Tuesday morning notes
- For those of you wondering, I have seen Dan online a bit in the last few days, but he's been pretty busy with work and school work. I'm sure he'll be back to normal soon enough (I'm sure you're all anxious for that.)
- It's amazing to see a football game like we did last night. When the refs decide to call it tight... they really come through. 300 yards of penalties. Ugh. I wouldn't say that they really favored either team, they just called everything that was close and neither team really adjusted well.
Still, glad to see the Packers go to 8-4, which wouldn't have seemed possible after losing to Tampa Bay. The division is still out of the question, but the defense (save for Tramon Williams) played a terrific game. The 1st half against the Ravens was something to behold. They made Ray Rice look like an average back and that's pretty damn impressive.
- A day after I say that I'm pretty good on games... I picked up MLB 09: The Show for the PSP for $7.48 at Target. I haven't had a version of that game on the PSP since the first one, so I'm curious to see how well it plays.
- The Brewers seem to be pretty damn active. Looks like they're pushing pretty hard for Randy Wolf, are trying to trade Corey Hart, and have been mentioned in a few other deals as well. It's great to see them trying to make some changes... now fans, like myself, just have to hope that they pay off.
Monday morning apology
- A few weeks back I compared tw0 college football players thinking that one shouldn't have been mentioned for the Heisman trophy over another player with similar statistics.... Wow was I wrong. I have to admit it. Ndumakong Suh is an absolute beast on the defensive line and is the most impressive college football that I saw this year. The game he played on Saturday night was nothing short of amazing.
I'm not the smartest man, but I know when to admit when I was wrong, and boy was I in this case.
Sunday night notes
- Nice weekend with the family. Had a great time at the bowling alley and my daughter loved the whole day. Quite an affordable birthday party and all of the kids had a terrific time. Now I just have to figure out what to do for our youngest in March...
- Thank you very much Best Buy. I was able to trade in the free copy of Uncharted 2 that I got with my new TV for Assassin's Creed 2 tonight. Nice deal there.
- Also picked up the God of War collection with some Gift Cards that I had at Gamestop. I'm pretty much all set on games for a while now. Gamefly will have me taken care of for the near future.
- One game deal that I was going to mention was that Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is $19.99 this week at Best Buy, but if you are a member of the Reward Zone, you can pick up a $10 coupon for the title starting tomorrow and pick it up for 10 bones. That's a great deal for some of those songs. Pantera and Anthrax? Yes, please.
- Not much time for gaming this weekend, but I hope to take care of that tomorrow.
- Great weekend for Wisconsin sports. Hockey team crushes Michigan Tech (8-2 Friday night, 6-0 Saturday night.) Lots of free ice cream in Madison this week. Football team rolls over Hawaii 51-10, and the Basketball team avoids any hangover from the Duke win and beats Grambling State by 33.
The football team is headed to the Champs Bowl against Miami. Which is a good thing as they haven't played the Hurricanes in forever. Outback Bowl would have been awesome, but this looks like a great bowl for this team.
- I have a few games (that I mentioned on Friday) to talk about a bit more tomorrow, so I'll leave you with that teaser. heh.
- Have a great week everyone.
Fight Night: Round 4
Fight Night: Round 4 is on sale for $19.99 at Best Buy this week. A very nice deal for a great boxing game.
In other news for Fight Night, EA had to pull their most recent DLC for the game as it was causing freezing issues for the 360. They're hoping to have that fixed before Christmas.
Madden Patch out for PS3s, Xbox 360 not so much
If you have a PS3, you can brag that you’re getting the Madden update first.
It’s not yet on the 360s, due to some sort of certification issue.
What the patch contains (stolen from Kotaku):
- • Improvements in covering of the flats
• Improved pursuit angles
• CPU takes sacks more often instead of the last second throws while getting hit
• Worked on eliminating various exploits such as with the RB Direct Snap
• Fixing of problems caused by first patch such as black squares for numbers on some helmets
• Addition of Seahawks alternate uniforms
• Tribute sticker for Steve McNair added to Titans helmets
• Tribute sticker for Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson added to Eagles helmets
• Doubled the length of replays
• Increased frequency of auto-replays especially after touchdowns
• Reduced the number of times the chain-gang measurement scene occurs
• Extended time in post-play to allow those scenes to fully play out
• Stats tuned for franchise mode
• Decreased chances of injury for players with high injury ratings
• Included each player's draft info to be viewable in franchise
Friday night notes
- Man... what a week. TV breaks on Monday. Tons of things go wrong at work and then at the end of the day on Friday... I get a flat tire. Ever change a flat in 15 degree weather? It isn't much fun. Oh, well.
- I had a chance to play a bit more Madden NFL Arcade the other night and it's a decent arcade football game. Although, it really needs other people to make it interesting. The CPU doesn't really play a great game, so another person locally or via multiplayer would really make it a better game. Also, there is no single player season mode, which just seems odd to neglect. Oh, well. Fun enough, but worth $15... hard to say.
- Another sports game that I'm going to be taking a look at this weekend is Snowboarding TiltnTwist for the iPhone. It's priced at 99 cents for it's re-release, so I'll give it a go over the weekend and let you know what I think of it, for you iPhone/iPod Touch users.
- Last night I played a good deal of Borderlands with a friend and got my Soldier from level 13 to level 20. The game is just so much fun, just for the loot grab aspect. If anyone has it for the PS3, just let me know and I'll add you to my friends list to play a bit in the next few weeks. I can't picture that I'll be quitting this game any time soon.
- Oh, and my PS3 sold today. Sorry to those of you that were interested.
- I have my daughters 5th birthday party tomorrow, so I'll be pretty busy... but I'll try to get some posting in over the weekend.
Upcoming site maintenance
I'll be moving the site to a new server over the next week or so, so if you have any major issues, please let us know via my email address.
I'll probably start work on it tomorrow, but I won't do the move until sometime next week. (I think.)
There shouldn't be much in the way of changes, but there will be some changes in the future, but that's for another post. Heh.
Wednesday night notes
Ok, now that the Badger game is done....
- I forgot to mention it, but I actually got a PS3 with my new TV purchase the other day. Sony is giving a PS3, a new game (Uncharted 2... which I already have... so I have to trade for something else at Best Buy,) and a new Blu-Ray movie (Picked Pelham 1-2-3... it was the best choice... by far.)
I have a friend interested in buying the PS3 for $200, as I already have 2. That would be a nice way to offset some of the TV cost.
- I hate working on printers. Spent about 3 hours on one today at work... and still didn't have it done by the time it was all said and done. Grrrr.
- Got Madden NFL Arcade earlier in the week. Anyone else playing this? The demo was interesting enough, but was curious as to what people thought of the full version. Let me know if you'd like to try and play some online for it.
Wow
Talk about a huge win for the Wisconsin basketball program. They played a sensational game against the #5 team in the country and beat Duke tonight by 4.
Here are some of the most impressive things that I got from the game.
- Duke had not trailed in any game this year. They didn't have a lead at ANY point during this game. That's outstanding defense.
- Every time that the Badgers needed a basket, they got it. Trevon Hughes came up HUGE in this game. Outstanding gameplay.
- Ryan Evans looks like he could be the next very special player for the Badgers. Played great defense down the stretch and forced some bad shots from Duke.
- Bo Ryan will ramble any time a person puts a camera in front of his face. His interviews with Holly Rowe were too funny. The guy has such a dry sense of humor, it's entertaining.
- Just Wow. What a great win for the Badger program. For a team that didn't even get a vote in the pre-season top 25 polls, this team came out huge today and played a great game. Can't say enough about that effort tonight.
Late Tuesday Night Notes
- So, here's what's been happening for me this week. Last night my wife calls me around 5:00 to tell me that our 5 year old Samsung DLP is now making an incredibly loud buzzing noise. (actually it sounds like a grinding... I have no idea what part has failed, but I've read everything from the color wheel to some pretty big price parts.)
All of that lead me to picking up a new TV last night. I ended up picking up a Sony 46" LCD and really like it. It's one of the internet-enabled Bravia models, so I have yet another way to watch movies via Netflix.
The picture quality has been very crisp and I spent some time gaming on it tonight and really like the picture quality.
- On to gaming, I've been playing a good bit of Borderlands and tonight I hit my first real annoyance with the game. I'm in the midst of one mission where I am in a building. Well, I got to the boss at the end of the mission and ended up dying all while using up my best ammo. My only option? I had to quit the game so that it would take me away from my checkpoint so I could get more ammo. Of course I tried to beat the boss about 4 or 5 times, wasting half of my cash doing so.
That annoyed the hell out of me. I promptly quit playing after that. Just pissed me off. Add that to the fact that enemies kept re-spawning in areas that I had already cleared, sometimes right on top of my character (which is ALWAYS fun) and I found myself frustrated enough to want to quit the game for a while. How long is a while? Probably just a night, but when I had been enjoying almost every minute of the game... it was quite jarring to hit an issue like that.
- Other than those two things... same old....
- Anxious to see the Badgers take on Duke tomorrow night, even though Duke will probably run away with the game. It's just great to see a huge program come into the Kohl Center. The place should be jumping and it'll be worth your time to take a look at it.
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