The Blog for the Sports Gamer

I personally can’t remember a time when I’ve been more exhausted than I am now. I just don’t have that ’spark’ or that oomph these days. It can’t be the heat becuase it’s not hot here…just a case of the blahs I guess.

In other news, two new live arcade games for our enjoyment. Wee!

My check engine light came on my Passat yesterday. Second time in a month. I mean it’s all under warranty, but “free repairs” can also be “annoying” in the time you have to give up for them.

I think I am officially burned out on kids soccer practice. Every day now for two weeks. I’m told I will fondly remember these times. There’s nothing fondly to remember about a U8 game that goes 1 hour and 10 minutes because no one is checking the time. There’s also nothing fondly to remember about eating dinner at 8:45PM.

Apparently all this time, the diet pepsi I’ve been drinking will kill me. The study didn’t say if stopping would lead to better health or if the damage is already done, so I guess I’m already done for. Excuse me while I grab a Diet Pepsi Max, ok?

UGHGHGHGHGGHGHG .

Totally non-sports but the other 2 people that have PS3’s besides Glen and myself will be moist because the Heavenly Sword demo is indeed coming out on Thursday according to the official PS3 blog!

MGS 4 looks like one damn cool game.

Click on the the movie to see a real time demo by Hideo Kojima.

I’m not a huge MGS fan, but this makes me want to go and finally play through 2 and 3.

Xbox 360 owners: there are demos of NASCAR 08 and All Pro Football now available for download…

1. Attorney General Gonzales promising to fix the Justice Department is like that NBA referee promising to fix the bad calls he made.

2. Anyone watch that YouTube debate? Funny how the more obscure the candidate was, the more sense they made and they actually answered the questions and took a little bit of time. One of the questions was to this guy, Mike Gravel, who I hadn’t heard of before. Someone asked him if he regrets saying that the troops killed in Vietnam died in vain and asked if he would apologize. He said no, that when you have a war and then pull out and then resume normal trade with the government you opposed, that the troops did die in vain and the only thing worse than troops dying in vain were more troops dying in vain like in Iraq. Anad while I don’t know this guy at all, I was impressed with his direct no-nonsense response. Compare that to Obama’s response which could be summarized as “no, they haven’t died in vain, but we’re not getting the job done” horseshit answer, I guess the less likely you have a chance to win, the more honest you sound, or something.

Of the big tier candidates, I wasn’t jumping up and down at any of them…too much dodging the questions presented. I noticed this a lot with Obama. On that whole died in vain question he doesn’t answer it but then “wants to get back to a point Hillary made.” I hate that shit. Answer the question that you’ve been asked. I didn’t see the whole debate, and I still turned it off disgusted but the YouTube idea was interesting.

Tonight there’s a new show on F/X called Damages which is getting some great reviews…just sayin…

1. Tivo has launched the TiVo HD. $299. I am so there. I just gotta get cable cards. And try to beg Tivo for a lifetime transfer. Fingers crossed!

2. Got NCAA and APF for the 360. The graphical difference between the PS3 and 360 is *HUGE*. The 60fps vs 30fps argument is game over for PS3. I will say that the 360 versoin is almost too fast, like on roids. PS3 has a good speed to it. APF is pretty similar on both versions in my brief experience with it.

3. Sleepy. Going to bed now.

I’ll let Dan describe the particulars, but it was an NCAA Football battle that we will be telling our children about.

1. New PS3 firmware tonight. Custom backgrounds… Chinese language text supported… um… yeah.

2. Here’s an amazing video captured by a cop car as a plane made an emergency landing on a highway about 2 hours from here. Tons of planes fly into Oshkosh every year for the EAA and every year there are at least 4 or 5 crashes. Thankfully no one was hurt.

3. Anyone watch the debate tonight? No? Me neither. Next up the Republican/MySpace debate.

4. Brewers next demotion? Grant Balfour. The Australian, with a name like a Canadian hockey player. Here’s his line.

2 2/3rds pitched. 6 R’s all earned. 0-2 record in three games. 20.25 ERA.

Let us know how the food in Nashville is when you get back there.

Late lunch today, but lots of stuff to cover:

1. The Wii VC releases are drool inducing. Devil’s Crush Pinball (TG16), Shining Force (Genesis) and some weird Kirby Golf game. I may have to blow the entire salary on this one. Well except for Shining Force which I think is already on GameTap.

2. Super Contra and Wing Commander on XBLA Wednesday. Look for my thoughts on Friday’s TWID notes.

3. We don’t know what’s coming on PS3 yet (nothing confirmed, although lots of rumors). I have confirme that the firmware update is coming out. You’ll be able to sort games on the XMB!

1. This weekend was a soccer fest if you care. Sunday saw the arrival of Cuauhtémoc Blanco with the Fire and in a friendly vs Celtic, boom, scored this pretty goal. (MLS Net uses the MLB.TV engine for video, which is good and bad — bad being getting a URL for the site is a pain. The MLS Cup rematch between the Revs and Dynamo was very exciting, although the draw sucked :).

2. I played some NCAA and some APF. I still really like APF. The problem is that there’s no depth to the game. No trades, no franchise. Just play a season and then try again. Love the online. Lag free and loving it. NCAA isn’t terrible either — I enjoy the create a player where you start at the high school you select. I was shocked to see my city (but I had to type in the HS name)…you start with a playoff tree and they list the HS by city, which makes it neat but stupid. For example if you have a city “West” and an “East” you’ll only see the city name. But hey, they couldn’t include three billion high schools so I’ll live. This year you can sim the non-playing parts a la MLB 07, which is soo much better than having to watch in “accelerated” mode. I did gamefly both games for the 360 so I’m going to compare and contrast and see if there is a difference.

One of the reasons I like writing for GameShark (aside from getting paid) of course is that they are willing to individually review top tier games by platform. So, unlike say, our favoite two sites that may or may not tack on a paragraph, GameShark has individual writers giving individual opinions, none of which are “if you like football, you will love NCAA” or “despite it’s flaws, NCAA provides a good game of football.” Apparently Abner will fire us if we write like that.

Alright, triple S time….

1. Those of you looking to get Tiger Woods 07, it’s only $7.99 at Circuit City this week for the PC.

2. I need computer help from the class. I like to consider myself pretty smart at all things tech, but when it comes to buying a new PC, I’m completely confused. Intel has probably deliberately confused the world….what is the best price/performance CPU out there? I don’t think I’d get a Core 2 Extreme just because they are insanely expensive. But isn’t a Core 2 Extreme actually a quad? Jesus, what the hell…this is why people would rather play Xbox 360.

3. Speaking of issues, I put my “Good Shephard” HDDVD out on ebay, and promptly sold it. However, the person that bought it left me a message calling me out saying the DVD was unplayable. He had the same HDDVD player I had, the Toshiba HDA2. He had to do a firmware upgrade in order to get it to work. Now, Toshiba doesn’t let you donwload the upgrade to a DVD and put it in your player — instead you have to disconnect your player, and plug it into your router via wired ethernet. Huge pain in the ass. But I’m thinking to myself, how will this format succeed if you constantly have to tell Joe Public to upgrade their firmware? Most people just want to take the unit out of the box and watch movies. Just stupid stuff here.

4. I have a lot of reviews to get to and not much time, so I better get started. Oh and rumor has it Glen would like to get his ass kicked in NCAA on the PS3.

I haven’t read an entire book in one sitting since I was a kid.

It makes sense though, since the Harry Potter books always made me feel like a kid again.

Time for bed.

The latest ESPN The Magazine has David Beckham on the cover. At the local youth soccer stadium, the big news is all about Beckham. I was too young to know when Pele came around to the US, so something like this is the next best thing. The full 2 page fold out promoting tonight’s MLS Special friendly between Chelsea and the Galaxy was must see TV for me.

Of course, David has had a nagging ankle injury since early June, and oh, he’s getting called up to the England National Team so he won’t be in all the Galaxy games and he might or might not play tonight — but that didn’t stop ESPN from using the “Beckham Cam” — ohh look he’s on the bench..OMG HE IS WARMING UP…oh no he went back to the locker room.

There were a LOT of well known stars at the game, including the Governator, KG, and Eva Longoria. I mean what else do you want, it’s LA..

Anyway around the 88′ or so, Beckham comes on…I have to admit I was excited myself — but he really didn’t get any good chances…like Whinealda (sic), I was hoping for a free kick for the Galaxy but it was not to be the case tonight.

I haven’t been to an MLS game in almost 10 years…can’t believe it’s been that long, but Becks may make me get down to a Revolution game..(hey I still follow them, just haven’t made it down there)….

Well, we go into the local shelter today looking to maybe get a beagle, or this collie mix that we liked online, and we end up reserving (most likely will end up getting) a two year old Chocolate Lab/Bay Retriever mix.

This is an awesome dog. We saw him one on one for about 30 minutes. He never barked; he knows basic commands (sit, shake, lay, etc.) and attached himself to Ashley the whole time. She walked him and he didn’t pull; he just trotted right next to her. When you go and do something like this, a lot of times the dog picks you. Skipper pretty much picked us. There was an immediate connection. The dog’s disposition is just amazing considering his upbringing. The owner of the shelter (who does this for no pay and knows these dogs like her children) told us the story and part of it is online in his bio.

“Skipper was seen being thrown off a bridge…”

Some people simply need to reserve their section of Hell right now and just get it over with.

Skipper shows no signs of that trauma and is about as gentle and as kind as a dog can be. We can’t wait to get him home.

1. One of the worst things about living in the country is that I’m 500+ feet from my mailbox and can’t see it from the house. I have no idea when the mail will get here with my copy of Harry Potter and it’s killing me…

2. I got my copy of NCAA for the PS3 yesterday and I’m playing as a MLB in the Campus Legend mode and I’m really enjoying it. If I am disappointed in one thing it’s the fact that I was recruited to Wisconsin as a 3rd string LB, and I was starting by the 3rd game. I’ll be giving it a bit more time over the weekend if I can.

3. Speaking of NCAA, LanteriX has released his PS3 dynasty rosters over at Operation Sports. He said that he’s only slept 10 hours since Tuesday to get them done. While I respect him for his work… I don’t think I’ve ever been that dedicated to a game.

4. The creator of GameFAQs.com has announced that he’ll be leaving the site. Where will all of the 10 year old gamers go?

5. Also, as Dan said, we welcome in all of the new people visiting the blog. Even my wife wouldn’t go to a page with naked pictures of me on them.

I’m 7 or 8 games into my first OSU Dynasty season and I think I am nearing a point where I like my sliders on AA level. I beat Purdue 35-17 but the CPU is finally able to run and throw with some level of regularity and the INTs are down to 1 or 2 a game rather than 3 or 4 a game. I have still yet to play a game on AA lvl without picking off at least 1 pass though. I haven’t tried Heisman yet.

I’ve been emailing with my evil twin Bill Harris about this year’s game, and while I think he’s liking it a bit more than I am, I have to say I am pleased with this year’s edition, for the most part. As I told Bill, I think I am just suffering from engine fatigue. Yes, it’s polished a bit, but I think I am at the point where I want it to play and look next-gen and I dunno if it’s to that point yet. I still see a lot of holdovers from the Xbox and PS2 versions.

Still, I have no idea how I ever played this game without the Super Sim mode. Best feature of the entire year as far as I am concerned.

I still think that last year’s Xbox game had a better passing model — when you edit the QB sliders in NCAA 08 and lower QB Acc, it doesn’t lower the accuracy, but it destroys a QB’s arm strength. If you set that slider to like..20, you can’t throw it over 35 yards in the air.

Why?

Shouldn’t that slider just make the passes less accurate, like as in overthrows, throws at a player’s feet, throws behind a receiver on a cross route? Instead the QBs throw these weak floaters. It’s an accuracy slider. That makes zero sense to me. I think it makes editing this slider 100% pointless. This isn;’t to say that all throws are on the money, there is variability there, thank god, but it still seems a bit canned to me.

Thing is, the Xbox version did this in ‘07. It was a reason I thought that was the best version of NCAA….ever. It was just hard to look at..especially on this 24″ wide screen. Ick.

But…the DB AI is a million times more alert this year, the CPU misses field goals, the recruiting model is pretty cool, and it’s possible to run up the middle, so it has that going for it. This is clearly a better game than the ‘07 360 version, but I don’t see it as a home run, either. More like a double to right center…or a 15 yard curl for a first down, if you want to keep the football theme.

Finally, I spent a lot of time in practice mode last night and NCAA definitely passes the variety test. I think it’s very important for a sports game to not get predictable. It’s the number one killer of a potentially fun game, IMO. If you call play X and I call defensive play Y the outcome should never, ever be the same 100% of the time. NCAA passes this with flying colors and it’s a huge reason why I like the game this year despite my grumblings.