CONSOLE LOCKED (not hard drive locked, but console locked) or a Xbox Live Sign In is REQUIRED.

2. This means, if you do NOT have internet access, but transferred your hard drive to the new console you CANNOT play any Xbox Live arcade game unless you are playing it on the console you BOUGHT it on originally.

3. Believe me, when I went to my 2nd 360, and I lost internet access I found this out the hard way. What was Microsoft’s solution? They gave me 9600 points to redownload everything on the new console! Of course that console broke also, so I just gave up. You can always redownload everything as long as you are signed in to XBL with the Gamertag you purchased the items with — but if you lose internet access, no Joust for you!

Just a warning before you decide to upgrade….

Quick thoughts while checking out Bill’s post below. Scroll on the flash presentation and you’ll see names of players that are in the game I’m assuming. Some aren’t really well known, others, like Korey Stringer, are well known for other things besides playing football (he died on the practice field) but there is one, well, little known name…OJ Simpson. Oh please, please, PLEASE let me edit his gloves. Please!!!! One has to wonder how on earth he got paid for this and where does the money go….

In other news, when Idol announced it was a shocking show tonight, I immediately told my wife that means no one will be voted off, and I was right. Someone forgot to tell Jordin though who was visibly shaken and knocked off her game at the final song. So by saying “Bono mentors the Idols,” they meant “Bono gets 2 minutes of airtime at the end”…I see.

This show is becoming like 24 — as Bill said to me on ICQ — there’s so much invested you have to keep watching, but you really don’t give a shit.

On the other hand, you have shows like the Shield which are edge of your seat, what the F is going to happen next, OMG I can’t believe were 52 minutes into the show already and I want more type of show (I used to do that with the Sopranos, but that kinda died off).

Orioles lost tonight, so I guess the playoffs were a pipe dream. Fun while it lasted though.

I too am waiting for the baseball game for my PS3 from Japan. Maybe Glen will get it first. Choad.

OK regarding my last concern about the talent gap.

I just noticed some of the players listed in the backdrop.

The BOZ is in the game. Brian Bosworth is a Legend of..well I have no idea but he’s in the game, I guess. Alvin Harper…Andre Ware…Bubby Brister…Bobby Hebert…MIKE GOLIC…OK I am no longer worried at all about that.

No Jim Brown from what I can see. We do get Solomon Wilcots though so that’s a push…ahem.

OK there are a lot of legendary, great, good and downright average players on this list. I’m actually glad to see that.

First off: the Tom Sawyer Remix? That’s just…wrong. I hate when remixes screw up a perfectly great song.

So the Legends are rolling into AP Football 2K8.

Question: Does this change your opinion about the whole, “Just shut up and play” stuff? Does this get you excited at all? Are you excited about the $60 price tag? (That’s what’s listed.)

Look, I want 2K to get back into the football ring as much as anyone. Madden just doesn’t do much for me; it’s just stale at this point. But will a Legends game without real NFL teams and no franchise mode and no editing tools work for you? Jerry Rice, starting WR for the Palooka Lightning! To be fair, the next time 2K Sports designs a pro football game with a good franchise mode it will be the first time, so maybe this isn’t such a bad thing? I’d rather it not be there than to be crap, ya know? Granted, the lack of an editor just makes no sense to me whatsoever but that’s a rant for another time.

We’re looking at around 240 Legends. That’s a lot of Legends. They need name players to make this work, no doubt about it. If 2K designed a 100% fictional game with all of the editing tools in the world — it would fail. I’d be cool with it, but I know I am not in the majority on that. So I totally get what they’re doing with all of these classic players.

You can do a Fanasty Draft and play with all of these guys: “Draft your dream team from football’s legendary players–over 240 of them.”

This is where I’m a tad leery.

Will people have an All-Star team of great players? How will that work, exactly? Will teams have weaknesses?

Yes coach, we have Barry Sanders at HB and Elway at QB and the 1982 Redskins OLine and yeah…that’s Lambert at linebacker and watch out for Jack Tatum at safety…he hits like a tank.

I dunno. I’m one that likes to see teams with weaknesses. How do you exploit a team of All-Pros and Hall of Famers? OK, do I throw at Lester Hayes or Deion? Hmm..on second thought I’ll just keep giving it to Earl Campbell.

Again, we still don’t know how any of this will actually work so I don’t want to jump the gun here. I’m just hoping the talent is spread out a bit, that’s all. I love old time sports so I’m cautiously optimistic about all of this.

So — does this get you jazzed at all?

According to Fedex, the game should be here tomorrow by noon. Sadly, I’ll be at work when that happens, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be playing quite a bit of it tomorrow night when I get the chance. I can’t ever recall being this excited about a game.

In Brewers news, Ben Sheets strained his groin and was pulled from the game in the 4th. I can’t say that I’m shocked by this. The guy has great stuff, but he is hurt every single year…without fail. Thankfully they have a good staff to work around the issue of his always being injured.

Tomorrow the PS3 is supposed to get another firmware update and an update to Folding at Home that will increase the speed of the folding and add some other stats and such. Over 250,000 people have used their PS3’s for folding to this point. It’s a terrific program and I hope that we see more things like this in the future to use the processing power of our systems when they’re not in use.

Damn, last night’s episode of the Unit was fantastic. That show is like Alias but without all the weird crap — just a lot of action. Well worth your time.

I already talked about Idol…

Hope that Heatseeker for the Wii shows up today along with FEAR for the PS3. I did enjoy the Xbox 360 version of the game, so we’ll see.

In other news, while checking in with my friends at GameStop, even though the Elite isn’t available yet, the black controllers and 120GB HD are both available. I debated whether or not to trade in my Xbox 360 Premium for the Elite — which would result in me paying $220 for HDMI, 120GB HD and a black Xbox.

I decided to hope for the $180 for only the 120GB drive. Anyone want to buy a back up 20GB HD for a 360? Yes, that is an insane amount of money but with 0.8 GB available on my HD, its’ not like I had much of a choice!

If I would have known that Dan was this suggestible I would have started talking to him about the Konami baseball game earlier so that we would both have it by now. As for who will get it first… meh… If I get it by Saturday, I’ll be totally ok with that.

I also picked up Blitz for the 360 tonight at Best Buy. It’s not the best football game on the market but it should be fun to play for a while, plus it has the best name for an achievement to this point. (Look at the last achievement on the page.)

Also, I’ve been playing quite a bit of OOTP over the past day or so. I’m going to be writing up a short review for it here after I get more time in.

In baseball news, Suppan pitches a great game and the Brewers take another game from the Cubbies. This is the best I’ve seen the Brewers play in years. Hopefully it can continue throughout the year.

For those that enjoy ‘inspirational’ songs, you’re in for a treat. For the rest of us, welcome to another crappy show. Thank God though by having “Bono mentoring” they meant “Bono doesn’t show up anywhere on the program” which made me feel much better. I guess he was going to mentor them on charity rather than mentor them on singing, which I can live with.

I think my money is on Jordin to win it. Phil wasn’t bad either. Blake…well, let’s just say one of the Idol rules should be “you can’t cover John Lennon”…Blake’s stock is fading, which is a bit of a bummer. Apparently the judges love Chris, because I have no other reason for why he sounds good. If Sanjaya sounded that terrible, why is Chris being told he sounds good? WTF?

Okay back to gaming.

First, because I do everything Uncle Jerry told me to do, I bought Pro Jikkou Baseball or whatever it’s called — let’s call it the Konami baseball game for the PS3. Thank you NCSX. I bet I get it before Glen does. Suck it down!

Second, nice to see the Orioles return to their normal sucking ways.

Third, I only received on name for my console column. I was thinking the down low on downloads….if you think that sounds lame, give me a better title. Speaking of lame, nice job on Stern today, Jonah.

1. Did I hear the promo right for American Idol on 24 last night? Bono is the coach? U2? Bono? I don’t know what to think of that. Part of me wants to scream ’sellout’ but part of me thinks hey, if Tony Bennett can do it, so can Bono..I’m just cringing at the ‘gang’ singing something like I Still Haven’t Found and then Bono walking in on them. You see the difference between every other “coach” and this one is that U2’s songs mean something to me…sounds lame, I know. But let’s face it, this is as close as we’re going to get to seeing bands I like be coaches–I would still love Morrissey or Depeche Mode week.

2. Hands down, this is the worst season of 24 ever. Last nights episode was a joke. First, no way would Jack, a guy who killed Chappelle just to save the world, would give up this thing for a person. Oh, and could someone tell me how Jack knew about an abandoned hotel still being there 2 years AFTER he was imprisoned in China ? I know there’s a certain amount of implausability in watching the show but it’s really getting insane now. I’m going to watch it until the end of course (because I have so much invested), but I’m really disappointed.

3. Went to GameStop today — they only have 6 Elites and so far a waiting list of 20+. Didn’t expect that sort of demand. Also picked up all the new b/c games for teh 360 like JSRF…ironically I just sold it last week. Oh well, sell for $1 buy for $2.70…it’s not like I just dropped $70 on some Japanese baseball game or something.

4.New House, new Idol, new Dancing With the Stars…new Unit…how does anyone keep up on Tuesday? Is it me or are all the shows ending really early?

Okay…back to work….

I called the local stores in the Madison area that used to do importing and they got out of the business saying that there just wasn’t any money in it for them.

I ended up ordering the game from Play-Asia.com with Fedex shipping. With some luck it should be here before Saturday.

I’ll be posting about it as much as I can when I receive it. Now we just need to convince Dan to pick up a copy so we can try out the online play.

Woo! Brewers win in 12 over the Cubbies.

The Brewers are playing some great ball of late and are doing some serious damage against the division. In the midst of a 23 game stretch against teams in their division, they are 7 -3 and have opened up a 2.5 game lead over the division.

The best part of the game today was the fact that the bullpen threw 8 innings of shutout relief and allowed the Brewers to chip away and finally get the win on Prince Fielder’s second home run of the game in the 12th.

It’s just great to see the team playing so well in the 25th anniversary season of the only time the Brewers went to the World Series.

As I’ve said in the comments, I’m going to be picking up the PS3 version of Pro Yakyuu Spirits 4 one way or another tomorrow. I managed to track down a translation guide written by a gentleman over at Japanesebaseball.com and having something like that will be a huge help for me as I don’t understand anything about the Japanese language.

I’m looking at picking the game up from either Play-asia.com, NCSX.com, Yesasia.com, or from a local store in Madison that carries import games from time to time. NCSX and Yesasia are talking about up to a two week wait before they’ll ship the game. Play-asia promises to ship within 24 hours, but charges $20 to get the game to you within 4 days. Decisions, decisions.

Why I’m looking at spending $80 on a game right now is beyond me though as I barely have 30 minutes of gaming time each day. I’m just a game junky, I suppose.

Just following up — did anyone pick up the Konami Japanese Baseball game for the PS3? I’m really tempted — however NCSX has a 2 week delay to get the game…but damn it looks good. Wish I spoke Japanese.

Thanks to blog fans who have signed up for Folding@home. We’re up to 5 helpers now and were in the top 7,000 teams! Keep it up.

Uncle Jerry was bummed that I was able to reconnect my PS3…he thought he would catch up to me. Heh. That thing is running nonstop until 5/12 when the Show comes out.

I’ve received a few emails asking me what’s going on with GameRankings, since I used to work there. I don’t know. I do know that I have tried to contact Scott Bedard and have been unable to do so — the gamerankings.com email does not work, and attempts to reach over Xbox Live haven’t happened either. I know some people in the industry have tried to contact C|net and they say it will be back up shortly but now it’s been two weeks — they are also sending vistors to metacritic. If anyone knows what’s going on, drop me a line or leave a comment.