The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Friday morning thoughts

- You now have some insight into why Dan and I have had a hard time getting a podcast done lately.  I can only imagine how hard it is to go back and get a degree when you have kids.  My 4 and 1 (2 next week) wear me out, but that's mainly because I watch them by myself 3 or 4 days a week with my wife working nights.

- Steve Davey is leading the blog bracket at the moment getting 15 out of 16 correct.

I took my first hit of the tourney last night when VCU lost to UCLA.  That was my first Sweet 16 team out of the tourney.  Today should be a lot of fun, and getting to watch the Badgers at 9:00 tonight should be good fun.

- It's going to be a Wisconsin sports day for me... Badger men's hockey at the Final Five at 2:00, Badger women's hockey at the Final Four at 4:00, Badger men's basketball at 9:00.   Thank goodness for DVR's.  I'm still bummed that the women's game isn't on TV, but I can only imagine what kind of ratings draw women's college hockey is... still, I'd like to see it.

- The only games I've been working on of late have been Killzone 2 and The Show.

Killzone continues to impress me.  The Arc towers have to be one of the coolest weapons that I've seen represented in video game form.  The game is just amazingly good looking and is still a lots of fun to play as well.

The Show... I'm starting to lose interest in my RTTS career.  I'm in my 4th year with my reliever and the commentary for the game just drives me bat poop insane.  You'll see a player come to the plate, you'll hear the stadium announcer say that name... then you'll hear the play by play man call him something else.

I swear that Campbell only recorded for about 15 minutes, because his dialogue is repeated over and over again.

Gameplay-wise... I've seen far too many situational things that annoy me.  You'll be pitching with a 1 run lead in the 8th or 9th, have a batter on first, and see a ball hit toward the gap in the outfield.  Rather than making the smart play on it and cutting it off to prevent the runner from scoring, you'll see your outfielder dive... miss.. and the run will come into score.   Never once have I seen an outfielder do anything but to make a straight path to the ball.  I've never seen them drop back and let the ball fall in, but prevent the runner from scoring.  It's just frustrating.

I know it's AAA ball, but those guys know how to play late in games with the lead as well.

Lastly, one of the three things that I would like to see added into next years game (the first being an offseason program mode... we can't get any better in between seasons) is something like the positive results, but having it apply to your advancement goals.  Last night, I had 4 series to get a hold in a game.  The problem was that I was never put in a game in a situation where I could get one.  Then I hear that I'm not doing enough to get better in the email from the manager.  That's frustrating.  If hold opportunities=0, then.... blah, blah, blah.  A minor tweak, but still annoying.

Ok, I lied about the lastly.... I'm seeing big league players playing whole seasons in AAA in my RTTS career as well.  I know there are some guys that have a solid career and get some AAA time to hang on, but I'm seeing quite a few guys that are big leaguers now, playing AAA in my career.  Seeing David Eckstein just hanging on in AAA at the age of 37 just seems wrong.

- Speaking of web browsers... I've been using Google Chrome a lot.  Fast as hell for the pages I'm using (Google Reader, CNN, CNNSI, etc.)  Haven't tried IE8 though... I usually avoid that browser except for when I can't use anything else.