The Blog for the Sports Gamer

- Well, the Brewers go 4-3 to finish their road trip and it looks like Yost’s job will be safe for the time being.  I was happy to see them win, until I saw that they were near signing Julian Tavarez.  Do we need to take on every former Red Sox pitcher with a 5+ ERA?  Is Oil Can Boyd still available?

- The first two games of the Stanley Cup finals have been duds in my estimation.  Not to say that Detroit isn’t playing well, they are… I was just hoping for much more competitive games out of Pittsburgh.  Hopefully things will turn around in the next two games.  I’d just like to see some great hockey, with the national audience being able to tune in.

- Things are still “tender” for me.  Today was a bit of a relapse.  I went out with my wife and kids to a park to try and get out and about for the day, but I found out quickly that I’m not ready to run around with my daughter.  I was back on the bed with a bag of peas for a few hours this afternoon.  I really wonder what work will be like tomorrow.  I think they’ll frown on the peas.

- Dan and I have an outline for a podcast put together, but now we’re just trying to get our schedules to work together.  We should be able to get one done this week.

1. Wow, it was only a week ago when I was talking about Orioles magice. 5 losses in a row later, uhh…are they still playing baseball? LOL.

2. Not much on TV tonight as summer season literally begins…although there is a 2 hour Lost this Thursday. Tomorrow on BBC America is a Monty Python marathon, they say they’ve remastered the shows, so I’m guessing the dead parrot looks more dead? Tonight on HBO, if I had HBO, I could watch “Recount” but seriously I want to relive November 2000 like I want to relive the past 8 years. As in, I don’t.

3. Let’s see, is there anything not to be grumpy about? I cleaned up my office and my basement workbench today, so there’s that. ….

4. Glen must be suffering from soreballsackitis, since we haven’t heard from him much….

Amazon: TH Proving Ground - Wii - $13.99 (good Sunday 5/25 only)

Target:

• Buy a 360 and GTA IV, get a $50 gift card
• 1600 MS Points, $14.99 (save $5) — GREAT DEAL. These are never discounted!
• $10 Gift Card when you buy any Chronicles of Narnia game (blech)

Circuit City:

• Nintendo DS M&M’s Bundle $129
• $25 iTunes Card $20 — Another Good deal if you buy tracks on iTunes
• Deca Sports Wii $39.99 w/Free $10 gift card
• Quake Wars Enemy Territory $10 gift card w/purchase
• Death Jr - Wii, free $10 gift card w/purchase
• $50 gift card with purchase of Xbox 360 & GTA IV
• Call of Duty 4 or Army of Two X360 $49.99 each (save $10)
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 or MLB 08 The Show PS3 $49.99 each (save $10)
• Clearance Sale - tons of video games $9.99 each - incl : GT Pro Series Wii w/Wheel (great way to get a 2nd wheel for Mario Kart for less than the price of an official wheel — and a game to boot!
• B2 G1 Free on Selected Blu-Ray titles
• Sunday & Monday ONLY: Zelda DS $17.49

Best Buy:

• PSP Deal - PSP + 2GB Memory Stick + Case = $189.97
• PSP - MLB The Show 08 - $29.99
• Turok X360/PS3 - $39.99, UEFA 360/PS3: $49.99, NBA Ballers 360/PS3: $39.99
• $50 Gift Card with purchase of X360 & GTA IV (shocking, I know)
• X360/PS3 Assassins Creed $39.99

So, although it’s a holiday weekend there are some deals out there. Happy shopping!

- Still very sore.  I’m going through bags of ice/vegetables/whatever in the freezer is frozen, faster than I would have thought possible… but things are getting better.  My wife has been great, bringing me food and drinks without me even asking for anything.  Hopefully I’ll be back up and about more tomorrow.

- I might have some luck, when it comes to my 360.  The manager of the local Gamestop will swap the system out for me when they get a new one in.  For some reason, they’re still sold out of systems.  He says they only get 2-4 per week.  Odd.  Oh, well.  Nice of him to take care of me like this.

- Brewers have now split the first 4 games against two of the worst teams in the NL.  If they lose 2 of their next 3 against Washington, I have a feeling Yost will be gone.  Add that to Gagne going on the DL and you’ll probably see some happy Brewer fans around here.  As for me?  I’m just sitting back.  I don’t think that a different manager will make a huge difference, there are so many things going wrong right now that I don’t think one thing will do it.  People keep thinking that this team will turn out like the 1982 team if they fire Ned, but I just don’t see it that way.

- I’m thinking about picking up a 2nd PS3.  Walmart is going to be giving away a $100 gift card with the purchase of a PS3, during the week of June 1st.  Add that to the Sony Style card deal, and you are getting a PS3 for $199 (providing you would spend $100 on other things at Walmart.)   To have two Blu-Ray players in the house, that might be a deal worth doing.

That SingStar PS3 is quite an addictive game.

Welcome Glen to the wonderful world of Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death. Do you even qualify for a warranty at this point? Just make sure if you exchange you get the new lower wattage 360.

Did you hear that in June MS will release a tool to fix all the DRM crap on a single 360 so you’ll be able to play offline your Live Arcade games? About friggin time. They talk about contractual issues. Whatever. Speaking of stupid, how stupid is it that SingStar songs you buy are tied to one PS3 only — so if you want to play on your big screen PS3 but you’ve purchased the tracks on your 60 GB PS3 in your office, you are SOL. Great idea!

Just remember Glen, the snippies could be worse — instead you could have a tampon shoved up your nose for a week to fix your sinus disease. I can’t wait for my operation in a couple of weeks. I hear breathing is a real treat — something to look forward to.

So, I figured I would catch up on some 360 games that I haven’t had much time for, seeing as how I have plenty of time to spare today.  I put in Call of Juarez, thinking… Western based shooter should be fun for a bit.  Played for about 15 minutes, system locked up.  Started the game over, system locked up.

Ok, maybe I have a bad game.  Tried out NHL08, locked up.

Turned the system off, and back on again… Three red lights.

Glen’s Xbox - Purchased: Release day.  Died: May 23rd, 2008.  RIP.

I should have had my wife put up the giant banner and hung it over the garage for when I got home, but all the same the work has been completed.

I have to say that the experience was a relatively painless one.  People weren’t kidding about feeling uncomfortable though.  Things are definitely tender down there right now.

One thing I do have to ask those of you that have had this done, did the doctor give you the ‘remainders’ of the procedure?  I have these two little plastic containers that are holding what was removed.  I have no idea what I should do with them.  Probably put them on the mantle right next to the pictures of the kids, I suppose.

Ok.  Time to settle in and get some gaming/movie watching done.

- Peas and Corn purchased.  Full speed ahead.

- Apparently Ned Yost is the only manager in major league history where the fans don’t seem to like him.

- Holographic Madden.  These were the features we were all clamoring for.  EA Sports new motto - Tron?  It’s in the Game.

So, I’m sitting in the Urgent Care with my wife. She’s getting her second bag of saline via an IV because she’s severely dehydrated. Apparently she hasn’t been keeping anything down for the last two days. Gotta love being married to a nurse. Self diagnosis FTW!

So, as I mentioned yesterday, my wife picked up Wii fit and she really enjoyed it.

I put in enough time to get 30 plus minutes of Wii Fit credits and here are my thoughts.

My Wii Fit age is 45, and I’m only 34. Ouch. I’m almost 6′0 and weigh 175, but the game thinks that I should try to drop 20 more pounds. I haven’t weighed in the 150’s since I was a freshman in high school . Ugh.

‘The tree’ in the yoga exercises kicked my ass. My balance really sucks, but I was really feeling that the stretches and exercises were doing what they were supposed to.

I’ll see how much easier it becomes over time. The yoga stretches could really help my hockey flexibility in the long run.

- The plan for tomorrow is for me to be in the doctor’s office for my vasectomy. Dan thinks that I should live blog it. heh.

We’re hoping to do the podcast tonight or tomorrow if I’m ‘comfortable enough.’

Ugh. As I type this I’m watching the Man U- Chelsea game on ESPN Classic, but I already know the result. Another game ruined by Penalties. I hate Penalties. Might as well determine the winner via coin flip. I’d rather see a goal in the 304′ .

New release Wednesday. I picked up Wii Fit of course…and apparently I wasn’t the only one as it seemed to be the game on everyone’s mind — including GameStop customers. Another game that just came out that I happened to pick up was SingStar on the PS3. Since I already had the microphone, I figured why not. OMG. The game rules. All American Idol contests should play this game, just to hear how bad they are. I actually did pretty well on Here Comes Your Man, but I sucked hard on Hey Ya, and there’s no way in hell I’m posting that video for you to watch. :). Yes, you can upload videos of you singing if you have an EyeToy/PS EYe, whatever the hell. The game is pretty fun and with 200 (!) songs in the SingStore, replay value is high. Too bad they couldn’t have let you used the PS2 game inside the PS3 version.

Funny thing about the SingStar manual - it has an ad for Uncharted “Coming November 2007″…uhhh…someone didn’t proof the manual or they just used the UK version.

Moving along to Wii Fit, in a shocker, it says I’m ‘obese.’ I know the ladies who read the blog are now drooling with excitement, but I have to say I’m impressed with the exercises the game gives you. There’s a running competition where you put your wiimote in your pocket and run. It’s fun. I’m not crazy about the Yoga, and I suck at the exercises — so I do hope to improve. My fitness age is 51. Yikes!

Now, American Idol. Wow! What a complete and total shock. You know what’s funny…seeing Carrie Underwood (and by seeing, I mean really seeing…could that outfit be any shorter), it’s just amazing the talent that this show once produced. Now everyone is ragging on the judges saying they got it wrong but I’m thinking maybe Simon did it on purpose to spur that sort of reaction…then again he did apologize tonight — so maybe he really did want Archuletta. Ironically, I really didn’t want Archuletta to win, I thought Cook was better, but then on the No Republic song Apologize, I thought he sang better than the band.  Cook with ZZ Top was pretty awesome. Seeing naked gay stripper singing “Father Figure” and getting the “warm and naked by your side” and making a face at naked, that was something I could definitely do without. Syesha was pretty good and it was nice to see Brooke. Sorry that Amanda had such a bad time there, it seems that there was someone who had zero interest in showing up.

Seeing the Guitar Hero ads with Cook and Archuletta was pretty funny. Cook won that too as he could pull off the ’shirt only’ routine much better.

Getting back to baseball — A Rod did get jobbed with the HR call..and seeing the Yankees rout the Orioles in no way surprises me after last night– it was probably my ‘line of the night’ that put the jinx on big time.

So there you have it, another night of gaming, or watching TV. Or something.

- Wife went to Target right at 8 a.m. this morning and got her Wii Fit.  She’s a very happy woman.  She said there were about 50 people waiting in line when she got there, and they were just opening the doors.  She walked back to the electronics area and got one off of an end cap.  So, hopefully the rumored shortages aren’t going to be as bad as people thought.

- So, Gagne got hurt last night in the Brewer game, or he reported shoulder stiffness at least.  Why you bring your closer in to work the 9th when you are up 7-0 is beyond me… but that’s Ned Yost baseball.

- Back to work….

Bwhahahahahaa. 7R in 0.2 IP…yes only 1 was earned, but still. Maybe Angelos didn’t give Moose even a counter offer, but when you sign with the Yankees, all bets are off. If he signed with Boston, I could have even lived with that I suppose, becuase in 1979, some jerky kid didn’t steal a home run in game 2 of the ALCS. Not that I’m bitter about it.

- Mulligans?!?  Are you kidding me?  I love Kotaku’s take on the Rewind feature in Madden 2009.

“We think it’s actually a neat little feature, if only for its strategic shutting down of big plays (and big flubs)”

So, forget trying to fix the code that actually allows the cheap plays to happen.  Just institute a feature that lets you forget that they ever happened.

When I was 12, and played Super Tecmo Bowl, you were allowed one reset per match, because the CPU would totally job you from time to time.  Now, rather than fix the bugs in the game, they’re just coding in the ability to ‘do-over’ what the game does wrong?  What a crock.  I really should sign up for those EA interviews for their advertisements now.  I’m three shades of fired up.

- I really hope that I’m able to track down a copy of Wii Fit for my wife tomorrow.  She’s been very excited about getting it, and I’m planning on hitting at least 3 stores tomorrow morning to make sure that she gets a copy.  I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t like to pre-order things.  Just something about letting my money sit in someone else’s bank before I spend it bothers me.

- Okami, for the Wii, is $29.99 at both Amazon and Best Buy this week.  Anyone have any comments on it?  I’ve been thinking of picking it up since it came out on the Wii, but haven’t really heard any strong endorsement for it on that platform yet.

- After talking with a co-worker, we’re certain that if the Brewers don’t have at least a 3-3 record on their next two stops, Pittsburgh and Washington, that Ned will be gone.  Of course, we still have a sub .200 hitter in the lead off spot and you would have thought that would have changed by now too.

- Can you tell I had an off day at work?

Funny that GameSpot has an article about the ClusterF that is Wii Fit. Apparently they don’t have a good relationship with GameStop, because for anyone to say “we hope to get some in” is a liar.

Let me be clear: I have personally walked into a Gamestop that I have a good relationship with the manager (note: it helps to preorder 100s of games, and I have personally seen Wii Fit. It is street dated 5/21. As in they cannot sell it until 5/21.

I don’t see what the issue is, except they wanted to give the NYC store a head start. It borders on flat out deception that Nintendo says that the game is available 5/19 when it isn’t. This isn’t a “ships 5/19, check your local store for availability.” This is a “DO NOT SELL UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH UNTIL 5/21″.

Grr…