The Blog for the Sports Gamer

- I have a whole new respect for Aaron Rodgers.  He came in the game and started out rough, but really played well in the second half and put the Packers back into the game.

- There were so many Packer fans at the game that Dallas got a false start penalty due to crowd noise.   Romo was trying to quiet the crowd, but couldn’t… they just kept getting louder.  That was pretty damn cool to see.

So, a couple of calls go another way and the Packers figure out what exactly they were thinking of on defense and I think they could beat that Dallas team.

The way it looks now, we’ll see these two teams again in January.

Thanks to Glen, I had heard today that Jeff Gerstmann was let go at GameSpot. Jeff was the top dog there after Greg Kasavin left. Personally, I was never a fan of his writing or his video reviews. However, that being said, Penny Arcade has a comic today implying that Gerstmann was let go because of his Kane And Lynch review.

Personally I find this very hard to believe that the review score alone would cause termination; if it did people would run from GameSpot like the plague and even in videogame journalism, once word gets out that’s a problem. It’s all over the place now and GameSpot hasn’t commented on it (which they should have by now). Rumors at the QT3 board say it’s because Eidos looked at his online sign in name and found out that he hadn’t finished the game or something along those lines.

Now, I’ve never seen GameSpot’s reviewers guide, and if it says all reviewers must complete a game and if there’s proof he didn’t, well that could be an issue regardless of the score given. That being said, you often wonder with all the sign in and gamertags out there, if there wasn’t a way for a game company to gauge how much time the game was played and whether or not that information could be tracked.

While I do have my public GamerTag here, I do have privacy settings enabled; however if someone really wanted to see what my GamerTag was doing, I’m sure they could. There are ways around that, say a non-internet connected Xbox 360 with a silver account for reviews only..but really, I think C|Net or GameSpot or whatever needs to come clean — was it cost cutting? Was there an actual problem? It’s one thing to have a private personnel issue; it’s another when your integrity is on the line. Of course I’m sure lawyers are talking right now because their strategy is probably to pin it on Jeff without making it slanderous….

All of this is complete conjecture on my part, I have no idea what’s going on, I don’t know Jeff, I’m on the East Coast and can only tell you what I know.

In my brief time at PC Gamer, I never got the feeling from an editor that my review was changed due to advertising. It was changed for other reasons, which I disagree with and never really received an answer, Dan Morris, I’m talking to you….but even as unhappy as I was, I didn’t get the feeling it was to help EA.

During my time with Operation Sports, GamePen, and now GameShark, there has never, EVER been any pressure from anybody to try to change a score due to someone advertising. Of course, that would imply at GamePen/OS, there was advertising. But I think you know what I’m saying here. Did game developers get pissed off at me? Yes. I remember an unnamed game a few years ago that I was given a talking to by a developer for my less than stellar review of the game. What often happens is that frankly, the game works the way the developers want it to, and I just don’t like it. It happens. Let’s just hope there really isn’t this unspeakable quid pro quo.

Playing devil’s advocate: There could be 1,001 issues here, and the final review score may or may not had something to do with it.I really hope that there’s an explanation for this and that GameSpot addresses it. Maybe in “Rumor Central?” heh.

…strangely has nothing to do with the football game.

Logitech’s Harmony site is totally fubar right now and I can’t do any updating to my remote. It’s kind of a big deal for me to get it working tonight because I know my wife is going to want to watch some movies with the kids tomorrow. It’s just annoying. Oh, well.

Edit: It just went back up… man.. how annoying was that.

You don’t have one starting defensive back and one starting defensive lineman and you play 100 times worse than you have in any week in the past? Good grief.

Oh, and a memo to the Packers offensive coordinator…. you don’t have to throw 40 yard passes on every down.

Holy Jebus… this is worse than the Duke game on Tuesday.

Dallas isn’t this good, but when you play pass defense this badly, they certainly look like they are.

Rest everybody that isn’t well and get them ready for the playoffs, because you’ll be coming back to Dallas at this point.

Last week a game was supposedly released (although the only place I can find it is on their website) called “Black College Football Experience.” It uses the Unreal 3 engine and sounded promising. I can’t find the game anywhere. Has anyone bought it or would like to share their impressions? Comment away? Here’s what the manual looks like, btw.

As most sports blog readers know, there’s a huge game tonight but apparently not many people can see it. My local cable company does carry NFL Network HD so I get to see the game, in HD no less. I assume Glen being in WI will also get to see the game even if he didn’t have DirecTV.

 So I want to know — is this a big deal to you? Can you see the game or not — or better yet do you even want to see it? Comment away…

- I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about it but I think that the Packers are playing the Cowboys tonight.  Rumor has it both of these teams are pretty good… but I’m just surprised that there hasn’t been any media coverage about the quarterbacks or the game.  Crazy.  Thankfully, I have DirecTV, so I can see the game in HD without any issues.  Most people in the area aren’t so lucky.  Oh, well… if they love cable so much, they should marry it.  heh.

- Wow.  Did you see the best Xbox Live Marketplace content yet?  A 48 minute documentary about the making of Need for Speed Pro Street.   Sweet, huh?  Well worth the 240 points….

- Call of Duty 4 for the 360 is going to be $39.99 at Circuit City next week.  I need another game like I need a hole in the head, but I’ll probably pick it up…because I’m just that weak.

- I received my HD-A3 HD DVD player yesterday from Amazon and hooked it up without any issues.  Holy crap did the firmware update take forever though.  At least 45 minutes of waiting while it updated the system.  The only other annoyance is how slow the player boots up.  Not a huge deal, but it’s something that I had to make my wife aware of.   The fact that it doesn’t even display on screen for about 15 seconds would definitely lead her to believe there was something wrong.

I threw in Bourne Identity when the update was finished and it looked just as good as I would have expected it to.   Now I just have to sell that copy of 300 that came with it.  Meh… I hated that movie.

Hey remember me, long time no chat. lol.

I have had what you’d call an excrutiating experience with Gateway tech support. I bought that cheap Portable Media Drive 160GB at Circuit City for my Quad Core gateway PC. The Gateway PC has a Portable Media Drive bay, so I thought great, I don’t have to plug something else in and it’s good to go. Except when I put it in the drive bay, I got the red power light but no blue activity light and my PC wouldn’t recognize the drive.

So then I try Gateway online chat, with such gems as:

“You can’t use an optical drive in the drive slot” (hey asshat, it’s not an optical drive)

“You can’t make an external drive an internal one” (so why is there a slot for a Portable Media drive, idiot)

“That drive is incompatible with your PC” (not true).

So, basically I take the PC apart, and find out that the drive slot is merely a USB and power holder. You slide the drive in and there’s a USB cable it plugs into as well as a power cable. The USB cable goes directly to the motherboard. Obviously the power works. I still can’t get the damn drive to work that way (it works fine with the USB cable as a traditional external drive). If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. They can’t be any worse then the “support” from Gateway.

In other news, I’ve been assigned Time Crisis 4 for review. Yes the game is $90, and yes, the LED sensors are much better than the PS2 Guncon and rather Wii-like, but the game sure is fun…and looks gorgeous. I feel bad for the suckers that bought a 40GB PS 2 though…because you need 3 USB ports to play with two guns. Ooops! Guess you should have bought the one with 4 ports. (Of course, I believe you’ll be ok with a USB hub, but I just wanted to rub it in).

Okay, gotta do the triple S before work.

It’s not a big deal for some programs, but 4 consecutive January 1st bowl games is a big thing here in Wisconsin.  If I didn’t have 2 kids to watch, I’d really look at a trip to Tampa.  A flight in on the 31st and back on the 1st is only $300 something.  Tickets for the game are $65… dang.  Oh, well.  Maybe some other year.

- Good god was the Wisconsin basketball game a disaster. A loss like that can really set a program back. Thank Jebus I had to go into work last night and missed most of it on TV.  Watching that entire game could have been the worst two hours of television that I would have had to endure for my entire life. Every possession was a one and done or a turnover. Man, all I hope when Wisconsin plays a high profile program is that they are able to make a good showing and that was about the worst effort I’ve ever seen from a Bo Ryan coached team.  It’s easy to see that Duke has 8-McDonald’s All-American’s on their team as every single player that came up the court owned the Badgers today.  Man…

- It’s not very often that you hear a gaming scoop on the Howard Stern show, but yesterday morning Artie Lange stated that he was going to make some easy money doing a recording session for a video game.  He said he’d be playing a character called Big Al in the newest Leisure Suit Larry game.  Howard seemed to think that the Leisure Suit Larry games were very popular… and perhaps they were…. in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  What really got me was the fact that Artie said he was going to make, in 4 hours,  what a 20 year old would make in a year.  So, what do you figure?  25 grand?  Crazy.

- I haven’t watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force in a while, but the guys over at EDSBS posted a clip that has to do with the BCS that is terrific.   Oh, and there are some good digs in at the Giants as well…

- I think I’ve missed out on the whole social networking aspect of the internet.  I’m completely unaware of things like Myspace and Facebook, so the fact that the Xbox’s next update includes a feature where you can view the people that are on your friends’ friends lists just seems absolutely stupid to me.  If you head over to this page, you can decide who will be able to view this information on your friends list.   Of course, it doesn’t seem to hold whatever setting I choose… so I guess you’ll see my friend Tony on my friends list soon.

- I spun up ESPN NFL 2K5 earlier tonight and saw that there were people online playing the game, so the system is clearly still working.  A few things to note.  When you sign onto Live from NFL2K5, you will have to download an ‘old’ Xbox Live update, which works fine.  If the system asks you to view your Xbox Live messages though, don’t do it.  It’ll kick you out of the game.

Microsoft just released a new backward compatability update. Of note to sports fans is that ESPN NFL 2K5 is on the list!

Full list available by clicking here. Some good ones and some dogs, just like all the updates.

 Lots of sports titles, including High Heat as well.

Just got word from Codemasters that Sensible World of Soccer will be released on Xbox Live Wednesday December 19th. Pricing details have not yet been announced.

I fully intended on going home last night and getting some gaming in… but didn’t count on falling asleep at 6:45 and waking up at 6:15 this morning. I got hit with a cold Sunday night around 8:00 and Wow did it hit me yesterday. I got home and laid down on the couch and was out of it. I feel a touch better today just due to the rest, but I’m still a bit out of it. Very stuffy head and such. Blech. Anywho….

- Apparently people are taking fixing their Rock Band guitars into their own hands…. I’ve only played about 6 or 7 songs with my guitar, so I haven’t had any issues yet, but it’s nice to know that people are coming up with ways to fix them. Oh, and I never got around to trying the drum fixes. I’m just going to get my new kit and deal with that… which reminds me… I need to see why I don’t have a box here from EA yet.

- Nintendo launched the Everyone’s Nintendo channel on the Wii in Japan. The big news for it is that it allows you to download DS demos from your Wii. This has been a long time coming. I can’t wait for them to release it here.

- If you’re interested in that Halo game… Amazon is selling the Legendary Edition today for $59.99… less than half of what they normally charge for it.

Oh, and one last note… Sean Taylor, the safety for the Washington Redskins, passed away this morning due to his injuries after he was shot in his home during an apparent armed robbery. My condolences to his family on their loss.

Well, I did it. I knocked off the last undefeated Fantasy football team. Suck it, Tompkins. Thanks to a horrible game last night, Furburger only got a couple of points. It’s always fun to tell Big Ben to give it to Parker, and not go for the TD…unless he throws it to Parker who’s on my team. LOL. I won by 3 points. Wooohoo!

- Best Buy (and a few other places that I can’t recall) is running a promotion where if you buy NBA2K8, you get NHL2k8 for free.  I know some people here on the forums have liked NHL2K8 quite a bit and NBA2K8 has been well liked as well.  Might be worth a look.

- I got a chance to start working on College Hoops 2K8 last night and while I’m still not thrilled about the menu interface, I am enjoying the game thus far.  I’m working my way through the All-American challenges right now and some are just that, challenging.  I’ve run into an issue with the post up moves though.  I’ve found that if my player is facing the basket, that it’s difficult for him to try and back someone down using the post up button on the Sixaxis (L2.)  Anyone else with the game having this issue?  Might just be me.  I’ll try to get a bit more time in tonight.

I do have to say that I like the 2K Share feature though.  Within 2 minutes of starting up the game I had a brand new roster that had the correct name for every college player.  Nice!

- Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe on the Xbox Live Marketplace Wednesday… really?  Aren’t we running out of ‘classic’ games on Live?

- I’m looking to finally play some of the World Tour mode in Rock Band tonight.  With some luck, my wife will provide the vocals and I can play the drums and we can give that mode a go.

- Speaking of Rock Band, I’m working on getting 5 stars on every song, for the drums, on Medium.  After I got through the first 10, I realized that I wouldn’t even get an achievement for getting 5 stars on every song… and it actually felt good to be playing something because I liked it… not because I was going to get an achievement for it.

- Pick up MLB Power Pros, at Best Buy, yet?  It’s out of stock online, but it’s available in most stores.   I’ll quit asking soon…