The Blog for the Sports Gamer

After 3(!) days, I finally received my RMA and ship to address for my Guitar. It cost me $10 to ship UPS. Oh yeah, and good luck finding a box to fit this GD thing in.

This whole process is really a big disappointment considering how much I enjoy the game.

Getting back to "Sports" games, MotorStorm Pacific Rift is a lot of fun so far.

Also, GameStop has already marked down Blitz 2 The League to $39.99 from $59.99. Nothing says "hasn’t sold" like dropping a price $20 in less than 2 weeks. It’s too bad, as my GameShark review says, this is a fun game.

- So… the Brewers hired Ken Macha to manage the club for the next two years.  I can’t remember the last time that an experienced manager got a two year deal when he started with a new club.  Not that it really matters though.  Almost everyone around here that I’ve talked to, or listened to on the radio seems pretty underwhelmed by the move.  It just doesn’t seem like the candidate base was all that great this time around and as a result, they got a guy that turned them down for the job when they gave it to Yost a few years ago.  Yay.

- I put a lot of time into GH:WT last night and found that I really, really like the game.  Sadly, I think I’m going to have to break down and buy the MIDI to USB cable required for the drum tuning software.  I think my high-hat cymbal isn’t sensitive enough at this point, so I’d like to give that a go.  It’s nice that they have this option, but it’s a bummer that we have to buy a cable to fix our drums… oh, well.

I’m still waiting to see if anything changes on the return policy for their guitars.  I’d like to get mine replaced… but I’m not really feeling like I should have to pay to send it back.

One other thing about the drums… If you’re really used to the Rock Band drums… it’s going to take a while to get used to the extra pad and the configuration difference.  There are some songs on the medium level with pretty complicated off-beats, that make the game a lot more challenging than Rock Band is.  Not a bad thing, just something to note.

- In honor of Wisconsin and North Dakota meeting up tomorrow night.  Here is one of my favorite moments in the history of these two teams.

Nothing says hockey fight like going after the fans…

I played some MotorStorm Pacific Rift last night, and call me impressed. Graphically it looks more stunning than the original. I still haven’t even opened Fallout or Fable….so little time!!

Just read the news today about Netflix doing streaming on Tivo Series 3s/TivoHD units. I wish it would work with Series 2 as well, but hey, the HD will be great….

- As I posted in the comments, I’m having some minor guitar issues with GH:WT.  The green button seems to stick and the star power activates automatically whenver obtained.  It’s certainly annoying, so I’m going to wait and see how the warranty issues resolve.  I would tend to believe that Activision and Red Octane will work together to get a better solution in place soon.

- I love early voting.  I was in and out of the polls in 10 minutes this morning.  According to the clerk, over 10% of the registered voters of my township have already voted.  That’s just too cool.  The funny thing is that when I’ve mentioned to people that I’ve already voted, most of them didn’t even know early voting was an option in Wisconsin.  The word really needs to get out about this.  Also, they should do it nationwide.  Things would be so much quicker on election day if 20 or 30 percent of the country had already voted.

- Issues aside with my guitar, I just like Guitar Hero more than Rock Band.  There is just something about the game that I like more.  Can’t really put my finger on what it is though.  I do like that the set lists change every time you start with a new instrument though.  Rock Band just seems so sterile to me for some reason.  Oh, well.  Personal preference and all.

- So, Netflix will stream some content in HD to the 360 once the new dashboard upgrade is in place.  That’s another nice benefit for Netflix.

Amazon is having PS3 Gold Box Day — the first deal is the PS Eye for $22.99, which is a great ‘all day’ deal and sure to sell out like at 10AM.

Looks like there will be a lot of sports games — I’m guessing Blitz, and a golf game — either Tiger or Hot Shots around 6PM Eastern.

Getting back to GHWT. Did I mention how much I love the game over RB…it just is more fun to me. But, if only my @#$$#ing guitar works.

I can’t believe the lack of response by Activision — basically they are saying "hey, this is Red Octane’s problem – go see them"…really, really classy.

Well I know we’re a sports blog but I have to share this with you. I called my local GameStop as I have a great relationship with the manager — hey I give the guy his preorder quota in one day — and asked if there was anything he could do for me with regards to my GHWT guitar that refuses to strum up.

He told me that GameStop had a national conference call today that ordered all managers not to take returns any more and instead to direct gamers to amazon.com/support.

I went in to pick up Fallout 3, and I saw a half dozen GHWT opened boxes behind the counter.

Suffice it to say, this seems to be a problem. I have tried contacting Red Octane both as an individual Joe Q. Public member and as a press member asking to see what can be done. I haven’t even received an email and it’s been 24 hours.

Activision and Red Octane did add to their FAQs stuff like "make sure you have fresh batteries"…uh, you mean the batteries included with the game weren’t fresh?

Anyway, it’s too bad. I love the drums. This guitar experience has given me a bad taste in my mouth. Let me reiterate: making gamers that just dropped $190 to pay for shipping of an obviously poor quality product that was pushed to release is not a good way to do business. Also, not responding to emails within a day is also not a good way to do business.

This from the latest issue of "duh" magazine, comes this article. I completely agree with this article. I keep saying I’ll get to it, but I haven’t..meanwhile the credit card bills keep popping in.

On a sports related note, the original LT was on Howard Stern today promoting Blitz 2. It was a rather funny interview, even if they didn’t really talk about the game except at the end.

I’m eagerly awaiting Wednesday November 12, as it will be the day that the Orioles show off their new uniforms, including the road uniform that says Baltimore. I simply cannot wait to preorder mine.

I haven’t posted any reviews in a while, sticking mainly to my impressions of a given game, but due to the fact that Blitz: The League II seems to have been given the shaft by a few sites, I figured that I would give you my thoughts for the game in a more formalized manner.

I also decided on a review scale that I’ll stick to when reviewing games.  This goes just for me, as Dan tends to want to get paid for his reviews on other sites.  I doubt he’ll be posting many here for free. heh.

So here’s my scale…

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Rental

Pass

I think that’s a fair way to look at games, without the silly point scales.

So, without further adieu, here’s my Blitz: The League II review.

Let’s recap:

Last year I purchased Rock Band Special Edition.

My drums did not work. EA had a great form to fill out, they cross shipped the drums and made sure that I had my drums before I had to send the old ones back.

Activision on the other hand makes you fill out a request from Red Octane rather than Activision. OOPS, that’s not our problem, we only distribute Red Octane, even though we own them.

You have to ship it at your own cost, wait 2 weeks and maybe get a replacement.

Suffice it to say, Activision is really blowing it here.

- After spending a bit more time with GH:WT last night, I have a few more thoughts.

The drums are quite good but it is an adjustment to get used to having the cymbals, rather using pads for every note.  Also, having that 5th note is a bit of an adjustment.  The first time with any song is a bit of a challenge, but when you play a song again, it becomes much more comfortable.  I’m hoping to try out the GH drums on Rock Band 2 tonight and I’ll let you know what I think of them then.

One annoyance that I’ve found with the drum portion of the game is how the star power is activated.  It requires you to hit both the high-hat (yellow) and crash (orange) symbols at the same time.  I have been a bit frustrated with this means of star power activation, but I’ll see if it’s just another adjustment.

Dan is spot on about the guitar, I love it.  My first songs with the guitar controller just felt perfect.  It’s a great controller.

The character customization is terrific as well.  You have a ton more options when you’re setting up your band members.  Really nice stuff.

I’ve enjoyed the song list quite a bit thus far.  ‘Beat It’ was a ton of fun to play, and the character animations for the song are hillarious.  ‘On the road again’ was a ton more difficult than I would have expected as well, but it’s nice to see a song like that make it’s way into the game.

- Now that Dan has posted his review of Blitz to Gameshark, I’ll post my review later today.  I didn’t want to steal any of his thunder… or something.  Oh, and the game has dropped to $39.99.  I think Dan and I would agree that it’s definitely worth your time.

- Nothing really of note on the Wii store today.  Earthworm Jim for the Genesis and Strong Bad: Ep3 are the major titles.  Meh.  The first episode of Strong Bad is still on my console… about half done.  It was funny, but I just have a hard time throwing $30 bucks into episodic content.

- I should check on my Fable II character tonight… if you do earn money every few minutes whether the game is on or not…. I should be crazy rich by now.

Is anyone else excited for the Wii Nerf N-Strike game?

I finished my review of Blitz 2 and submitted it to GameShark over the weekend — it’s a surprisingly enjoyable, if not short arcade football game. For the grade and the full details, you’ll have to wait until it’s posted. Sorry.

Picked up GHWT and man the guitar is fantastic. I haven’t played with the drums yet, but so far I’m enjoying it more than RB 2.

Pro Evolution Soccer this week as well as Motorstorm. Someone will be busy!!!!

- Officially, I became “That guy” last night as I took my daughters to a midnight opening of Gamestop for Guitar Hero World Tour.

In the interest in full disclosure, we were in Madison for a hockey game last night and got to the store around 11:15.  We sat in the car until midnight and went in and picked up the game.  Thankfully the crew at the store helped me carry the full kit box out to my car.  I had my daughters home and in bed by 12:45.  Not a great scenario, but they wouldn’t have been in bed until midnight either way.  This way, I got a new game.  heh.

- Speaking of GH:WT, I love the drums.  Much, much quieter than the original Rock Band kit.  One other nice surprise was the fact that there is velcro on the bottom of the kick pedal.  I really think that I’ll be able to play this drumset in the room next to where my kids are sleeping and won’t have to worry about waking them up.  That’s a huge victory for me.

I haven’t had a chance to try out the guitar yet, so no words on that yet.

One thing that I did notice right away was the difficulty of Guitar Hero versus Rock Band.  Medium on the drums in GH:WT seemed to be a great deal harder than it was on Rock Band, and that’s not a bad thing.  In my first three songs, I couldn’t get better than 95% of the notes for the drums, so it looks like I have some work to do.

- As far as the hockey game went, the Badgers lost 5-2 to the Gophers.  0-5-1 at this point in the season and the schedule doesn’t get any easier as they head to Grand Forks next weekend.  There was a “fight” last night though.  I hadn’t seen a fight in college hockey in about 10 years.

I do say “fight” because the Minnesota guy never dropped his gloves and just got beat down because of it, guess that’s what happens when you don’t fight back.

- Just about done with Blitz: The League II.  I hope to have a short review of the game up on the site in the next few days.

- I’m planning on picking up Little Big Planet and Fallout 3 this week… but have no idea why.  I won’t have the time to mess around with either at this point, but I just can’t help myself sometimes.

- I picked up Fable II as well as Fable: The Lost Chapters for the Xbox today.  I figured if I enjoyed the early parts of Fable II, that I would probably want to take a look at the original as well.  For $10, where can I go wrong?

After playing through the first hour or so of Fable II, I was surprised at the direction that the story took so quickly.  I won’t spoil it for those of you that haven’t started playing it yet, but it was definitely not what I expected when I started playing the game.

Also, I love the dog that becomes your pet in the game.  It seemed like a gimmick to me when I heard about it, but I found myself wanting to take care of it and watch over it as soon as it became my companion.  I guess I’m just an old softie.

- A review of Blitz II: The League should be coming your way later this week as well.  I’m nearing the finish of the campaign mode and should be finishing that soon.  I’d hate to go through the effort of writing up a review for a game before I finish playing it…. not that I’d accuse any sites of doing that… (cough… IGN)

- Maybe it’s just me… but I’ve had a hard time getting excited about the baseball playoffs after the Brewers were knocked out in the NLDS.  You kind of throw all of your fandom behind one team… and after they’re eliminated it’s hard to keep interested.  Having said all that, ‘Go Rays!’

- Oh, yeah Dan… like you’ve never tried to talk me into buying games.  All I did was mention that Haze was $10 and that it had online co-op.   Heh.

Well I am already exhausted. I don’t remember having as little time for games as I do now. Perhaps I am officially getting old.

Of course, playing games and buying them are two different things, and when I walked into Best Buy tonight, despite preordering Fable 2 from GameStop and Wii Music from Amazon, I couldn’t help myself and I bought both of those from BB as well as Haze for $9.99 which is completely Glen’s fault. I had no interest in that piece of crap but Glen was like we’ll play online and I was like, ok.

Meanwhile SOCOM sits in it’s factory sealed box, Far Cry 2 comes out on Steam tomorrow and I’m still meaning to play The Witcher.

I’m way behind on TV as well … the only thing I’m caught up with on TiVo is Mad Men, which is just an awesome show…and the Shield which also has holy crap moments.

What games did I get to play tonight? Namco’s Outdoor Adventures for the Wii and Wii Music. The kids LOVE Wii Music. You’d think designing an album cover was just the most amazing thing you could do in the game. Outdoor Adventures is a nice DDR-esque activity game that 2 people can play together with one mat. It’s cute too.

I want to play the adult games though — but there is never any time when I’m not exhausted. I’m half awake as I type this trying to will myself to play games but it just isn’t happening.

On the bright side, I got my 360 20GB HD and 3 month Live subscription from MS today…that was a great deal — the shipping address is Fort Worth TX, same place where you ship your dead 360 so I wonder if they are any good (heh).

Working from home today with a sick kid, so I’ll make it quick

- Tetris Party on Wii Ware looks pretty good.  6 player tetris?  Tetris with the Balance Board?  Ok, I’m a sucker… I’ll probably pick it up.

- So, if you’re a member of Best Buy’s Reward Zone program you can get Haze for the PS3 for $9.99.  I’m a sucker for a cheap game… so I’ll probably grab that as well.

- Still can’t believe the Packers dominated the Colts like they did yesterday.  The defense was just stellar.  Crazy.

More later…