The Blog for the Sports Gamer

1. As is tradition I turned off the Patriots game in the 4th Quarter. How else would you think they would win.

2. Glen, and the asshats at ESPN are all over the Patriots today. What they aren’t saying is that AJ Feeley has had the Patriots card for sometime…I still remember that horrid game in Miami…thankfully he still throws picks. NFC teams always play the Patriots tough — I’m not worried, but this will bring the spread down to a more realistic number.

3. Double Dribble NES hits Wii VC today. I have fond memories of that game. I also remember the players flickering more than an Atari 2600 game.

Thank you to the Eagles for showing everyone tonight that the Patriots are not a perfect football team. They pushed them to the absolute limit tonight and I think there is going to be a lot less fear of what you have to face in New England.

Let’s set the record straight for tonights game.

A 5-5 team goes on the road to face the best team in the league. They go into their stadium with a backup QB and had a great chance to win that game. In fact, if Westbrook makes that 3rd down catch when they are up by 4 in the fourth quarter… man… no telling what would have happened.

The only thing that I hope is that a ton of New England fans bet their houses that they would cover that spread tonight. They only missed it by… 20 points.

Oh, and I’m still waiting to hear if Dan turned the game off….

- Amazon came through in the end and gave me the credit for all of my movies with the HD-A3. Gotta love that. Now I just have to wait a few weeks for the player. heh.

- It’s not very often that you get a chance to do this, but you have to single out an amazing call from a referee when it happens. The game was a blowout, but here’s the call from the ref.

The call harkens back to a Jets/Bills game in the 80’s. Here’s the clip for that as well. Gotta love it.

- Have you bought MLB Power Pros yet? You really should…

Ok. Time to watch the kids and some football.

- Boy is it important to calibrate the Rock Band guitar.  I was able to 5 star everything on Medium (except …And Justice for All) on the first try.  I like the lack of click… but I really wish it was wireless.

I’m still having some issues with the drums… haven’t had any luck with my wife bringing home the medical tape though.  We’ll see.

Oh, the other problem I’m having with the drums is the fact that the headset adapters don’t work with my kit… probably best that the whole thing is being replaced.

Why again don’t we have an online band mode?  I’m going to be stuck playing the drums and singing, or playing the guitar and singing… ugh.

- I’m now pulling for a Missouri - West Virginia BCS championship game.  I think OSU is a good team, but I don’t think that they would fare well in a championship game.  I just don’t think they were really tested this year and it probably wouldn’t suit them well in the bowls.  Perhaps I’m wrong about that though.

- Amazon is still dinking me around about my free HD DVD’s.  They’ve credited my account for two of them, but they won’t credit the third… saying it’s not part of the deal now… which it isn’t… but half of the movies that were up there at the beginning of the deal aren’t there any more.  Grrr.  Hopefully it’ll get done soon.

- Futurama the Movie: Bender’s Big Score is $17.99 at Best Buy this week.  I’ll have a hard time passing that one up.  I loved the series… glad that it’s getting back on the air one way or another.

- Also at Best Buy MLB Power Pros for the Wii for $19.99!!!!  Run to the store.  Don’t stop running until you have the game back at home.  Play the game like crazy.  This was my favorite sports game of the year… it’s worth every one of those 1999 pennies.   Go pick it up… hurry back and tell us what you think about it as well.

What do you get the gamer who has everything? May I recommend a Japanese import of the DUALSHOCK 3 SIXAXIX (For PlayStation 3)?

I pre-ordered mine from Play-Asia, for the low low price of $54 shipped. It took about 10 days to get here on the east coast. I got the ceramic white, because that was the only choice available and rumble is better than console vanity.

Anyway, I was rather surprised to see the DualShock 3 does NOT come with a USB cable (controller only) so you’ll have to share the USB cable to charge or find an extra one lying around. It did come with a charge in it.

Since Uncharted was in my PS3, I tried that game first. Voila! Rumble when you shoot the gun. Very cool.

The controller itself is little heavier — you’ll notice it but it’s not that heavy, if that makes sense. Still very easy to hold and comfortable as ever. The action buttons on the front (circle, X, Triangle, etc) seem a lot more mushy to me than the SIXAXIS, but the response is fine. The shoulder buttons/triggers are exactly the same to me.

For most of the evening, I played the fun game “what PS3 games have rumble” but didn’t get very far because MLB 07 had a 1.20 update that I hadn’t downloaded and it was taking forever to get. I can tell you that All Pro Football and Professional Baseball Spirits do NOT have rumble as far as I can tell. It doesn’t look like there’s a PBS update, but I forget how to get an update if there is one.

 The rumble in Uncharted wasn’t as pronounced as it could be. It’s enough to feel a bump but doesn’t seem to result in the violent shaking as on the 360 controller. I didnt’ play it a ton, so I reserve the right to change my opinion.

 I think I’ll have to buy/rent Ridge Racer because that was one game I was really hoping would have rumble. Ohh and Gran Turismo. I have to try that. Well my day is planned when I get out of work :)!

Did my first online band yesterday with Glen…we played a few songs and I was the guy who played guitar while Mr. Glen played drums. Here are some observations:

1. Glen’s Live mic adapter wasn’t working with the drums. Perhaps as in real life, he couldn’t find the right hole with his dongle. I know the input on the guitar is sort of like playing Where’s Waldo. Of course I have a wireless communicator so it was no problem for me anyway.

2. This game really needs an online coop career mode. It was fun playing the songs together but disappointing that there were no achievements to be unlocked or progression from that.

3. At first I thought the Rock Band guitar sucked, but Bill Harris said it grows on you because there’s no clicking. Indeed, I am liking it more and more.

Today has gone better for me so far… as I was able to pick up some games without any real issues and Amazon is giving me a credit for the movies that I should have gotten for free on my HD-A3 order.

Now, whether or not I should have picked up Red Steel, Call of Juarez, Rainbow Six Vegas, and Stuntman Ignition… that’s up for debate.

Also, Wisconsin’s hockey game against Michigan is being run live, instead of on tape delay as it was initially set up to be.  That’s a nice bonus for a Friday night.

My wife forgot to bring home the medical tape for the drums, so I never got to try that out… but since I did go through EA’s customer service site for Rock Band, I think I’ll wait on those drums before I do anything extreme to these ones.  I will try out the guitar later tonight.

Also, I got my copy of College Hoops 2K8 from 2K Sports today, so I’ll give that a look tonight as well.

Here it is 1:20PM and I’ve been at work since 6:20. This day is ending at 3PM for me, thankfully and it can’t come soon enough. I’ve hit two excedrin (just for the caffeine), four cups of coffee and three diet pepsis and I’m barely awake.

Quick responses to comments:

 1. I’m finding playing a career as a guitar player much easier than playing as a drummer.

2. I’m not sure if it’s my drum playing that sucks or if I have a defective drum pad. I think it’s my drum playing. Maybe I should try the tape just to be sure.

3. I think the U2 20th Anniversary set at $43 is a little on the high side, especially if you already have the Joshua Tree. You get a nice book, some photos and 2 bonus discs: one is a DVD of their 7/4/87 show in Paris and the other is a bunch of B-sides. Most of the b-sides you already have but there is one actually new for the re-release song.  I love the concert DVD. It is awesome.

4. ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

So, I played 2 1/2 hours of hockey last night… which turned out to be a very bad move considering the day I had to partake in.

- I started the day by being woken up after 3 hours of sleep when my daughter wanted a bottle. Fed her and went back to bed for another hour, when my other daughter woke me up to let me know she had wet the bed. Cleaned her, and her bed, up and changed her and waited for my wife to get home.

Once my wife got home, I had to go out into the yard and start putting up our snow fence to stop the drifting that occurs over our driveway. After hurting my foot (don’t ask… I shouldn’t do manual labor) and after driving 15-6 foot stakes 1 foot into the ground with a sledgehammer, I took a shower and then took both kids to my grandparents for Thanksgiving day.

There, I had to listen to some of the worst sports fans that I can ever recall. I knew this going in, but these guys are terrible. If you watched the Packer game today, you know that they were down 6-0 about 10 minutes into the first quarter. No less than 3 plays into the game, half of the group was saying… “We’re going to get destroyed today.” Yeah, cause you can tell so much about a game from the first 1:30. I hate fans like that…

So, I have a few things to eat and watch the rest of the game. My oldest daughter is spends most of the time with my father (whom I’m not really on speaking terms with) and proceeds to use him to get whatever she wants all day, eating an insane amount of sugar and basically being a pain in the butt.

I get the girls bundled up and bring them back home and find that neither of them really wants to eat or cooperate and they both cry until around 8:00.

Then I looked at Amazon and see that the HD-A3 is now priced at $159.99 and still includes the 10 free movies. I put my order in… verify that I’m going to get my three free movies and then decide that I’ll give Amazon Prime a whirl. It’s a free trial… why not? Well, as soon as I sign up for it… the movies that I was going to buy from the HD-A3 sale cease being freebies. They now ring up at full price. So, I call their support line and tell them about it. The person barely speaks English and informs me that she’ll cancel the order because there is nothing she can do… except she can’t cancel one of the movies for some reason. She then informs me that I need to call my bank and tell them not to honor the charge… great…

So, with one order for the HD-A3 cancelled, I proceed to try and order it again with Prime. Still no freebies, but now I’m waiting on Amazon’s email customer service to see if they can handle the issue with the 3 movies not being zeroed out.

At that point, I decide to play some Rock Band… figuring that could help me get some of my issues from the day out. Oh, no. I can’t do that because the damn red pad sucks ass and doesn’t register 2 or 3 hits out of 10. The other pads miss about 1 out of 10. I stopped myself just short of throwing my drumsticks and proceed to put in Guitar Hero 3… which surprisingly I’m able to play quite well (on easy, natch) and manage to salvage a few minutes of sanity at the end of my day.

With about 30 minutes left in Thanksgiving day… I’m petrified of doing anything else, as I don’t want to know what else will go wrong today. At least the Packers won….

1. First off to all of our American readers, I hope you have a great holiday.

2. Second, I just finished going through 23,598 Thanksgiving day circulars and I have to say I’m not impressed. If you want to wait at Best Buy at midnight for their 5AM opening to save $100 on a TV that you wouldn’t normally buy anyway, be my guest. I guess video game wise there are some decent deals, say if you don’t already have a 360 and Guitar Hero, but there’s nothing there that I would get out and wait in the cold for.  Orange Box PC for $34 at CC isn’t bad, if you don’t already have Orange Box.

3. I stayed up playing the drums on Rock Band until 2AM last night. Yes, it’s addictive and difficult. I’m playing Easy and I’ve only 5-starred a couple of songs. I may have to go to the guitar. I’m a sucker for these music games, I know I said I wasn’t going to buy it. Oh well…oh and Bill Harris, still plenty of Rock Bands. They are even at K-Mart and they’re open today. lol.

4. Needing a new game for the zapper, I picked up Ghost Squad. I figure hey, it’s a shooting game by Sega…it’s a lot of fun, but my son finished the game in 30 minutes. Jury is still out on the Wii Zapper for me. The aim just doesn’t seem right to me. I’m curious to check out Time Crisis 3 and see if there’s any difference.

5. I played Unreal Tournament 3 last night and came away impressed. It looks and plays great. Funny how Crysis needs it’s own portable generator to run 30fps in SLI mode but Unreal 3 seems to not have any problem at all.

6. Time for Turkey…

Yeah, I’m a bit crazy for being up this late… so sue me. I just got done playing 2 hours of hockey, then driving home on mostly frozen roads. Not my smartest night yet… but I’m home safe with the kids, so all’s well that ends well.

- Best Buy has their Black Friday gaming deals on their website already. I ordered SSX Blur (kind of dug the rental,) and Cooking Mama for the DS (for the missus.) They have a few other games of note on there with free shipping if you’re interested.

- Amazon has NBA2K8 for the PS3 for $26.99 with free shipping.

Packers vs. Lions at 11:30 tomorrow. That one should pretty much settle the NFC North. I hope the Packers D keeps showing up like they have.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

I spent about 2 hours with Rock Band last night (entirely on the drums) and while the game is very good.. I am running into some of the hardware issues with the drum kit that others have reported.   I’m playing through medium just to get my drumming groove back and while I’m getting 4 stars on every song, I should be getting 5’s.  I’m noticing a lot of red notes that are missing for no good reason, so I’m going to try out the taping solution that was posted in the comments and see if I have better luck with that.   I do like that the first thing that a drummer does is to put some tape on the pads.  I don’t have any pictures of my old kit, but I had tape all over my drum heads just to get the right sound that I wanted.  It’s funny that tape is needed with pads just to get them to work right as well.

Two other things that I think I’ll probably pick up are a new drum throne and some new sticks.  The sticks that come with the game are decent, but there were sticks that I used in the past that I know that I liked better.  I just need to find them again.  As far as the throne goes… it’s just awkward sitting on a couch and playing the drums.  Maybe that’s just me though.

Somehow I also got my wife to come into the theater and sing some vocals for a few songs.  She said she was coming down for 1 song, but she ended up singing 5… and we ended up making a character for her.  I think that’s a good sign that a small band is forming in the house.

Oh, I never even took the guitar out of the package.  I might look at that sometime this weekend.

- Mr. T is still a very funny man.  This commercial proves it.  Shatner’s spot is decent… but Mr. T rules.

- According to early reports Super Mario Galaxy sold over 500,000 copies in the US in it’s first week.  Not too shabby.  Finally something that can knock Wii Play off of the top spot on the Wii game charts.

- I picked up the Wii Zapper yesterday at Walmart…which strangely is one of the only stores that has it at the MSRP right now.   Any thoughts as to which Zapper compatible game I should rent to try it with?  Medal of Honor 2, Ghost Squad, or Resident Evi: Umbrella Chronicles?

- If you have a PS3, they’re having a sale on a few of their downloadable games through November 29th.  Calling all Cars, FlOw, Everyday Shooter, and Pixeljunk Racers are all $4.99.  I picked up Everyday Shooter last night and was it was well worth 5 bucks.   Thanks to limelicker for posting this in the forums.

1. You know what is depressing? It’s having to work when the world is off. Today and Friday seem to be that everyone’s off but me. Not only that but I’m the idiot that decided we should open at 7am on Friday. I have to pick up donuts at 6am. Good times. Remember I’m a night owl kind of guy, not a morning person. I’m barely up now.

2. I picked up those new PlayStation Eye games…they are pretty fun.

3. After spending a Christmas like amount of time putting together the #$%^ing Rock Band accessories, I can tell you this: the kids love the game, even if they don’t understand it. Everyone wants to play the drums. I haven’t had time to try the tutorial , I just played two songs, Weezer and Garbage. The game isn’t bad — I’m still thinking to myself I paid $170 for it. Then again, the game itself was $60, so that means you paid $110 for a microphone, drum kit, guitar and usb hub which doesn’t sound all that bad. I still found plenty of copies around here, so if you have to have it and don’t mind paying shipping let me know and I will be happy to do a good deed for you.

4. Trauma Center for Wii is out today. This will pretty much end my video game purchases for the year as I am now flat broke.

While I picked up Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC, I noticed that the Target here had 12 Xbox 360 Rock Bands and 3 PS3 Rock Bands. Needless to say, rumors of a sellout are just that — rumors.

- The College Hoops 2K8 demo is out on Live Marketplace.  If you haven’t checked out the PS3 version, give it a look.  It’s a very solid basketball game, regardless of what Dan says.

- Also on the Live Marketplace is a demo for ATV vs. MX Untamed.  I think they’re going to run out of ‘un’ words for those games.  Maybe the next one will be ATV vs. MX Underwhelming.

- Something that will definitely make Dan happy, the original Nights into Dreams for the Saturn is being ported to the PS2.   Apparently it will have a widescreen display and enhanced graphics as well.  Now if we can finally get Sega to remake Panzer Dragoon Saga… I’ll finally be able to try that out without having to play $200 on Ebay for it.

I went to Gamestop last night to pick up a copy of Uncharted, on Dan’s recommendation, and here’s the experience that I had at the store.

Employee 1: What can I do for you?
Me: I would like a copy of Uncharted
Employee 1 fumbles in the drawers for a while
Employee 1: Are you sure it’s out?
Me: Yes, it came out last week.
Employee 1 fumbles for a few more seconds
Employee 1: I guess we don’t have it.

I look around the store for a minute to see if anything else interests me, but come up empty.  As I’m getting ready to leave, I overhear another customer, who coincidentally I had played hockey against on the night before (small world,) asks a female employee if they have a copy of Uncharted.  I mention that I would be curious about it as well.

Employee 2: Hmm… we don’t have any here, but the computer says that the store 4 blocks away has 5 copies.  Do you want me to call them and check to see if they can hold a copy for you?
Me:  That would be terrific.

10 minutes later, I had the game in my hands.  Amazing how customer service can actually help you make a sale….

- Oh, another funny thing that happened yesterday.

While I was at Gamestop, I asked if they had the Wii Zapper.

Employee 1: Yep, we have it
Me: Can you sell it?
Employee 1: Nope.  Doesn’t come out until Wednesday.
Me: Nintendo’s website says it’s for sale today.
Employee 1: Huh?

I stopped in at Best Buy… same question

Employee 1: Yep, we have it.
Me: Can you sell it to me?
Employee 1: Nope… doesn’t come out until the 25th.
Me:  How often do you get a street dated accessory?
Employee 1: Huh?

I drove to Target then on the way home… they had 10 on the shelf in the glass case… but no employees to be found.  Go figure.

One last story.

While I was at Target, I picked up a copy of the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade expansion pack that was on clearance for $4.96.  I took it up to the register and here’s what happened.

Register person: Um….
Me:  Did the game not price out correctly?  (I scanned the game back in the department to make sure what price it was before bringing it to the register.)
Register person:  No, it comes up at $4.96…. but…
Me:  What’s it say?
Register person:  It says you have to be 35 or older to buy this game
Me:  You have to be kidding me.  (Mind you, I’m 33… and I’m about to be denied a game because I’m not old enough.)
Register person:  I’m just going to ignore it
Me:  Thanks.  Next time I’ll bring in my AARP card so I can buy anything I want.

What a horrible retail day.  I can’t believe how many goofy things all happened to me within one day.  Crazy.