The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Gamestop has a wonderful FAQ about Guitar Hero 3, which you can view here. The PS3 Wireless guitar is NOT compatible with the PS2 Guitar Hero games, making my platform choice much, much easier.

Anyone purchase the “eye of judgement” yet? Me neither, but I downloaded the video creator thingy, just in case. I wonder what else may arrive at the PlayStation store. Remember, the camera has a lot of microphones, so uhh…that makes it good, or something.

In other news, how about those Red Sox? Nothing like getting three bases loaded walks. Boy did Colorado look overmatched. If there’s any consolation, the FOX graphic that said every team (all 2 of them) that won a Game 1 by 10 or more runs lost the series….but after last night, it didn’t even look close.

Just submitted my NBA 2K8 review for the three people contemplating buying it for the PS3. Next up is FIFA for the Wii or 360, or both. I lovey the football…

Just an FYI.

A new online text-based NFL football sim, Deep Route, needs beta testers to help test the league functionality. It’s easy to sign up, and you’ll be asked to provide feedback and look for bugs, etc. You’ll be auto registered for the forums.

You can sign up at http://deeproute.com
or go there to get more info on the game.

Disclosure: My father had a hand in making this game (he designed the playbooks and game planning) so in this capacity I have my media hat in the shredder. I am not covering this game in any capacity. I am gonna play it, though.

There are only 9 or so spots left for the beta test so if you are interested, hop on over.

Well it’s Wednsday. Lots of stuff going on so let’s get to it:

1. Guitar Hero 3 demo on the 360. I don’t care what anyone says, I already love the game. What an ass kicking demo. Which leads me to my next point.

2. I had seriously thought about purchasing the PS3 or Wii versions of GH3..and then it hit me — i would be the only one. By far the 360 is the console for real gamers. So I’m just going to pick up the 360 version of the game when it releases Sunday.

3. Speaking of the PS3, I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying Heavenly Sword. What a good game. I’ll pick up Ratchet & Clank tonight. It was funny how GameStop whore called me and said that “your game” will be available on Wednesday afternoon. She also said it was rated M…so maybe she was afraid that the game title would be offensive or something. Either way it’s pretty funny.

4. I’m still trying to download Jericho on my PC..2.5 GB..and it’s a little slow…actually gametap crashed on me overnight. Dammit!

Bill is jealous because according to EB, Hannah Montana Music Jam doesn’t come out for another two weeks. Well, what can I say — I would be hoping that a game that I get early would be one I’m dying to get, but instead it’s Hannah…I can say that I didn’t use any undue influence, the game was on the shelf just waiting for me.

MSNBC has a great article about TV shows you should be watching. I second Chuck and Reaper. I like both of those.

If you have GameTap, you can play Jericho right NOW. No extra fees, no nothing. I just saved $50. Grab it by singing up for Gametap — or btw, the annual fee for Gametap is about the same price as an Xbo360 game…..hmmm, what will you choose?

So, I just got back to my room in Vegas after the days events finished up.  Conferences really suck, especially if you go by yourself.  I know my wife would have been bored off her butt all day while I was in sessions, but at least we would have been able to attend the receptions together.   Oh, well.. perhaps tomorrow will be a more interesting day.

- One of the most interesting things on the trip thus far was the ability to listen to the air-traffic chatter on the plane.  Seriously, as a geek, you must do this at least once.  It’s amazing to hear the air-traffic controllers telling all of the planes what to do so that they don’t collide into one another… it’s absolutely fascinating.

- My video card in my laptop shit-the-bed today, so when I get back I’ll have get that replaced.  It’s a big bummer, because I was hoping that I would have been able to get a bit of time in on Half Life - Episode 2, but I guess I’m going to be stuck with Vegas related activities… bummer.

- Is it sad that I wish that I was at home playing MLB Power Pros?  Just asking….

- One of the stations at the reception tonight had Wii Tennis on display… the funny thing was that everyone that stopped to play really stunk.  This is a really big geek conference and it was surprising to me that the IT geek didn’t seem to translate to the gaming geek.  I should have just stood at that booth and challenged people to beat me.  It would have been an heck of a lot more entertaining than drinking for the night.

More from Vegas later today…

Let’s see….

1. The headline news in Boston tonight was how they got the Red Sox logo around the pitcher’s mound. I love the big stories.

2. You may have remembered Bill loved Hannah Montana Music Jam so much, I had to pick it up. Well right now I had to go to the mall in order to compete in an ice skating competition and then I had to partner up with Jackson in an RC Race. Oh and I had to get to the tailors as Hannah Montana (not Miley). Of course, what is even scary about this is that I know the characters and understand the plot. Yes, I have officially watched too much Disney Channel. I’m still waiting for the music part to kick in. I’ve done one guitar thing. So far, I’m liking guitar jam better. Tomorrow night, my kids and I will try the make your own band thing. You only need one DS card to play (and we have 3 DSes), so this may be better than Rock Band. Or not. I will say the music is bad — and some of Hannah’s music is bearable but it’s like running a MIDI player on your Commodore 64 in this game. Yikes.

3. Anyone watching Chuck on NBC? I’m digging the geek-spy show. Love the intro — I mean the song they use is Cake! They rule! Same goes for Big Bang Theory. Although Chuck seems more realistic, if you ask me. And that’s pretty far fetched. Either way, it makes for a nice night of TV viewing.

4. Glen, a co-worker says to go right to roulette put the min bet on Red and put the other five on #21. Let me know how you make out.

5. I’m listening to REM live in Dublin right now. Hard to believe they made albums this decade. Heh.

6. Okay I just changed my music to Cake. I enjoy Yahoo Music Unlimited.

7. Speaking of music, are you going to buy the new Radiohead album, and if so, what price are you going to pay for it? How about 1 Euro? LOL

The Wii VC list is ho-humming to say the least. I guess Lunar Pool is sports? Whatever. Microsoft announced their 2 new games this week, one based on Battlestar Galactica and the other one called Exit. Consider me intrigued.

Oh and there’s a Guitar Hero 3 demo tomorrow on the 360. Now that will make XBL go to a crawl!

I went to GameStop today and picked up Hannah Montana Jam or whatever — this was THE game Bill was yapping about, so I’ll keep you posted…

I took the weekend off from reviewing because I was still recouperating from Mohegan, and I had to get my new PC up and running, and I had real work to do for the real job. Instead I watched would could be described as an ass kicking by the Patriots and played some Heavenly Sword for the PS3. I loved BB’s quote after the game about putting Brady in. Sweep the Leg..yes Sensei!!

I have to say I’m rather surprised by the low scores this game is getting (probably becuase it’s a button masher) but I’m having fun with it. They did incorporate the SIXAXIS controls in a great way.

I thought I’d see Victorious Boxers for the Wii by now but it didn’t show up this weekend. Instead I played some Wii Table Tennis which I have to say isn’t as good as I expected. Yes it’s fun, but it’s silly to see such tips as “move back from the table to get a better shot” when you can’t move back from the table in Wiimote only mode. I was really expecting better. Oh well — that’s not to say it’s a fun game — with the nunchuck it’s similar to the 360, but without online play and your hand can get quite sore while playing, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

I believe there are only 3,456 games coming out for the DS this week. Isn’t it funny that the same week that it’s Bill’s daughter’s birthday and Bill gets her a DS as a present that Hannah Montana Music Jam is released — the game Bill said was one of the best of E3? Bill, just buy your own damn DS and admit it. Guitar Jam and Flash Focus are fun. No way I’d play Madden on it though. Bleck — there’s a reason they don’t make cartridge based consoles anymore.

Getting back to sports, as I mention in my recent TWID article, I love SpeedBall 2. Anyone interested in playing online?

I’m heading to the airport soon, but I’ll be relatively available out there and should be posting a bit.

I’ll also say, Ohio State looks to be the best team in the Big Ten, but that’s about all we know about them to this point.   After watching a good deal of SEC football in the last few weeks though, I don’t think the Big Ten is playing at the same level right now though.  That’s across the board, not just talking about OSU.  Also, I’d love to see a team like Oregon play against them… that just looks like a sensational matchup.

Have a good NFL Sunday.

Today is Ashley’s 7th birthday and we got her a pink DS-lite. She really digs it; we got her the High School Musical DS game and she’s getting better at it. She’s a huge fan of that movie (like every 7 year old girl I imagine) so this is right up her alley. I am curious as to other DS games I should look at for her. Thing is…I can now see why this system is such a huge hit. It’s an addictive little sucker. 

The Buckeyes won yesterday against Michigan State 24-17. If there was a ever a score that did not reflect the game…it’s that one. OSU completely dominated the Spartans. MSU came in with the #1 offense in the B10 and the #7 rushing offense in the nation and only managed 185 TOTAL yards, 65 of that coming on a 4th quarter drive which led to a FG. Think about that. With 5:00 to go MSU had a total of around 120 yards of total offense. Javon Ringer, a damn good back who couldn’t get into OSU due to a low ACT score (we wanted him bad) came in averaging 7 yards a carry for the year — he had 18 carries for 49 yards Saturday.

It was 24-0 until we took a trip to crazy town. With the ball on the 50 and OSU in complete control, Boeckman was pressured and made a bad decision and threw a pick that was returned for a TD. Our next play, Boeckman was sacked by an unblocked blitzer and fumbled, which was again returned or a TD. 24-14. On the NEXT play Wells fumbled and we somehow recovered it on our own 12. It was 1:08 of pure bizarre-ness. After that, MSU was out of magic tricks and we went on to secure the win, but it was a very, very odd game. A game that OSU dominated but it just goes to show how turnovers can make stats moot.  

I do wish Chris Wells was 100%. He had a HUGE game Saturday, carrying the ball 31 times for 221 yards…on one ankle. Wells has had a bad wheel since spring ball and is right now at about 75% effectiveness. Not bad for a gimp. On two good ankles…well next year you’ll see what I mean. He wasn’t the #1 recruit in the country for no reason. He’s a beast, and we’re just now starting to see it.  

So, is OSU legit? Yes and no. The defense is remarkable and anyone who questions that just isn’t paying attention.   It’sa much bette defense from last year in almost every way. They’re faster, and more experienced. I thought Laurinitis was highly overrated coming into the year and benefited from some big plays, which lead to him winning all those awards. This year, he’s taking over games. This is in no way the same defense from 2006, which was also great until the final two games.  Through 8 games, the first team OSU defense has allowed *23* points–TOTAL.

Anyway, OSU is #1 in the nation. Are they the best team? Well, we don’t know that yet. OSU’s schedule has been less than brutal thus far. But there is two ways to look at that. Everytime a team plays OSU, it’s supposedly the “first big test.” Washington on the road was a “test.” Washington has a legit offense, ask Oregon–and USC. OSU dominated that team. Purdue and Michigan State, (two more “tests”) when they played OSU had the #1 offense in the Big 10. Neither can say that now.OSU dominated Purdue, on the road at night. It was never even a game. Michigan State needed two miracle plays to avoid a 24-3 beatdown.

But it is hard to say OSU is really #1 because while there have been “tests” there has yet to be a truly TOUGH test. Is that OSU’s fault? Nope.  They play who they play and this year their big OOC game happened to be against a good but not particularly threatening team like the Huskies. As for playing YSU, Akron and Kent State? People that rip OSU for that need to due some fact checking and then promptly shut the hell up. The Big10 IS down this year, bigtime. Is that OSU’s fault? Nope.

Like Steve Spurrier, who amazingly called out Ohio State after losing 17-6 to VANDERBILT. Spurrier said something to the effect that, “we didn’t overlook Vanderbilt…Vanberbilt lost to 3 good teams, if Vandy played nobodies, they’d be at the top of the BCS standings like Ohio State.”

Vandy’s previous wins coming into the game against #6 South Carolina? Richmond, Ole Miss, and Eastern Michigan. If you are the #6 team in the nation, you don’t lose to Vanderbilt. But Spurrier continues to be perhaps the sorest loser in sports.

South Carolina’s OOC schedule this year includes: South Carolina STATE and Louisiana -Lafayette, North Carlona, and yearly underacheiever Clemson. Washington is better than ALL of those teams. So instead of just taking care of business and beating a team that a real contender would hammer, Spurrier jabs OSU. He’s like the cry baby 10 year on the playground who when he doesn’t get his way tries to tear down the other guy. In short, Spurrier’s a douche-bag. He always has been one.  Will he be singing that tune when OSU plays home and home games with USC, Oklahoma, VTech and Cal over the next several years? Who is South Carolina scheduling down the road?

Teams schedule games against small schools. It’s the way this thing work. Look at any team — think Michigan thought Appy State was going to be a challenge? Wisconsin played The Citadel, Oklahoma played North Texas and Tulsa, Utah State and a very down Miami. These things are scheduled so far in advance that you never know when an OOC game like that will be tough. Washington, when that game was scheduled was a top 20 team. Think Oklahoma thought the Hurricanes would suck when they added them? USC played Idaho, a SHITTY Notre Dame, and a very weak Nebraska team. It’s part of college ball.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. I have a party to get ready for. Have a good Sunday.

Greetings all. I’m back from my work-related conference to Mohegan Sun. I love the irony of going to an economic conference at the casino gaming capital of New England. I just about broke even, so I can’t complain at at all.

In other news, looks like the Red Sox are coming back..but man, Dice-K in a game 7 situation? Was Bob Stanley not available?

 Oh, tonight I saw one of the most amazing MLS games ever — New England at Toronto. It had an amazing goal by the Revs late in the first half, followed by an amazing equalizer during injury time in the second half. Quite the fun game to watch.

Have you seen 30 Rock this past week? The GE executive’s name is Jack Donaghy, played by Alec Baldwin. In this week’s episode, he hires a Private Eye to investigate himself. The PI asks him if he has any family guilty of crimes and he says he has a cousin in the NBA who fixed games. (The NBA guy has the same last name as the character). I thought it was rather funny that it was addressed in a show. Reminds me back in 1981 and the Greatest American Hero’s last name was Hinkley, until that guy shot Reagan, and then they changed his name because people would be too stupid to figure out that this is a FAKE TV SHOW. Good times.

I need to get some sleep..

…before I’m out the door.

- The GT5 Prologue demo is now available on the Japanese Playstation Network sites. If you search google, you should be able to find a way to create a Japanese account without much of an issue. Can’t wait to see how it compares to the last GT demo.

- Audio of the version of Devil Went Down to Georgia for Guitar Hero III.   Kill me now.

Seeing as I have Badger hockey tonight and tomorrow and I’m heading out of town on Sunday, I figured I’d cram as much stuff in today as is possible.

- There is a Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 demo out on Xbox Live, and I’ve updated our This Week in Downloads thread to reflect it.  I figure this is as good of a place as any to talk about all of the digital content that comes out each week, plus you can mock Dan when he makes mistakes in his weekly article.

- The monthly NPD numbers are out and Microsoft’s press releases are just plain annoying to me.  They talk about how they outsold Wii software 4:1 and PS3 software 8:1 in the month of September.  Really?  How about that.  Did anyone think that Halo wasn’t going to sell as many copies as it did?  To me the most telling statistics are these….

- The 360 console got a 250k unit bump from August… when they sold 3.3 million copies of a single software title.  To me, that indicates that almost everyone that wanted Halo 3, already had a 360.  The Wii got a 100k bump, and Metroid Prime 3 (a good game, but criminally under marketed) was the only “major” released for the platform during the month.  It’ll be fascinating to see how much growth the 360 sees throughout the holiday season

- Carnival Games sold over 100k copies last month.  People rail on the fact that the Wii only has mini-games, and they keep buying more and more of them.  Crazy.

- In one of those rumors that will never die stories, Microsoft is rumored to be working on a 360 with a built in HD DVD drive.  This makes no sense to me considering how much of a pounding Sony has taken due to the cost of having a Blu-Ray drive built in to their system.

- Yahtzee actually likes a game.  I was stunned.   Of course I completely agree with him.  Portal is one of the best action games this year, period.  Plus, it has the probably the best game ending that I can ever recall.

Hmm… less news than I thought.  Oh, well.  Maybe more later.

Just to follow up on my Franchise thoughts from yesterday. Bill Harris and I are perhaps two of the biggest ‘franchise’ guys around in that …we actually play them. Bill has tested franchise modes in games for years to an incredible degree and I guess I have never understood why a company didn’t just hire someone like Bill –someone to come in and simply do nothing but test and help design a game’s franchise mode. One guy. That’s all you’d need. Someone with a load of experience who can spot stupid shit within ten minutes. This isn’t small details here folks.  

I recall when 3DO tried to hire “DangerZ”, creator of that ultimate High Heat editor. So that idea isn’t too far fetched. You NEED someone with a critical eye to see things…and make sure that they get fixed. That is, if in fact franchise modes are worth fixing.

It all goes back to player progression. Without this…any franchise mode is doomed to failure or at best mediocrity. You have to have players age, progress, decline, and retire within the realm of possibility otherwise the whole thing just breaks down. You need sleeper draft picks — the 4th round pick that ends up an All Pro. The 3-Star Recruit that ends up being an All-American (AJ Hawk) — even the 2-star recruit that does the same (Pats RB Maroney was a 2 star throwaway recruit who went to Minnesota. Could that EVERhappen in NCAA 08?).  Conversely, you need the 5 star recruit that ends up busting and not living up to the hype — the Buckeyes have a kid, a great kid who everyone on the team loves, who was a 5-star can’t miss prospect who is now a Junior and only plays on special teams. It happens. You need to have kids fail to meet expectations. It’s this level of variety that makes franchise/dynasty modes fun. It’s the WHOLE POINT.

You also need to ditch every piece of design inside a franchise mode that isn’t fun and is just feature creep tedium. That includes staff hirings, assigning a friggin practice schedule, training modes, yadda yadda. Don’t make these things overly complicated. Every “Owner mode” needs to be canned. Stat.

But you also need a sharp AI both on the field and off, particularly draft AI which is still horrendous in most games (Madden being the King of Crap here.)  Now, a lot of people equate AI to players using smart behavior. That’s part of it, but the area of AI programming that continues to go ignored — game planning.

Playing games against the AI in most games is still staggeringly predictable because the teams always play the same. I don’t mean teams playing to their “style.” That’s a great thing and one of the best features in NBA 2K8, but PLANNING. The AI needs to start looking at personnel. It needs to see that I have no running game but an All Pro level WR and must try and take away my biggest threat.

It needs to see that my basketball team relies almost 100% on low post play, and plan accordingly. It needs to double team. It needs to put 8 men in the box if it knows it has no run defense to speak of and I’m going to hit them with with an All American tailback.  It needs to run a zone when it knows I have no perimeter game. It needs to see who my weak defenders are and expose them mercilessly.

“If you can run the ball you can bring up the safety and it opens up the passing game.”
“If you can make them fear the three pointer you can open up the middle by extending the defense.”

Basic stuff. Stuff you learn in middle school. I still don’t see this in today’s games when playing against the AI. And until the AI starts to plan around its players and plan against mine, we’re still going to be playing predictable games. I think it’s time the games took that next step.