The Blog for the Sports Gamer

- I’ve updated the Digital Downloads thread with the newest info from Sony and Gametap.  4 more demos on the Playstation store.  Maybe Sony is finally figuring this online thing out.

- So there is a supposed set list for Guitar Hero III out on various sites.  Here’s the list off of Kotaku.   Sabotage?  Bulls on Parade?  La Grange?  Cult of Personality?  And to finish it all off ‘Devil went down to Georgia?’  Be still my heart.  I guess I’ll be buying this and Rock Band this year.

- The Cubs accused the Astros this week of dumping their starting pitching to give the Brewers an unfair advantage this week.  Right, because I’m sure that Roy Oswalt scheduled his wife’s child birth inducement during the Brewers/Astros series just to make it an easier series for Milwaukee.  Loveable losers, my ass.

- Second showing on our house tonight.  This is probably our last chance for a sale this year, as almost no one comes looking for a new home in October.  Hopefully things will work out.  If not… I put up the snow fence next month.  Ugh… I’d really like to avoid that.

1. NBA2K8 Demo: Skip it. I was not impressed. They crippled the audio on it and it feels like a traditional 2K baseketball game. I much preferred the EA game. There, I said it.

2. So, Sony announced at the Tokyo Game Show the release of the Dual Shock 3. It’s official! People do want rumble! Oh whoops, while it will be released in November in Japan, it will be released “Spring 2008″ in the US. Time to hit up Play-Asia. This makes no sense. Well it does make sense to Sony. Dolts.

3. In other news, I picked up Blazing Angels 2 mainly for my son, but it does have co-op play which is nice. Looks very pretty.

4. Interestingly enough, despite all the new games, I went back old school last night and played something from June. I put in The Bigs, I forgot what an underrated and fun game it is for the Xbox 360. Give it a shot.

Anyone grab this yet? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Thanks for the emails — you dont’ even have to buy the FNL series, you can watch it online - FREE. Click here to get started. You have no excuses!

If you’ve read the blog for a while, you know how much I enjoy Friday Night Lights. Seems like I’m not the only one as Bill Simmons writes about the best show on TV in this week’s Magazine article (available online here)

I’m telling you this isn’t the type of show that’s great but over everyone’s head (like Arrested Development). This show is just freaking fantastic. Why isn’t anyone watching it? Hello????

Also, there’s this article about the Patriots win on Sunday night. I didn’t really notice it as much as he did, but no doubt that Madden and Michaels quite often phone it in and the game seems to be secondary to whatever the hell else they feel like talking about. Luckily TiVo recommended I record the game so I went back and viewed it and he’s right. LT was confident but sucked and yet they never mentioned it again. Hey, it’s easy to be biased when your team is taking it up the ass with the press but I agree, everything else was totally ignored. It really makes me long for Dan Dierdorf on CBS, and that’s pretty bad.

- Brewers and Cubs tied. Mets 1 1/2 up on the Phils. Yankees 2 1/2 behind the Sox. Things are pretty damn exciting right now. I was reading the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sports section last night and saw that the Brewer game had a higher rating than Monday Night Football this week. That’s insane… the NFL rules around here. To see that much interest in the Brewers is just too damn cool.

- EA confirmed today that the PS3 will have their new rumble SIXAXIS at the Tokyo Game Show. Ooops. I think Sony would have liked to have announced that, but come on… everyone knew the thing was coming anyway.

- I’m becoming a big fan of Play-Asia.com because of the region free aspect of the PS3. Today they have the Asian version of Folklore for $53.00 shipped. The US version comes out in about a month, for $59.99 and the Asian version has a full english language option. What’s not to like about that?

- Someone in the NFL office leaked the Patriots recording footage to Fox and they played it on their pregame show. Someone at ESPN has to be ticked that they weren’t the ones to get the footage.

- I have to give Google credit.  They give us great toys to play with.

- Screw you Dan. Big Red Car was in my head all night last night.

It’s funny, as I was MSN’ing Glen about how I dread the Hannah Montana ticket sale next week (apparently these tickets make U2 look ‘inexpensive’), he mentioned whether or not he should go to the Wiggles concert.

My kids have now matured passed the Wiggles World, but I still have the DVDs and the Wiggles microphone and the 5 or 6 concerts to remind me of that special time.

By far, the quintessential Wiggles track has to be ‘Where’s Jeff,’ although many critics will debate “Fruit Salad.” I think that Fruit Salad was their breakthrough hit, but ‘Where’s Jeff’ has it all: a catchy chorus along with a great falsetto by the red wiggle, who believe it or not I have forgotten is name…Greg, Anthony, Jeff and Murray…that’s his name…of course since I fell off the bandwagon, Greg has left, but not in a dating Yoko fashion.

 Anyway, Glen can now get Wiggles ringtones. I think he should have Toot Toot Chuga Chuga Big Red Car. Click here.

- Geon: Emotions for Live Arcade? Here’s a quote from the Microsoft email, “Play to your emotional strengths as you compete amongst your opponents to master “Geon emotions.”

Wow, an online game where saying ‘Fuck off’ to your opponent could net me an achievement.

- Lucasarts announces Force Unleashed for the Wii. I can’t wait to see how disappointed people will be in the control scheme.

- I watched 300 last night.  Wow, there is 2 hours I’ll never get back.  Talk about all style and no substance.

- Gaming for tonight? Probably some Bioshock and I’ll give another go at NHL08. I wasn’t too happy with it on Sunday, so I’m due for another attempt.

- We’ve had our first spammers enter the forums, so when people register now there will be a minor delay while we approve the user before they can try to post on the thread. Just letting you know.

- It’s been 15 years since the Brewers were in a pennant race, so I’m not well versed in how to handle scoreboard watching. The Cubs were down 2 going into the bottom of the 9th and put up 3. Grrr. My email to a friend pretty much summed that game up.

“Fucking David Weathers. ”

back to the news…

- For those of you that have been commented on what the difference looks like between upscaled DVD and High Definition, Firing Squad has a nice comparison article.

- Just for Dan, here is the Amazon Video Game Deal of the Day.

I grabbed the Sega Rally Revo demo last night…and was struck by the irony of the Rally Cars with helicopters watching their every move (as you probably know Colin McRae died last weekend when the helicopter he was piloting crashed).

 In my brief time with the Demo, I’m thinking DiRT is more enjoyable. We’ll see what happens when the full version comes out.

 I haven’t heard what new games are coming to XBLA tomorrow. I guess it’s a state secret or something.

We’ve had to change the forum posting to approve for new users as we frown on guys visiting us from incest-rape.nl in the Netherlands.

1. Those of you that have cable, check your On Demand channel and see if you have the NBC shows. They have a few pilots available, commercial free, for your viewing pleasure. I actually thought Chuck was interesting. I had a tough time with Journeyman, although I really wanted to like it because it has that guy from Rome. The Office Summer Vacation was a great 3 minutes as well.

2. I received Heavenly Sword and NHL 08 today from Gamefly, both for the PlayStation 3. Heavenly Sword looks amazing…but God of War 2 is better gameplay wise. I just feel like I’m mashing buttons so far. I’ll keep playing it and see if anything changes. Oh, and I hate cutscenes I can’t fast forward.  Blech. I started up a game of NHL 08 — Boston vs Ottawa…and in the first period there were 4 fights. Seems like a lot of fights….

 4.  Nice to see how well I did in Fantasy football this week after last week’s disaster. Dan’s helpful tip: Bench McNabb for Romo.

- Man, the Packers put a spanking down on the Giants in the second half yesterday.  I really would like to be very excited about them, but I’ll hold on commenting until after I see them play the Chargers this week.  Still, it’s nice to see them 2-0 after opening last year 1-4.

- It’s official, my fantasy teams suck in both leagues.  In the blog league, I put up 100+ points, and will lose by 20 or 30.  In my other league, I rely too much on the Saints offense, which is painfully ineffective at this point.

- Finally a gaming week reprieve (No offense to Cabela’s Trophy Bucks for the 360.)  With some luck, I should be able to finish up Bioshock and trade that one in.  I like the game to this point, but I’m just not getting the “WOW” from it that a lot of people have talked about.  EB has a 30% bonus on trade-in’s this week, so I’d like to get it returned while I can get close to $40 for it.

- I put in a bit more time with NHL08 last night and had 2 lockups while playing.  One while I was trying to sort the Free Agents by salary and another while just pausing the game.   I’m firmly into EA Sports - Stage 2 at this point.  I hope that I’m able to stay here for a while.

1. Hey LT, for a guy who talks about class a lot, nice job stealing the first LT’s nickname. Oh and could the Patriots have throttled you any more? Talk about an ass kicking.

2. Oh and nice of Nike to run an ad about Merriman. So let me get this straight, the Pats cheated and should be villified but this guy takes banned substances and gets an ad campaign. Alrghty then.

 3. Didn’t play a lot of games over the weekend, but did get some Ant-killing Earth Defense force in. That is some mindless fun!

Sorry for the lack of weekend posting. I’m still in mild shock after the Browns game. Seriously. Did that really happen?

So, it’s nice to think you have a whole weekend where you think you can get some gaming time in and then get a call at 9 o’clock at night asking for a house showing at 1:00 the next day.

There went any gaming time that I was hoping to get in. The only positive thought about it is the fact that if they’re coming to look at your house during a Packer game, they’re probably interested.

I did spend a ton of time with the practice mode, working on the goaltending aspect, of NHL08 last night before I got the call from our realtor though. I think I finally have mastered getting to the post and staying there, but the one major problem that I found was if someone is coming from behind the net to swing around you.. and you don’t have any D help, you’re screwed. You stick to the post for just a split second too long and they can get around you too quickly for you to have time to react. I played the 1 on 0 drill about 200 times last night (not kidding, 200 times) and found that I got beat that way about 75 to 80 percent of the time when that scenario came up.

So, the goalie mode is very fun… but it does need a bit more work in future years.