The Blog for the Sports Gamer

1. Last night my, 2.7 year old, daughter came up to me with her hands covering her mouth. Like an idiot, I say “What’s wrong?” She then proceeded to projectile vomit all over the bedroom. The first thing that came to mind was the scene from Parenthood where the little girl throws up on her dad. When I first saw that movie, I thought that there was nothing realistic about that scene. Now I know different. So, that was the first time my daughter really threw up. Exciting, huh?

2. Today my daughter, the same one from the first story, walked up to me and said, “Daddy I want to use the potty,” and she went for the first time at home. She’s been doing it for a month at daycare, but never here. It’s funny how proud you can be for someone controlling their bladder.

I know it’s not as exciting as Bill’s work on getting realistic stats in NCAA, but it was a very interesting last day for me at home.

BTW, I’m going in to the doctor on Monday to ask for an MRI for my knee. I can stand, walk, and run without any issues, but if I flex my knee I have terrible pain on the side of my knee (where the puck hit.) I had an X-Ray the other day that went fine, but now I’m wondering if there is some sort of damage to a ligament or tendon… Hopefully it’s just a really bad strain or something.

A few things after messing with stuff today, both in season play and in practice mode.

First off — the sliders aren’t “switched”. The Knockdown and INT sliders are not somehow magically “reversed.” Seriously guys, every year I hear that about either Madden, NFL 2K, or NCAA. Yes, I tried it just for giggles (I’m a sucker for a conspiracy theory) and go ahead…bump that INT slider and watch what happens after a few games. (I’ll wait…)

……….

See?

Also, you need to understand, and this is a big, big reason I don’t post slider stuff anymore — you cannot play one game and then come back with a set of gameplay sliders. There are just too many variables at work. Testing this Interception thing takes a hell of a lot of time and patience. One game with no INTs (something I still haven’t seen) wouldn’t prove any sort of hypothesis. If I ever get the game to behave the way I want, after playing them for at least a season, I’ll share them. Otherwise I’m wasting my time and yours and you already waste too much reading our shit anyway.

With regard to the tests, my current theory is that in order to limit the INTs, be it on All American level or Heisman level, you need to keep an eye on a few select settings. The WR Catch slider appears to be a huge, huge deal. (Not as key as QB Acc…but still)

I thought that that that slider simply dealt with catching the ball; it would appear after sitting in practice mode and playing 3 games with this, that the slider also impacts how aggressive a player is in going AFTER a ball. A lot of the silly INTs in this game are because the defender makes a break on the ball and the WR keeps running his pattern. I have this slider at 100. I think you can play with the Human Defense AWR bumped up a bit, but you really don’t need to (especially on AA level).

My current set is back to AA level;
CPU Accuracy around 75; catching 100
Human AWR at 10; INTs 0; Knockdowns 100

The game I just played was encouraging. OSU 30 Akron 7

The Akron QB: 22/32 188 yards, 0TD 2 INT
2 Drops (even with 100 catching..)
5 Deflections (if the sliders were reversed, explain the 2 ints and 5 deflections? Wouldn’t I have picked off a ton of passes with the INT slider actually maxed out? Against Akron?)

The INTs in that game: On a deep post 1-1 coverage, a bad throw that my CB just caught in stride. The other was on a quick out and my 99 rated CB jumped the route and ran it back 55 yards.

2 INTs against Akron..I’m fine with that. I’m trying to get those 3, 4, and 5 pick games cut down to a minimum.

I also want to talk about QB Accuracy. If Practice mode is any indication, this slider does a lot more than just force the cpu to make more accurate passes. More importantly, it forces them to make better decisions. Try it. Go into Practice mode with Acc set to 45 or 50. Find a play and a defense that the QB is throwing a high number of picks. Change the Acc now to around 80. Notice how the QB checks down now, and finds a safety valve or finds an open seam rather than forcing the ball into the spot it kept trying to find earlier.

Hell, look at that QB line again from the Akron game. When was the last time you played NCAA against the AI, saw it complete *22* passes but only for 188 yards? 9 yards per completion? In NCAA? The last time you saw that was never. By raining the accuracy, the QB is looking underneath; yes they will still make mistakes and yeah…with that Accuracy that high you won’t see too many horrible off target passes — most incompletions are knockdowns, drops or a breakup when a DB clobbers a WR as he catches it. But I’ll live with that if it means a better game out of the AI as the whole.

I’m spending this much time with it simply because there is a great, great game in here. It just needs help in getting out. It’s still as unpolished as a soot covered nickel, but there are gameplay elements that have been sorely lacking in this series that are IN NCAA 08. Like YAC. I don’t mean a WR catches a crossing route and runs for 10 more yards. I mean that you can now actually make a MOVE on a DB after catching a pass…a TE can run OVER a corner. That kinda stuff. When I see OSU WR Ray Small juke a CB out og his shoes on a curl and take it 45 yards up the field…that makes me want to test the game to get it to play the way I want it to play.

And now a public service announcement (with guitar): eyes with allergies + contacts + my rubbing said eye is not a good combination. It is not good to feel like you have something on your eye like a spot on your glasses — but it’s on your eye! It’s also not good to have the eye dripping various liquids when one of them is blood. Really makes reviewing games and typing hard, but I do it for the throngs of readers here.

Quick notes: 1)While watching VH1 tonight, I saw a preview for EA’s game Boogie. I have zero clue what this game is about, I thought it was like karaoake revolution but it says you can use the tools in game to make your own music video! Wow, how Marky Mark Make My Video Sega CD of them. Next, visit the site and have a listen to the soundtrack - Worst. Covers. Ever. It says that some songs were re-recorded by the original groups, but man these are bad. I mean they make some Guitar Hero covers look fantastic. Wow this is bad. I don’t think I’d even put the ’sampler’ out there. I also don’t think that Love Rollercoaster was made popular by RHCP; it was in fact the Ohio Players. Using that same logic, how about “I Got You Babe” as made popular by Beavis & Butt-head. Oh my god, Love Shack sounds horrid. I do a better Fred. Was their budget so bad from Madden they just had to get these losers? Lou Bega was busy? Wow. You have got to listen to this crap for yourself. Click here, if your ears can handle it.

While you’re web surfing, make sure to get your bids in on Short Circuit’s #5.

Ok, gotta go clean up my eye again.

After a few short games, I do have to say that I’m quite impressed with the gameplay.

- The tackling animations are light years ahead of what NCAA is showing this year. It’s amazing to watch a runner get stood up by a linebacker and then get hammered by the next guy joining the fray. It’s just a much more realistic representation of what actual tackles look like. I’m very impressed by that.

- It’s nice to hear the old play by play guys again as well. To be honest though, I couldn’t tell you a single thing that they said. They just kind of blended into the background in my time with the game.

- I did run into a big bug though. :05 left in the first half and I throw a Hail Mary pass that gets picked off. One of my receivers gets called for clipping. Assuming that the clipping penalty happened after the pick, they assess the penalty correctly from the spot of the interception and then proceed to give me the ball with no time left, in which I kick a Field Goal with :00 on the clock. Annoying, but I’m not sure how often something like that could happen again.

I do have to say that it’s quite a good football game. Worth $60? No. Worth $30? Yep. I’ll pick it up when it hits that price point. I just hope that next years version has more gameplay modes as well. Of course if EA has their way, there won’t be another version next year.

I started year 2 on the road against Arizona State. I set it to Heisman, and kept CPU Accuracy at 100 and every Human AI setting at zero except for tackle and break block. Seriously..HEISMAN level and Human Awareness, Knockdown, and INT at zero. CPU QB Accuracy at *100*. This is NCAA on the MOON.

The guy tossed 3 picks. !#$%

In a last ditch effort I bumped CPU WR Catching to 100 as well. The result was the ASU QB going 22/33 for 278 yards 0 TD and 1 INT. I won 28-16 in what was a hell of a fun game to play with a 28 yard TD run by Chris Wells and a 36 yard strike to Hartline for a TD and 25 of that was YAC. On Heisman!

A fluke? Or did the CPU WR Catching slider offset something? But why would it? But it would be a heck of a fluke seeing as I’ve played over 20 games now and never had a 1 INT game by the CPU…ever. The perfect setting may still be out there.

Test #4 tomorrow.

Well, year 1 of the OSU Dynasty is over and we ended it by thrashing Tennessee in the Fiesta. (See below)

With a year of recruiting and the off season under my belt, I have a few thoughts.

The “Promise” feature is a good idea in theory but it doesn’t make a lot of sense, at least early on. I never touched it and OSU landed the #2 class in the nation. I can make a promise to a recruit that we’ll beat our rivals and promise him we’ll win the Big10? Uh, ok. A recruit cares if as a Freshman we win the conference?

Recruiting with OSU was *way* too easy. Crazy easy. So easy I feel it’s just a time sink. Of the schollies I offered, only 1 spurned me for Michigan. EVERY other player — if I wanted him — I got him. It was, to be blunt, kinda boring after a while. Manually recruiting takes a long, long time this year. More time than it used to, for certain. It also didn’t seem to matter where a kid was from. I grabbed them out of Mizzou, Cali, Texas, even a 5-star kid from North Dakota. (!?) House rules can always fix this, but EA had refined its recruiting model and by changing some of the mechanics they have messed up stuff that wasn’t broken.

The All-American team was announced and OSU pretty much made up the defensive team. How silly is it? My nickel back was named an All-American. W.T.F. His stats weren’t even all that wonderful, sans the 4 picks and the 2 sacks. OSU had an All-American LT, RE, OLB, MLB, CB (TWO OF THEM), FS AND SS. Yes, for those scoring at home, the entire back seven at OSU –except for the LOLB, made an All-American team. The INTs played a role, obviously.

Again, EA also screws up the ‘keeping kids in the program’ feature. It’s still too easy. After my entire defense wins awards..NO ONE leaves early for the pros. None. Zippo. Oh, they wanted to, sure, but a 25 minute chat with Coach Tress and they’re 100% Buckeye baby. Come on, EA. What the hell. Make it at least a challenge to keep these kids–or even better just say, “Here’s who is leaving, friggin’ deal with it.” As is, I’ll never lose a Jr to the pros.

The funny thing…all this negativity will in fact wash away if I can ever fix this INT problem. Anyone that tells you it isn’t a problem is either drunk or lying…or doesn’t mind it (which is fair).

Well, I went to last night’s Lucinda Williams concert in Boston with the Mrs — had a fantastic dinner at Longhorn — the last time I went it was pretty bad but we gave them a second chance and glad we did — it was $72 with tip but we got an appetizer and dessert and had Mojitos, very enjoyable.

The seats at the concert were great but this was probably one of her worst concerts I’ve seen. It was very disappointing. Most of you probably know Lucinda Williams about as much as you know what a 4-4-2 is in soccer, but she penned the song “Passionate Kisses” which was a hit for (EDIT: Mary Chapin Carpenter — thanks Erik for the correction) and has a great voice — kinda like an alt/folk/country kinda thing. This is the first concert I’ve been really disappointed with, then again it’s happened with U2 as well…wish I could go to the Police at Fenway over the weekend but at $235 a ticket I’ll pass.

In other news, this week’s “This Week In Downloads” is now online which you can check out by clicking here.

I haven’t spent much time with Heavenly Sword yet, mainly because some hardass wants reviews of APF and NCAA for the PS3 yesterday. I do hope to get some game playing in this weekend though.

I decided to say, “Screw Blue” and move on to the Fiesta Bowl for this round of tests. First off, Texas made the title game despite a loss to Ark State and Florida and LSU played in the SEC Champ. Game but both were rated below 2-loss Tennessee, which is the team I played in the BCS game…who also LOST to Florida. NCAA 08 makes the real BCS look like the perfect way to handle college football.

As I wrap up the year, I see more and more “little things”. Usually people say that when they love something. Here, it shows a lack of polish; they clearly ran out of time again this year. Just little stuff. The play by play gets behind like a full play from time to time. When you get to Bowl Week you can’t just sim that first week of Bowls (there’s like 5 of them). There’s no option anymore to do that. You have to manually sim all of them or SIM ALL BOWLS. Wow, thanks for screwing that up, guys. Why do they keep telling me the stats for the LE every other play? I get it. The Vols LE has 4 sacks and 50 tackles this year. I’ll never, ever forget it. Now, there are little things that they got right — there are more on the field injuries this year and I already mentioned the CPU missing FGs among other positive strides but the game just has a “boy we needed another 90 days” feel to it the more I dig. How is there Clipping on a HB Dive? How can I catch the CPU AI to jump offsides 5 plays in a row?

Back to the test. I bumped it up to AA lvl after my Varsity Blues test — keeping the 100 CPU ACC and ZERO for Human AWR, INT, and KNDWN. OSU beat UT 28-3. Here’s the funny bit. The UT QB (Ainge, right?) threw the normal AI rate of 3 INTs but 2 of those were literally on the first 2 throws the AI made. 2 passes - 2 picks. Then in the 3rd he threw another. He ended up 23/33, 247 yards, 0 TD and 3 INT. Note — that’s with 100 ACC (and only 35 WR CAT, and they did drop a few). Take away those first 2 throws…and hey…

I think AA lvl deserves some additional games with the 100 CPU ACC and zeros across the board on human defense. Despite its unpolished feel and pretty silly ranking AI, if I can hurdle this INT thing, it’ll still be very much worth playing.

EA Sports just never makes it easy, though. I gotta work to earn that $60 trust.

- Gametap has announced a day and date agreement with Codemasters. That means we’ll be seeing DiRT, Overlord, and future titles like Jericho and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty on Gametap on the day that they’re released. This service just keeps getting better and better. I paid less than $60 bucks for one years service and I’ll be getting well over that many games in a year. Too cool.

- I ordered Minna No Golf 5 (Asian version) from Play Asia earlier this evening. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Hot Shots titles and this one presented me with an interesting dilemma. The US version doesn’t have a release date yet and the Asian version comes with a set of English instructions. Also, the Asian version shipped was $53, whereas the US version would be $60 plus tax when it comes out. Seemed like a no brainer to me.

- Cubs are 2 back of the Brewers. Man… the Brewers really need to get back to basics. Lots of silly things going on and they don’t seem to want to bunt runners over to get them in scoring position any more. Things better turn around quick. I am happy to see Linebrink coming in tomorrow though. More bullpen help is always a good thing. Hopefully that will get the team fired up. The owner and GM are showing that they’re willing to try and improve the team before the deadline. Hope it helps.

Seeing as how Dan and Bill have NCAA and All Pro covered for the moment, I figured I would talk about the Heavenly Sword demo that came out on the Playstation 3 today.

First off, the game has absolutely stunning visuals. The amount of facial detail on Mariko is absolutely amazing. The amount of emotion that they are able to show in her face is something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a game before.

I know a lot of people are calling the game Goddess of War at this point, but in my short time with the game, I just can’t agree with that. You can hammer away at Square and Triangle and be effective for very short periods of time, but if you keep trying to do that the massive amount of enemies will crush you in no time. It becomes clear, very quickly, that in order to succeed in this game you’ll have to master it’s counter and combo system.

I’ve played through the demo four times now and I’ve found that I’m having more fun trying to time out my counters just to see some of the wickedly destructive things that Mariko will do to the enemies. There are counters that kill an enemy with a single hit. There are counters that send them flying into the air, which when you can combine with a Sixaxis lift will allow you to string together a combo that will kill them before they hit the ground. Then there are the Superstyle attacks that can wipe out an entire group of enemies in a few seconds.

But what’s really surprising to me is the fact that they say this demo is based off an early build and the newest builds of the game look and control better.

A few weeks ago, I asked for people’s opinions as to which games I should pre-purchase at Gamestop. After playing this demo, I got my answer.

Well, I officially have the bug now. I must find a way to solve the INT problem, otherwise the solo Dynasty mode play is a complete and utter waste of my time. Chad Henne throws 5 picks in a 38-10 OSU win. Uh…whee. Look, if I can’t get pumped at all about playing the OSU/Michigan game, WTF is the point? There has to be settings that fix this. There has to be.

Before I get into the testing, let me ask you guys something.

Let’s say Ohio State finishes the season 11-1. Their only loss is on the road to #12 Penn State.
Texas is 10-1with one game to play — @ A&M. Their loss — to Arkansas State. Texas is #3 in the BCS and OSU is #9? A loss to the wily ASU Indians and you are able to be #3 in the country?

Does that seem even remotely possible?

Or how about Florida sitting at 10-1 and Tennessee at 9-2 and yet UT is ranked #6 and UF is #8? Huh? How can a 2 loss team be that high? AND the topper — Florida BEAT Tennessee early in the year 41-24! If you were playinjg as the Gators, wouldn’t you be a bit…irked by that?

Anyway, I saved the Michigan drubbing under a different file name and decided to keep on replaying that game with various settings in order to see if I could somehow get Chad Henne to have a game where he did NOT throw an INT. Actually, I’ll consider just 1 INT a success at this point.

I’m going to start at ground zero: Varsity level, CPU QB Acc at 100, WR catching at 50, Human INT at 0 and Knockdopwns at 0 and Awareness at 0.

Result: Henne throws 4 picks at home in a 7 minute quarter game, looking like recycled ass in the process. 23/41 for 220 yards 0 TD and 4 INTs. Most of the picks are off tipped balls, too. Like the ball gets batted in the air and then gets hit around like a volleyball then someone discovers, “Hey the ball!” and grabs it out of the air.

I didn’t expect Varsity to be the cure, but I wanted to check. I’m going to keep those settings and bump it up at All American level. I’ll post the results tonight if I get a chance to test it.

First off, there was a comment that on the PS3 version of NCAA you can’t SuperSim while in the game. That is not true. I’ve done it and speak from experience here.

Second, the slider discussion is interesting, and thanks for all the comments. I agree with many of the posters. EA seems to include the sliders as a cop out as in “oh well we can’t program this, so why don’t you” whereas Sony with MLB and 2K with All Pro seem to include them as a way to tweak things. If someone has to turn down a slider to zero or up to 99, I think that says it’s broken, don’t you?

Third, the amount of content being put up on Xbox Live arcade this week is insane and difficult to keep up with. I’ve decided to include gaming related demos and add-on packs in my weekly column and boy what a week I picked for that!

Fourth, The PS Store is annoying. It seems like stuff gets released on it around 5PM eastern. Don’t they realize I have a deadline?

Fifth, Erik Bedard is awesome, even if we’re playing Tampa, we’re still winning.

My review of the 360 version of Harry Potter and the OotP is online. Also, my review of Total Pro Golf 2 is up as well. I’m not ready to write up NCAA ‘08 yet. I still haven’t touched online, I’m not through a full Dynasty season, and I just signed a LOI in Legend mode. Still lots to test there. No clue when Dan’s PS3 reviews will be ready and Todd is doing APF2K8.

The interceptions in this game are starting to drain the fun out of it for me. I simply cannot play a game on All American difficulty even with the INT slider at 0 and Awareness lowered below 50 without picking of at least 3 passes per game. I just turned off an OSU/ Illinos game where I picked off 4 passes in the first half. These aren’t User picks, either. Just plays by my AI secondary. It’s just crazy. The CPU QBs complete more passes this year than ever before, but they are usually either complete, picked off, or dropped by a defender. It’s the same old thing. The fact that passes are rarely just flat out off target is something that has been needed for years; the difference this year is that instead of balls bouncing off a cornerback’s hands — they’re actually picking them off with more regularity.

When I boost the difficulty to Heisman, this lowers the INT rate to 2 per game (usually) which is still too high because it happens every single game, but I also think Heisman level throws other parts of the game out of whack a bit. I have played about 5 exhibition games and I’m just about through the regular season schedule in my OSU dynasty and I have yet to play a game, AA or Heisman, without at least 2 picks against the CPU.

If anyone has found the magical slider setting to lower INTs I am all ears. Maybe Knockdowns play a role? I hate to lower Awareness any further because the CPU picks me apart already; it’s just that they throw in the INTs left and right. But I give up a lot of yards in the air as is.

Well, I had to work last night until 1:30 and didn’t get to sleep until 2:30 and was back up again by 6:00 and back at work by 7:30, so like Dan, I’m pretty wiped out right now.

- I’ll be taking a look at Wing Commander Arena on the 360, but something tells me that I’m not really going to enjoy it. I loved, absolutely LOVED, the Wing Commander games on the PC, but this isn’t going to be anything close to those… so I’ll probably download, play for 5 minutes, delete… sigh. Why we can’t get new X-Wing and Wing Commander games on the PC, I’ll never know.

- Heavenly Sword demo tomorrow? Be still my beating heart. Throw the new MGS demo video on there in HD as well and I’ll be a very happy boy.

- My copy of All Pro Football for the PS3 should be in house either today or tomorrow. Now I just have to decide if I’m going to buy NCAA or just send it back and get another game from Gamefly next week…. hmm…

- Brewers got another great start out of Yovani Gallardo. I heard that Bob Costas compared this Brewer team to the Braves clubs of the early 90’s the other day. I can live with that.

- One of my friends posed this question to me the other day and I’m just curious as to what each of you might think about. Your team is up 3-0 in the World Series and you have game 4 at home. How much would you pay for a ticket for that game? I would spend at least $500 to be in the building for a chance to see the Brewers win the Series. How high would each of you go?