The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Hey, any time your team wins vs the Yankees is a great day. It’s an even better day when the Yankees lose due to a bases loaded walk in the 9th inning. Fantastic.

I played around with Home Run Pinball in the bigs some more. I have to say it would make a great XBLA game. And with Midnight Oil in the Soundtrack, the music is good. I may have to rent the Wii version to check it out. Now on the other hand, I have no idea what I’m doing with the actual ‘game’ part of it especially when pitching so I’m going to have to RTFM.

I quickly tried the new board game for XBLA today. Sounds interesting…however I keep getting the name of the game confused with those Mexican eggs that have confetti in them.

I did play some of the Darkness last night and I’m intrigued so far. Definitely a rated M game — as Glen mentioned to me, it seems like there’s a lot of graphic (heart ripping) stuff going on…but it doesn’t seem odd to me given the story line. I’m having fun with it.

I didn’t try Call of Hour of Victory of Duty yet, but my son enjoys it. So there you go.

Don’t tell anyone this, but this is exactly the mindless fun baseball game I’m looking for. Don’t get me wrong, Bill Abner will not be playing this game anytime soon, but it’s a quick and entertaining game of baseball — nothing like the real thing…no strategy here, for example, a bat got hit back to the pitcher and he was injured so he went flying from the mound to foul territory and the runner got a double. Realistic? No. Like the real thing? No. Fun? Yeah.

I have to say I do enjoy Home Run Pinball. That’s the screenshot you saw of Times Square. Basically you’re hitting BP and the ball goes anywhere giving you points — 1,000 points for a taxi which there are a bunch of and 20,000 points for the real hard stuff. Mindless fun — reminiscient of those old pinball baseball games they still have at Funspot.

Graphics are dressed up in an arcade sort of way. Everyone seems to be on steroids. Unlike say, Slugfest, it seems like they do care about how the players are represented.

So like I said, not for the sim freaks, but it has its moments. Of course I only played about a half hour…I still have a review to finish for Call of Juarez :). Yes Bill, it’s coming.

The Brewers are down 4-2 in the 6th and proceed to put up a 9 spot on the Astros, including a Grand Slam. Man, these kids are fun to watch.

1. I managed to pick up Virtua Tennis 3 at Circuit City on clearance, so I’m happy with that. I also grabbed Lumines II for the PSP for $9.98 at Toys R Us. Not a bad clearance purchasing day.

2. I also got a chance to try out Harry Potter on the Wii when I stopped in at Gamestop this afternoon and the gesture based controls for it could work out pretty well. I only got to put about 5 minutes to play it, but the controls seemed pretty good. Also, the game looked better than a good deal of the Wii games that are out there.

3. On Sony’s Playstation blog, they’ve reported that Firmware 1.82 will support H.264 files. This makes me very happy as I have Serenity in that format and can’t wait to watch it on my PS3 without having to stream it through something like TVersity.

4. We had a second showing scheduled for our house today and the people called our realtor at 7:00 in the morning (we were notified mid day yesterday) to cancel. No reason, no nothing. I hate it when people do crap like that. It’s not like I enjoy staying up until 1:30 cleaning.

While I’m just finishing cleaning up the Sewer Tank shit for the 2nd time in six months (I love this job), TV’s Craig sent me this link. I do not believe you can do this in Professional Baseball Spirits 4.

http://crazy-japanese-pitching.12w.net/

In other news, I just got back from GameStop at lunch where I picked up the Bigs (360), The Darkness (360), and Hour of Duty or Victory or whatever it’s called also for the 360. Hey I’m a sucker for World War 2 shooting games, sue me.

AT&T Inc. and Apple Inc. on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. 200 Text messages are included and unlimited data is also included — which is a very good deal. Compared to my $149 a month Blackberry plan with Nextel which only gets me 800 minutes. Talk about a butt reaming. As a bonus, it sometimes even works in the coverage area :). The Nextel. I have no idea about the iPhone.

Lots of stuff to talk about this morning so I’ll get right to it.

A new column will appear on GameShark this week or next (as soon as we get approved artwork). This is a boardgame column called Cracked LCD by a fellow named Michael Barnes. Michael is an interesting fella. He’s the only user, to my knowledge, to earn a banishment from boardgamegeek.com.

He’s also a talented writer (with incredibly strong opinions..). He has forgotton more about the boardgaming hobby than most people will ever know. You may not always agree with him (I don’t) but Michael always has something to say — which to me is the key to writing a great column.

After being booted from BGG for being too opinionated (that was basically the reason from what I read) he co-founded the Fortress: Ameritrash blog. Some of the stuff on that blog is brilliant, other stuff is just juvenile weirdness, but it’s a bookmarkable site for BG fans.

Michael has already submitted his first four columns, each hovering around 1,500 words. He wrote these up in a matter of a few hours. The guy is a machine. If you really enjoy the BG hobby I think it’ll be required reading. It’s A-list stuff.

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Staying with the bg angle, the XBL version of Carcassonne comes out tomorrow. Woo hoo. Digital meeples! I like Carcassonne — not as much as Settlers, but it should make for a good XBL conversion.

Oh, and I still haven’t played Puerto Rico yet. I had a late game night but we played Ingenious, Citadels, and some Settlers. Ah well. I’m also currently playing a game of Twilight Struggle with Mary…and it looks like the U.S. is about to lose the Cold War. Sorry, folks. Er…Comrades.

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Finally, videogames. I’m currently playing Total Pro Golf 2, and having a hell of a good time with it. I reviewed last year’s game for CGM (3/5 stars) and this is a significantly better game in both its sim aspects as well as its playability. It’s funny — I play the game almost exactly the way Bill Harris does. I sim a lot of it, and jump in and play when it gets juicy; this way I can play multiple seasons quickly but still get a sense of how it plays. The first two days of a golf tourney always bored me (unless I was playing in it) so I wait to see how the weekend shakes out. Expect a full review shortly although Bill’s blog review pretty much says it all.

1. Very sorry and shocked to hear about the passing of Chris Benoit. What’s even more shocking is that it was a double murder-suicide. What the hell was going through this guy’s mind? I understand how the WWE had to cancel their live show. However, it’s tough to do a tribute show to a guy that just killed his wife and son, don’t you think?

2. I’m on my third day of trying to download the MotorStorm update. Seriously I don’t have this problem with my Xbox, but I’m supposed to believe it’s my ISP causing the problems? Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll just take it to work and see if I get any luck there. Maybe not, as it’s a pain to unhook. Blech.

3. Filled in the rebate form for the 5 free HDDVDs. I can’t wait.

4. GameStop is running a few pre-order specials worth mentioning: pre order Medal of Honor Airborne and get 400 MS Points. They are also doing a 20% bonus trade in if you purchase Madden or NCAA 08. Of course this brings your total trade in value for Madden 07 to $8.40, but hey, every last dollar counts.

5. I’m selling my Xbox 360 versions of NCAA 07 and Madden 07 together for $27.99 with free shipping if anyone is interested. Let me know.

6. New Xbox.com design goes live after 3PM Eastern time today…I bet you’re exciting, aren’t you.

7. Uhhh. Nothing else. Time for work.

Well, it’s almost July, so that means Circuit City clearance time. Thanks to Cheap Ass Gamer, here is the list we have thus far. All prices are $16.96. (Aren’t you happy I didn’t say bucks?)

360

Virtua Tennis 3
DOAX2
DDRU (Game Only)
Eragon
Bionicle Heroes

Wii - $16.96

Happy Feet
Avatar
Meet the Robinsons
Ice Age 2

DS - $16.96

Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam
FFF: Chocobo Tales
Magical Star Sign
Contact

PS2 - $16.96

Rayman Raving Rabbids

Virtua Tennis looks like a winner for that price point. Also, if you’re a big fan of games where women with huge breasts ’sort of’ play volleyball, DOAX2 is probably for you. (Dan, I’m looking in your general direction.)

1. After watching the Kansas City Royals play the Brewers this weekend, I have no idea how their coaching staff hasn’t been fired. There were so many base running mistakes made by that team that I was amazed that any of the players involved in them had played professional baseball before. Ugh. Maybe that team will get better in time, but whew… that was tough to watch.

2. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re rapidly approaching our 500,000 visitor to the blog. It’s a pretty cool achievement for the site and we’re working on a few things to add to what we’ve already got going here. For a hint… take a look at my email contact on the right side.

3. Based on Dan’s recommendation, and the fact that I couldn’t find any other games to try out on Gamefly, I rented TMNT for the 360. Man, that was an easy 1,000 points. 4 1/2 hours and the game was done and all achievements were completed. Not a bad brawler, but some of the jumping portions of the game were very poorly done. You could count on at least one or two jumps per level where you would die the first time, because you had no idea where you had to jump to next. Frustrating to be sure, but there were plenty of checkpoints to move things along quickly.

4. I know I’m a huge Nintendo fan, and this won’t come as a shock, but the new screens of Metroid Prime 3 that were in the most recent Play magazine were pretty damn impressive looking. Easily the best looking Wii game, thus far, from those screenshots.

5. Big week, no pun intended. I’m very interested to see how well The Bigs turns out. Especially with the Wii controls. Some of the previews have mentioned some issues that they would like to see fixed, which isn’t a good sign because if the code they have for previews isn’t working right… my guess is that it won’t be fixed by now. We’ll see soon enough.

6. Memo to Dan, Ratatouille is probably going to be the best Mouse/Chef simulation on the market.

7. What is it about ‘The Darkness’ that has so many people interested in it? The videos I’ve seen just look ultra violent and not much fun. Maybe I’m just getting old though.

I know, I know, the joke is on me. Seriously though, I Have a 6.0MB cable modem internet connection. While I would concur that it never has felt like 6.0MB, it is faster than the Verizon DSL I did have.

Anyway both my Wii and PS3 are connected wirelessly (my Tivo, 2 other laptops and Stiletto are also connected wirelessly). The Wii and PS3, which are right next to each other, seem to have a devil of a time connecting. Getting into the PS Store is not a problem, doing the background downloading is not a problem; however getting the Motorstorm update and the MLB 07 SportsConnect to work are problems. The irony is that I get the ticker that shows updated sports scores fine. Just when I try to go into a lobby or download a roster is when it’s a problem.

As I type this, the Motorstorm update progress bar is finally moving. Maybe I’ll get lucky. I have a Linksys Wireless G router…my other laptops connect fine. It’s just frustrating. I don’t have this problem with the Xbox 360; however I have had this problem when using a wired PS3 connection.. Urgh!!!

If you have any suggestions or ideas please let me know (I’ve tried the nintendo “change the wireless channel” suggestion about a billion times.

Well it’s Monday morning which means let the rampant speculation begin on what Virtual Console games will come out this week. I have no idea what the Wheel of Nintendo has in store for us…..do you?

1. You know we’re about 3 weeks away from NCAA 08?

2. Lots of stuff coming out this week: Harry Potter, The Bigs, Hour of Victory, The Darkness, Transformers, Overlord, and Ratatouille, which I believe Glen is already camped out for at GameStop for the midnight opening. Heh.

3. My credit card is going to take it up the ass this week, obviously. Damn.

As part of the celebration of BurgerCon, McDonald’s is giving away a free rental of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. SD only (Sorry) but hey worth a free rental…

Now the Orioles are talking to Dusty Baker. Why? Was their ambition to make this team like the Cubs? That’s not really an organization to emulate, you know.

Davey Johnson or keep Tremblay. He seems to have the right attitude so far. Of course I will change my mind if they lose tonight. LOL. Seriously though, even Cabera had a no hitter through 5 last night….