The Blog for the Sports Gamer

So, I went to play Peggle Nights last night…and it locked up. I rebooted, and got the red ring of death.

This is my 3rd Elite console and 7th overall at my house that has been borked. I am not out of lifelines at my local GameStop, which means I have to take advantage of the 3 year/2 week turnaround if I’m lucky repair process from Microsoft.

I am so @#$%ing sick of this. I love the games, I love the consoles but quite frankly this is insane! Merry Xmas! Here’s another broken 360!

- The fantasy football season ends on a touchdown pass that forces the final Monday Night Football game of the year into overtime.  You can’t ask for a closer finish than that.  Congrats to Daniel.

- As for the Monday Night game, it was quite a finish… and it was great to see the Vikings lose, as always.

- Have a good night all.

- So the Fantasy Football league championship comes down to Sidney Rice.  This is one of those events where I find myself being pulled in two directions.  I want the Vikings to run, and run, and run some more so that I could possibly win the fantasy championship.  I also want them to lose so that they do not have a chance at the two seed in the NFC playoffs.

I could have made it a good deal less suspenseful if I had known that Pierre Garcon was not going to play in yesterdays game.  Oh, well.  Such is life, I suppose.

- The Packers game yesterday was one of the most boring games that I had watching recent memory.  I did get a chance to see it with some of my uncles though, which is always entertaining.  It doesn’t matter how good (or bad) the Packers are, they have to be some of the most negative sports fans that I’ve ever encountered.  After the first drive, when the Packers did not score, it became almost unanimous that today’s game… just didn’t look good for the Packers.

I’ve always found that it’s difficult to make that sort of assessment after 2 minutes of gameplay, but I guess that’s just me.  I’m just wired a bit differently, it seems.  But that wasn’t always the case.

One of the longest standing jokes between myself and my best friend comes from when we watched a sporting event about… good lord… 20 years ago.  Another one of our friends, after seeing a certain player (for the life of me, I can’t remember who or what sport it was) scored a certain amount of points in the first few minutes.  He then said, “Whoa.  At that rate…”

So, I usually take any snap judgements made by announcers, friends, or anyone and think to myself, “At that rate…” and it usually settles me down.  No team ever plays that well or badly for an entire game…. but some of my extended family members have a hard time recognizing that.  Still, made for entertaining watching.

- Nothing really to cover on the game front.  I picked up Final Fantasy: Crisis Core for the PSP a few weeks back and have been playing with that when I get a chance.  I don’t know what it is, but Action RPG’s just speak to me lately.  It’s fun to just mash some buttons sometimes.

- More later.

Seeing as how Dan put together his list, I figured I would add my list as well.

- Best Football Game

This really wasn’t a contest.  When you only have two football titles hitting the market in a given year, (As Dan said, the Black College Football Experience title shouldn’t count, as they focused more on the music than the football gameplay,) there is only so much you can do to compare and contrast.

So, we had NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10.

In my opinion, one of the most important features of NCAA Football is the Road to Glory mode.  It is the best single player feature of the game, but the problem with it is the fact that it is broken.  The play-calling AI is just so bad in it that you will see your coach make horrible play calling decisions that, as a player, you have no control over.  For example, screen passes do NOT work, and yet you will see the play called over and over… and there is nothing you can do about it.

Madden has some of the same play-calling issues in the 2:00 minute drill, but the rest of the game is just so solid that you can over look it.  There are some other issues that the game has, such as the ‘Fight for the Fumble’ which became one of the quickest features to disable that I’ve ever encountered in a game, but nothing that would cost it the title this year.

2009 Football game of the year: Madden NFL 10

- Best Soccer game

I won’t lie to you, the only soccer game that I got a chance to play this year was FIFA Soccer 10, and it was incredibly entertaining.  As a person who does not play a lot of soccer titles, this game really sucked me in right away.  I rented the game and regretted sending it back when some other new titles came out later that week.  The Virtual Pro feature is very well done and gives you manageable goals (no pun intended) to complete in order to improve your player and move from lower level leagues up the ladder.

It’s the only one I played, but I have no problem giving it…

2009 Soccer game of the year: FIFA Soccer 10

- Best Baseball Game

Ok.  Finally a category with more than a few choices…

This year our options are, Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (the venerable Playstation 3 import,) MLB2K9, MLB09: The Show, and The Bigs 2.

I have a huge soft spot in my heart for the PYS series and this years title did let me down a little.  I’m just not feeling a great deal of improvements over the previous titles.  They did add a World Baseball Classic mode to all of the other features of the game, and while it does add something different to the game that none of the American titles added, it’s just not enough for me to award it game of the year.

The Bigs 2 is a great arcade baseball game (which is a niche that we really need,) and I love the fact that there is a Milwaukee Brewer player on the cover of a baseball game.  The game did feature some nice enhancements and tweaks over the last game, but again… not enough for me to award it my baseball game of the year.

Where to start with the MLB2K series?  Each year we are promised great enhancements and adjustments to the previous years game and each year we find that they’ve spent time on one or two aspects of the game, and then neglect others that needed a good deal more work.  Then they add in new features such as card collecting games, that are just wasted development time that could have been used to make a much better sports title.  The game has come so far from the World Series Baseball series on the Saturn… and almost none of that progress has been positive.  Needless to say, it won’t be my game of the year.

That leaves us with MLB09: The Show, but only for the PS3.  As I commented on a week or so… the loading times on the PSP versions would prevent me from recommending that title to anyone, but the PS3 version is a terrific game.  The Road to the Show mode keeps making the right adjustments to make it a sensational single player experience.  What the Sony development team really needs to work on this year is their network play.  They have not had a functional online gameplay mode since the series launched on the Playstation 3 and it is something that really needs to be rectified this year.  Still, it does win…

2009 Baseball Game of the Year: MLB 09: The Show (PS3)

- Best Basketball Game

We have 3 titles to choose from in this category, NBA Live 10, NCAA Basketball 10, and NBA2K10.

The biggest surprise of this year was how much better NBA Live was over previous years titles, but it’s still got a good bit of work to do to challenge the NBA2K series for the crown.   It has some issues, but it’s on it’s way to becoming a very solid title.

NCAA Basketball is one of those titles that is just so very average.  It’s amazing that the College Hoops 2K series ended two years ago, and the EA Sports series still hasn’t caught up.  It screams potential, but just needs a bit more polish.

NBA Live 2K10 was probably their most underwhelming title in recent memory.  2K offered very little in the way of enhancements this year (outside of a new way to create their commentary on the fly,) but it still was a solid enough title to earn….

2009 Basketball Game of the Year – NBA2K10

- Best Golf Game

This category begins and ends with Tiger Woods 10 for the Wii.  One of the first titles to support Wii Motion Plus, it put a great deal more fun back into golf games for any console.  I found myself making the same sort of adjustments that I make when I’m actually playing and seeing the results accurately portrayed on the screen.   As long as you stay away from the online play, you’ll have a great time with this title.

2009 Golf Game of the Year – Tiger Woods 10 (Wii)

- Best Hockey Game

EA Sports has dominated the hockey category for quite some time and this year is no exception, but the surprising thing was the fact was how good NHL2K10 was for the Wii.  The “next generation” versions of the game were very slow in their pacing, but the gameplay on the Wii version felt just right.  The Wii Motion Plus control, which does take a little while to get used to, really made the game a great deal of fun, which is something that I just don’t feel as much with the EA Sports series any more.

Still, the 2K effort wasn’t enough to stop the EA Sports juggernaut.

2009 Hockey Game of the Year – NHL 10

- Best New Feature

The Madden 10 Online Franchise mode was an awesome addition this year.  It’s incredibly easy to set up, you can run your league via a web browser or even an iPhone.  It needs some minor work for next year, but it’s a huge addition to the football game of the year.

- Worst New Feature

Madden again takes the crown for this one for their Fight for the Fumble feature.  I’m playing a football game, not God of War.  Random button mashing when the ball is on the field just doesn’t make any sense.

- 2009 Sports Game of the Year

This is a tough one as there were some great games across the various categories.. but to me it comes down to a football game and a golf game, but in the end, I have to go with the game that I played more than any other… that to me is a great sign of how much I enjoyed the game.

Glen’s 2009 Sports Game of the Year – Madden NFL 10

Let me know what you think of my games of the year.

Two deals that I’ve seen today that are worth mentioning.

- Steam has Torchlight for $4.99.  An absolute steal at that price, considering they are developing a free MMO aspect of the game.  If you like Action RPG’s, it’s a great deal.

- Gamestop has a $20 trade-in on a huge list of titles (some as old as the original Assassin’s Creed.)  The catch is that they have to be applied to one item.  For me, I’m thinking of trading in a few for some Playstation Network or Wii Store cards.

Well it’s that time of year for all the year end kudos..

Best Football Game:
Well, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition here – Black College Football Experience was more of a music game than a football game, which means that we have three EA games to choose from: Madden NFL 10, Madden NFL Arcade and NCAA Football 10.

NCAA Football 10 isn’t a poor game, but it continues to have many issues to impede full enjoyment.

Madden NFL Arcade is fun when enjoyed as a quick one off, but definitely not a long term replayable game.

That leaves Madden NFL 10. The game is much, much improved from previous versions, which makes me wonder why it hasn’t sold as well – perhaps it’s just the economy, but to the bean counters at EA I’m afraid this will say to them “hey, if we just release crap, no one will care and they will buy it anyway – and look at all the money we save.”

However, this year’s model is a lot of fun, the AFL pack was a nice (and cost justified) purchase, and I would easily recommend this game to anyone, either the 360 or the PS3 is a fine choice.

Winner: Madden NFL 10 (PS3 or Xbox 360)

Best Futbol Game:
What I found as amazing and cool is that the biggest seller in EA Sports gaming isn’t Madden, but FIFA. Of course I’m talking worldwide sales, but still, you know I love soccer and this is one of the sports where we have true game competition.

Konami’s PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) is a lot of fun to play. They’ve improved the graphics, the commentary is great, but it still suffers from a lack of licenses. The UEFA champions league is great, and the mod community is still out there, but the game suffers from too much player lock and ‘auto assign the player closest to the ball”. You can turn it off, but the game suffers either way.

New Star Software’s New Star Soccer 4 came out this year and as far as a simulation goes, it’s great. It’s a lot of fun as a role-playing soccer game with some action elements. However, it’s not for everyone, as is Soccer Manager (Football Manager ) 2010.

FIFA Soccer 10 takes the beautiful game to the next level. The LIVE Season is just nothing short of spectacular and every little touch I would expect in a soccer game is there – players calling for the ball, calling for offside, debating with the officials. The game is pretty much near perfect.

Any of these games are fun, but if I had to pick one, I’d pick FIFA 10.

Winner: FIFA Soccer 2010 (Xbox 360)

Best Baseball Game:

The 2K series of games have crashed and burned. When we heard the press conference in early 2009, Glen and I both had a feeling that this game was just not going to be that great and unfortunately our fears were released. Poor doesn’t even begin to describe this game – from the horrible official scorer’s decisions to the poor gameplay, there really isn’t much to enjoy about this game. The PC game could have been a winner here had it made it easier to mod, but for some insane reason it was closed off so unless you want to modify actual system files, you are SOL.

The best 2K games release was The Bigs 2; it is an underappreciated arcade baseball game that is quite enjoyable. However, purists will avoid because of the “big slam” and “big heat” features – both of which I love. 2K did a much better job with the Bigs than they did with the actual MLB game.

With no EA entry and no 3rd party unlicensed game, there was only one other option : Sony’s MLB 09 The Show. Thankfully this game continues to be awesome. There’s not a whole lot here that was new from last year (the instant replay system was cool); but if it isn’t broke, don’t’ fix it.

Winner: MLB 09 The Show (PS3)

Best Basketball Game:

For the first time in a number of years EA put up a better effort than in the past with NBA Live 10. Unfortunately the game still feels like NBA Live and is getting better but isn’t quite there yet.

NBA 2K10 looks great and plays very well. Again, not a lot of updates compared to previous years, but hey at this point I’m glad there is competition!

Winner: NBA 2K10 (PS3)

Best Golf Game:
There was only one major golf release this year : Tiger Woods 10, but there was also another unknown – called Avatar Golf for the Xbox 360 under the Indie Games Channel. Avatar golf used your avatars, and had a few courses and depth. The price/performance value is incredible.

Tiger Woods 10 on the PS3 and 360 were your average, run of the mill, nothing new here golf games. The game on the Wii was phenomenal – using the Wii Motion Plus made the game truly feel like a golf game – this was what the Wii was meant to do and it worked superb.

Winner: Tiger Woods 10 (Wii only); Avatar Golf (360) Overall: Tiger 10 (Wii)

Best Hockey Game:
2009 told us that when there is more competition, gamers win. When there is less competition (EA + NFL, 2K + MLB) gamers lose.

EA released a 3-on-3 hockey game that had it’s moments – I prefer this arcade game to the Madden one.

2K released their annual hockey game as well as EA. On the Wii there was no contest, 2K’s game is a complete and total blast, especially with the motion plus add on.

On the other consoles, NHL 10 is just plain awesome. Regardless of console, you have a good hockey game to play!

Winner: NHL 2K10 (Wii), NHL 10 (360/PS3) Overall : NHL 10 (360)

Best Beat the Crap out of Someone Game:

We had a few choices here, there was EA’s Fight Night Round 4, which was very good but not much different than FN3; there was WWE Smackdown vs Raw which always has it’s moments..however there was one that came out of the gates that I am still playing.

THQ’s UFC Undisputed is easily the best new game I’ve seen in a while – it’s so good and sold so well, EA jumped right on the bandwagon. We’ve seen a few UFC games as long ago as the Dreamcast, but nothing captures the fun, excitement and the beat the crap out of someone mentality as this UFC Game.

Winner: UFC Undisputed (360)

Best Innovative New Feature:
Of everyone I’ve seen, the coolest new feature came in WWE SvR == the ability to create and upload your own story lines for players. You can then download the “entertainment” and continue the story line on your own. I thought this was very cool.

Winner: Smackdown vs Raw

Worst New Feature:
In order to cut down on used game sales, many “features” are now unlockables that you have to purchase used (a code comes with the new purchase of the game for one time use). This in a word sucks.

Best Downloadable Sports Game:

My favorite and most unexpected game is the College Lacrosse game that came out on the Xbox 360.  It sure doesn’t feel like an indie game – instead it feels like a pretty flushed out game of lacrosse. It’s very enjoyable and very inexpensive – you should try it!

Winner: Inside Lacrosse’s CL2010

Those are my awards – what are yours?

Just wanted to take a few moments to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Merry Festivus, and all of the other greetings of the season to our readers.

It’s been a great year for the ol’ blog and I wanted to thank all of you for that.

Dan and I have been working very hard on some new ideas/concepts for the site and we hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we will enjoy doing them.

Again, wishing you the greetings of the season (my new favorite holiday greeting.)

- I’ve never been all that sure of how many hockey fans are out there, but check out this save by Dwayne Roloson earlier this year.  He makes one great save, then a spectacular a few seconds later.  It is a 4 minute video and it really deserves your time to watch it.  Awesome work by Roli, and I’m not just saying that because I’m an Islanders fan.  heh.

- Sports Illustrated ran a great feature the other day on some of the best examples of sportsmanship over the last 10 years.  A great read for those of you with the time.

- For those of you with Netflix accounts, there was a great bit of news that came out the other day.  Criterion has allowed Netflix to stream some of their library via the online movie service.   The Seven Samurai is one of my alltime favorite films and it’s great to see that the films will now be accessible to a lot more people.

- Two really nice sales going on… Steam is the first one that I wanted to mention.  Dan and I have been doing our best to avoid looking at the site, as there are so many games that we could pick up at very low prices.

Also, Gamefly has a great year end sale going on.  With the $5 coupon that I had saved up, I was able to pick up MLB09: The Show for the PS3 for $7.  That’s a great deal.

- I mentioned this to Dan the other day and he laughed it off, but there is a 70 minute review of the Phantom Menace available on Youtube and it is hilarious.

- Lastly, EA is running a deal on their games via Xbox Live.   If you buy any 3 of the items on their list, you get 800 microsoft points for free.  Madden Arcade, NHL 3 on 3, and Fight Night: Round 3 are all part of the deal, so you may want to take a look.

Have you downloaded the latest patch for Madden? Big rumors are all over the place about EA launching an insane ad blitz.

Well I fired up my PS3 version of the game, got the 1.03 patch and after every play I got a “Madden NFL Arcade Available Now” banner.

Then I went to NHL 10 and saw the Madden NFL Arcade on the rider boards. I don’t mind the ads being part of the in game placement where they belong – ad boards in NHL and FIFA for example. Actually I would love it if the FIFA ad boards were those very cool digital ones in the EPL. I’d love to see a ‘working’ digital ad board in an NHL arena.

The Madden ads however, cross the line. I have no problem with the Coke Zero Loser of the Game or the Dodge Ram tough player of the game; but to put up an ad just for the sake of putting up an ad is just plain shitty. In game, realistic environments => good, ads to fill up space = bad.

This is way the NFL exclusive license sucked, and the MLB exclusive (third party) license sucked. It’s all suck all the time and Xbox 360 gamers are the losers here. PS3 has the Show at least. Heck at least All-Pro football has some fun to it .

- Dan gave it a valiant effort, but came up short in his fantasy league game.  So, strangely, I’ve found myself in the championship game of both of the leagues that I’m participating this year.   It’s nice to get lucky like that sometimes.

- Picked up Shadow Complex on Live Arcade today, as it’s dropped to 800 points for the next week, and I’m still sitting on points from last year’s Target coupons.  I just never buy anything on Xbox Live any more.  The arcade games just don’t really grab me all that often, but this one looked intriguing enough to give it a shot.

- My wife got some Wii games via this House Party website… One of them was called Let’s Dance, and while I got the feeling that the detection for the game was not that solid, it was hilarious to watch my girls try and mimic the dances on the screen.  This is a game that is definitely going to make an appearance at the New Years party this year.

- Here are the radio commercials I heard, in order, this morning.  A commercial for an erectile dysfunction drug, a commercial for a strip club, then a commercial for credit card debt relief.

This is what I came up with as a story for that person.  They bought a drug to make sure they weren’t going to go limp, went to the strip club to prove it, and then went broke at the strip club and needed help to pay off the strippers.   Just glad that the advertising people at the station got those commercials all to go in the right order.

- The Packers game tonight was incredibly entertaining.  The Steelers just did enough to win the game and Big Ben threw a sensational ball to win it with the last play of the game.  Winning the game would have been nice, but it was an awesome play.   Still, the Packers playoff seed seems just about settled if they can beat Seattle at home this week.  Also, the Giants losing tomorrow night wouldn’t hurt either.

- Congratulations to the UW-Whitewater Warhawks, who won the Division 3 football championship yesterday.  After the game was delayed for snow cleanup, ESPN moved it from ESPN2 to ESPN Classic, which I do not have on DirecTV, so I had to resort to watching it on Justin.tv, which worked out pretty well.  2 championships in the last 5 years, to go along with 3 runners-up, is a pretty amazing accomplishment.

- The matchup for the Fantasy Football league championship is almost set.  I snuck in tonight after Favre failed to rack up enough points to put the Anderson Ugly’s into the final game.  As for the other game, Dan needs to get 30 points from his wide receivers, which isn’t likely… but you never know what can happen.  It’s been a great league all year long and I want to thank you all for sticking with it.

A few weeks ago I recieved a code to try out Snowboarding TnT (Tilt N’ Twist) for the iPhone.  The game was originally released earlier this year, but has been re-released with the addition of a new course as well as some new music and control enhancements.

The objective of the game is to make it down the course as quickly as possible, all while performing tricks after hitting the jumps that are arranged throughout the course.  You also try to grab stars that give you a score modifier to give you more points for completing one of the 30 tricks that you can accomplish during the game.

As it’s name would suggest, the game is controlled via Tilt sensor control.  For each of the courses, you have the choice of either a male or a female snowboarder, and you steer them down the course by tilting the system to the left or to the right.  The controls themselves are fairly solid, but one of the issues that I ran into with the game was the collision detection with the obstacles.  It wouldn’t happen every time, but every once in a while you would be going down the course and appear to miss a tree, stump, or rock, but it would register a collision and drop your score modifier and slow you down.

The courses themselves become more challenging as you progress through them, but the unfortunate thing is that there are only a few of them.  Within about 15 or 20 minutes, you have all of the courses completed and the game becomes a score challenge.  There really isn’t anything wrong with that, but since there isn’t an online score system, so you’re stuck with trying to set and beat your own scores in the game.

Graphically, the game isn’t going to win any awards, but with the iPhone platform you know about what you can get for a 3D engine.

Currently the game is priced at 99 cents due to it’s re-release and for that price, I think it has a decent value for an iPhone game.

Even with the limitations that I mentioned, I still enjoyed the game, even if only for a little while.  The pursuit of improving your times down each course and improving your scores on each course may be exactly what some people are looking for and if you’re looking for a fun diversion in the holiday season, this might be just for you.

- Not sure the last time this happened, but the Division 3 football championship has been delayed for 5 hours for snow cleanup.  For the life of me, I can’t remember a game being delayed because they couldn’t clear the snow from the field, but there you have it.  UW-Whitewater (Where I matriculated for 1 1/2 years) is in their 5th straight championship game against Mount Union.  Can you imagine the same two teams meeting for the National Title for 5 straight years in ANYTHING?  Crazy.   Hopefully I can watch the game on tape later.

- Not a sports game, but Torchlight is $10 on Steam for the weekend.  They’ve also added Steam Achievements to the game, if you like that sort of thing.  $10 is a steal for that game, considering they’ll be adding the MMO component to it within the next year or so.

- EA Sports seems to be wavering in their support for Tiger Woods.   When you hear a company say “At this time…” that’s not a good sign for your future prospects with that company.  If I had to wager on it, I’d bet that this years title will be called EA Sports PGA Golf 11.   It will feature Tiger in the game, but I would almost guarantee that you won’t see his face on the front of the package this year.

- It’s the last few weeks of the NFL season, so we see the start of Saturday games with the Cowboys and Saints tonight.  There should be a ton of interest in that one, as the ‘boys really need it to stay in the playoff race and the Saints can get to 14-0…  Well worth tuning into.

- Kids note for the day.  They’re downstairs setting up chairs and staging their own ‘Polar Express’ with all of their stuffed animals and blankets.  Too funny.

- Pastapadre was examining the 2K financial reports for next year and found that they d0 not list the NHL2K series for next year.  2K responded back to say that they are examining the future of the series… which doesn’t sound good.

Looks like we could be losing yet another sports game series….

- Dan and I are planning on recording a show tonight… and….may even do it live.  I’ll post the details if we get it all working out well.

- I hate malware.  I’ve spend the last 1 1/2 clearing it off of a PC.  Ugh.

• Today’s Amazon Deal of the Day is Bourne Trilogy Blu-Ray for $49. Use our lovely search box so we can get $.98
• As you are probably aware, it’s Christmas time and since no one knows what to buy for me, I usually buy myself gifts and open them early. I picked up a new Sony Cam HD so I can record the big day, a tripod for it as well. It’s a sweet setup. I also picked up the Logitech Squeezebox radio. For $149, it is a very impressive radio. My router is in my basement and my radio is two floors up and it gets access fine. The sound, which I thought would be asstastic for a one speaker set up, is very, very good – much better than I expected for an internet device. I’m very pleased with it so far.
• With regards to gaming, I do still play games, although not nearly as much as I would like. I tend to buy games more than play them. Yes, I have a horrible addiction.