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

Thursday night notes

- First things first... Scribblenauts is a very impressive title from a technical perspective.  The controls for the game really hold me back from recommending it to everyone though.  The concept behind the game is a sensational one and it allows for an insane amount of gameplay creativity, but the controls are just maddening from my play time with it.

It's well worth your time to look at it, but I've been amazed at the endless stream of compliments that the game is getting and how few people are mentioning how bad the controls are.   Such is the internet, I guess.

- I've spent a bit more time with NHL2K10 for both the 360 and Wii and find that, surprisingly, I think that the Wii version is better than it's graphically superior brother.  The Wii version contains all of the features of the Xbox 360/PS3 version, plus some Wii specific skills competitions.

The controls for the Wii version are the biggest challenge though.  It's most definitely not a "pick up and play" experience.  It will take you a while to figure out the natural shooting motion that the game demands.  Add to that the fact that you will make a lot of mistakes on your passes, until you figure out that control method as well, and you have a challenging game play experience.

What surprised me about it was the fact that while I was being challenged by the controls, I really wanted to get better at them, and once I did start to grasp them (pardon the pun,) I found the game to be incredibly enjoyable.  Again, when I got my first goal, I was really excited about the moment.

You can contrast that with my first 'Be A Pro' moment from NHL10, where I started a career as a goalie and got drafted #1 overall by the Maple Leafs.. and my reaction was... 'Oh, alrighty then.'

If you're at all curious about my NHL2K10 career on the Wii, you can take a look at it here.  (It also gives you a glimpse into their online stat tracking and game blogging features.)

- After playing 2K10 for a good part of the night, I spent a bit of time on NHL10 for the Xbox 360 and have found the 'Be a Pro' mode to be a bit more in depth that the previous year.  They've added a store feature where you can get new equipment for your player (unlockable via gameplay accomplishments or via purchase in the Xbox and PS3 online stores.)  The new equipment enhances the ratings for your player and is well worth the time to enhance.

The goalie controls have been altered and, for the most part, they are improved.  One of the major changes was how the 'hug the post' works.  In the past, if you pushed your goalie to the post, he would get stuck to it.  In this years version, you need to pull the left trigger to get the goalie to stick to the post.  It's a nice change, but I have found some issues with it already.  Whenever I would try to get the goalie to hug the right post when my goalie was on the right side of the crease, he would slide to the other side of the net and stick to the left post.  Perhaps I'm just not using it correctly, but it's definitely an odd thing to see... and it hasn't cost me any goals yet... but it is a touch annoying.

My plan is to spend a bit more time with NHL10 tomorrow night and see how the board play and some of the other added features work, but I do think that what I've seen thus far are some nice enhancements to last years game.

- Is anyone following baseball anymore?  The closest division race is 4 games (Twins behind the Tigers,) and the NL Wild card is a 3.5 game lead with 2 weeks to go.  Not the close races that we've seen in years past.

- I'm incredibly tempted to pick up the Lucasarts Adventure pack for $9.99 on Steam.  Both Indy games, the Dig, and Loom for $9.99?  Damn, that's a lot of point-and-click gaming value for $2.50 a title.