The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Nice to see how the Brewers hung 13 on the Cubs, one day after blowing a 2 run lead in the bottom of the 9th.

What was funny to me was listening to how Fox was selling the game before it began. “The battle for first in the NL Central.” Saying something like that would seem to indicate that first place could change hands today, when the Cubs were 6.5 back going into the game. I just found that entertaining.

- If you have a PS3, you really need to look at Super Stardust HD. It’s $8 and it’s a blast. I was thinking about as I was playing it today and comparing it to Geometry Wars isn’t really an accurate description. It’s more like Asteroids on crack. I’m up to 1700 on the leaderboard, and I’m about… oh, 200 million behind the person in first.

- Gamefly shipped out The Bigs for the Wii for me today… all that means is that I won’t be getting Ninja Gaiden for the PS3 next week. No huge loss there for me.

- Hockey early tomorrow morning. Time for me to get to bed.

I won’t say I’m giddy, but the way the Orioles are playing of late, I can live with that, Chris Ray being the exception though.

I think O’s fans just want a decent product this year. We know the Red Sox are going to run away with it. I just want to be respectable.

I don’t know if the Interim Manager will still be manager in a month, but the new GM there made a smart move by giving him some time to see what happens.

And perhaps we’re seeing the Simmons “Ewing Theory” with Tejada on the DL…either way, maybe this is the start of something good. Or really shitty, I don’t know. Just thought I’d throw it out there.

1. Took the kids here today and had a nice time. Long day though.

2. Supposed to be going to the Portland Sea Dogs – NH Fisher Cats game tomorrow, still debating that one.

3. I didn’t pick up an iPhone yet, but I see you can still buy them online. I’d love to hear from anyone that bought it what you think of it.

4. I played a few games last night in the “jack of all games, master of none” department. The Super Stardust game does have it’s moments, and I do like the add on pack for Mad Tracks. I like the way they did the expansion too. Also, the Motorstorm Time Attack mode is very nice and worth the free download.

5. After hearing about my Big Brain review, I went out and re-rented it thinking I may have missed something. I didn’t. It still sucks and I stand by my grade. Seriously there’s more depth in Wario Ware.

6. Harry Potter shipped from my GameFly queue as well. I look forward to checking that out.

7. On Friday I decided to take the next week off for vacation, since everyone else is off that week it should be pretty dead at the office. I figure I’ll catch up on revivews and take the kids to see Ratatouille and do various other things. Now you know. lol.

8. Lots of webredesigns this week. First Xbox.com, today Cnn.com. I wonder if naughtynymphos.com will also have a redesign…

1. Super Stardust HD on the PS3 is a terrific game and it’s probably the best 8 bucks I’ve spent on a game in a long time. Take Geometry Wars and add a few nice features (you keep your weapons when you die, 2 player co-op, and shields) and you’ve got a winner.

2. Speaking of Geometry Wars, Gamespot has a nice preview of the Geometry Wars games for the Wii and DS. Sounds pretty damn cool thus far.

3. Harry Potter for the Wii is shipping from Gamefly today. For those of you keeping track at home, it will be 8 days between shipping my last game and receiving another…. nice.

4. What did you think of the NBA draft? I was happy to look back this morning and see that Alando Tucker went to Phoenix. A system like they run there, should allow him to become a pretty good pro player. The Bucks on the other hand draft a player, Yi Jianlian, that wants nothing to do with being in the state of Wisconsin. Oh, well.

5. I don’t think I mentioned it, but I got a promotion at work this week. The nice thing is that I was already doing the work, now I’m just getting the money that I should have been getting for doing it.

6. I’m going to see a band tonight that a few of my friends play in. I’ve never had a chance to mooch free beer due to connections with a band… so that’s a nice way to start the weekend.

1. I just drove by the only company owned AT&T mobile store within 20 miles. I was expecting a PS3 like queue, but instead only saw 5 or 6 loser…err, people waiting. I have to say I’m on the fence with this one. I guess with my Yahoo Music to Go subscription, it makes Itunes useless…and it’s $500..but the monthly plans are much less than I’m paying Nextel for my Blackberry, so maybe it will wash out.

I recently chatted with the Producer of Saga, an MMO-real-time strategy game. It’s from a small development house but the lead designer was the lead programmer on StarCraft: Brood War. It sounds pretty neat. It’s also free. Sort of…

GameSpot has their hands on All Pro Football for the 360. I have to admit, it sounds very interesting to me….click here.

Lots of news today, so I’ll get right to it:

1. Thanks to Bill Harris for letting the world know a patch has finally been released for MLB2K7 for the 360. Now we know where Ben Brinkman has been all these months!!! Honestly, I have no idea if it makes the game better..maybe I’ll pick up a used copy today and check it out. Or not.

2. Gamerscore Blog has a quick write up on the Madden 08 party held by EA. Click here for the article, but I think this quote says it all…

When I got to the event, I fired up a game of my beloved Seahawks against division rival, St. Louis Rams and tried out the new Weapons feature that I’ve been reading about. I tried a couple plays controlling Walter Jones and used the Pass Blocker Weapon.

Sounds great. No, really. Just like real football. At least 2K made a separate game for bullshit like this. Of course I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe it’s totally rad.

3. Again regarding the Xbox 360, there’s a new trailer (not demo) for NCAA Football 08 if you’re interested.

4. Anyone lining up for the iPhone? I’m thinking about it. Yes, I’m a loser.

5. Nice to see the only way the Yankees can win a game is by making sure the umpires don’t call a game. What a complete load of crap that was and Mora had every right to be pissed. This reminds me of a 1989 game, which I believe was also against the scumbag Yankees (maybe it was the Blue Jays, but I forgot) in which the fog at Memorial Stadium was horrid and the game was not called and in the 9th inning the other team won. It cost the Orioles the AL East crown and I’m still pissed off about that…good thing I never hold grudges, huh?

1. The Spice Girls are reuniting! Tell me what you want, what you really really want!

2. If you saw Rescue Me last night, you know what the big thing is (I won’t ruin it); as much as I love this show, the ending was rather abrupt if you ask me. Then today I notice this article about the behind the scenes issues there (warning: contains spoilers)…so I’m a little disappointed. Not Sopranos disappointed — there is some validity to how it was handled but still, in the context of the show it doesn’t make sense.

3. I’ve turned off HBO. Entourage is not worth $12.95 a month and now it’s just getting stupid. I guess I’ll get the DVD maybe. Not sure. With my shitty DVR going from $9.95 to $12.95 for the same thing, I figured I needed to cut back that cable bill…and HD will always stay (cable offers Basic HD and Ultra HD and I gotta have Ultra).

4. Download article will be up tomorrow for those interested in a pretty so-so week.

5. Always a pleasure to see the Rocket lose — especially to Baltimore.

6. You know what game I’ve been playing the most? The Bigs. There are things I despise about the game — the power swing is a guarnteed HR if you make contact and the CPU is very good…but I keep playing it anyway. And competing on the leaderboards for the HR Pinball game is just way too addictive. The first time I hit the New Year’s ball was quite a feat — and 50,000 points. I’m not supposed to like this game, but I do.

So, after playing pretty badly my last two times in goal, I managed to put together a pretty impressive game last night. Got beat on a couple really nice shots, but also made a few saves that I could actually be proud of. It was nice to get back into a groove after not playing well for a while.

Ok, back to gaming…

1. I sent back a game to Gamefly on Monday, and another on Wednesday and none of the things in my queue have shipped yet. Good to see that Rapid Return is working well. I don’t know why I put up with a company like this. The best case scenario seems to be a minimum of 3 to 4 day turn around for games. Worst case, you can be looking at a week or more.

Compare them to Netflix which has 44 distribution centers, to just 2 for Gamefly. That’s just plain ridiculous. I’m half tempted to just cancel the damn service and go back to renting games from local stores again.

2. We hit 500,000 visitors today. Very cool stuff. Hopefully the new things that we’re working on will be available in the next few weeks. I’ll keep all of you posted.

3. The NB….Yawn…. Sorry about that. The NBA draft is tonight. Can’t think of an event that I care less about at this point. I did get an interesting article from Bill Harris of Dubious Quality talking about Alando Tucker though.

4. The Brewers have a series with the Cubs this weekend. Hopefully they’ll keep playing as well as they have since being no hit (12-2.)

Speaking of no hitters, one of the Brewers bigger prospects threw a perfect game at AAA on Monday night. For a team that had absolutely nothing in their farm system for the most of the last 15 years, it’s so cool to see this much talent moving through the system.

I’d personally like to thank the Texas Rangers for firing Doug Melvin a few years ago, so he could come up here. I met him at an even two years ago and I was amazed at how candid he was about trades and such. He spoke to me about the details of a trade that almost got done and about the players that he was asking for from the other teams. It really made me like the guy a great deal.

5. The Playstation Network gets Super Stardust HD, a Dynasty Warriors: Gundam demo, the new GTA IV trailer, and a few other trailers. Also, the Resistance: Fall of Man map packs will be out tomorrow. Not bad.

Today we launched our weekly board gaming column at GameShark: Michael Barnes’ Cracked LCD. This first column is just an intro type thing. If you are at all into this side of the gaming hobby, or are thinking about jumping in, this is well worth a look. This guy is a walking encyclopedia of board games. Oh, also make sure to check out the front page art. I think that looks kinda cool.

Last night I got a call from my favorite whore, Yaris from Gamestop. She calls my house a lot, but never hangs up without leaving a message. I preorder so many games that it’s a running joke at my house. She can call 5 times on a Tuesday night.

Anyway, last night the call let me know that the Bigs was in store today. What a cheating slut. She should have already known that I picked up the games two days ago. What is her problem?

With a name like Yaris, do you think she’s an exotic dancer or something?

1. So, EA has put out the info that Madden and NBA Live will both be online titles on the Wii, 1 vs. 1 and 2 vs. 2 online… but Tiger Woods will not be… Huh? Oh, well.

2. Tecmo has confirmed that they’re making another Super Swing Golf game for the Wii. Both Dan and I enjoyed the first one, so hopefully they’ll be adding online play this time.

3. I sent back Resident Evil 4 after playing it for 5 minutes. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but I was frustrated by the controls almost immediately and for some reason the thought of blasting the heads off of those, formerly human, villagers didn’t really appeal to me. I think that’s why I have no interest in The Darkness either. I just can’t enjoy a game like that right now, not sure why. I know it borders on gamer blasphemy, but I’m not even really looking forward to Bioshock and everyone is going gaga over that.

4. Did you see this story about the guy who is on his 12th Xbox 360? I don’t know about you, but half of the time when I turn my system on, I expect to see the red ring of death.

Catan on XBL is wonderful. It’s a fantastic adaptation of the boardgame. At least that’s what I thought until getting schooled in last night’s game with Todd and the bastard AI. We both lost to “Shaka” and then Todd won game two. I finished 2nd both games. I’m never going to hear the end of this…

Thanks to Jesse for giving me this information from Blu-Ray.com for fans of the BD players, including the PlayStation 3…

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has revealed an exciting offer for
those of you who are still looking to pick up a Blu-ray player. If you
purchase a Blu-ray player (including the PS3) between July 1st and
September 30th, you will automatically qualify to receive 5 Blu-ray
movies absolutely free. Combine this with existing offers (like the 5
free Blu-ray movies with purchase of a Panasonic DMP-BD10A), and you
could receive up to 10 free Blu-ray movies with the purchase of a
player.

But wait, there’s more! If you decide you would like to purchase a PS3,
Sony is offering a special deal through their retail Sony Style stores.
Purchase a PS3, two games, and an extra controller from now until July
8th, and you will receive a $50 gift card.

More information can be found here. Fantastic deal if you shelled out $499+ for a BD player.