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

Friday morning notes

- After a conversation with my wife last night, we realized that we will be finishing paying her student loan off by the end of the year.   Add that to a soon to be completed car payment and that clears us $500 a month.  Woo.  More gaming for Glen.

- The Wisconsin/Purdue game last night was a terrific battle and should be an effort that Badger basketball fans be proud of.  Seeing the Badgers go into Purdue, without their 2nd leading scorer, and have a chance to take the game winning shot, was impressive to watch.  They did come up short (even though the refs missed a foul call on an attempted 3 pointer with 6 seconds to go,) but still it was a remarkable sign of the character of the team.  I would have loved to have seen them win that game, but I'm still impressed by what they did last night.

- Early weather forcasts for the Camp Randall Hockey Classic next weekend call for 32 degrees and snow.  Now that's the kind of weather I want to see for an outdoor hockey game.  My wife and I also got tickets to go skate on the ice the night before the game with our daughters.  We're not taking the girls to the game (no way I would subject them to 5 hours of hockey in freezing temperatures,) but I think it'll be great to see how excited they will be to be on the ice the night before.

- I spent a bit more time with Mass Effect 2 last night and I'm liking what I've seen thus far.  Probably the nicest change that I've seen thus far is the removal of the elevator loading sequences.  They were such a drag in the first game and it's great to see them removed for a, somewhat standard, loading screen.   There have been a a few enhancements to the Paragon system where you can choose to do nice (or evil) things by just pressing down the left or right trigger as you are prompted to do so, and while I've only completed a few of the "good" ones... I've been very tempted by the "bad" ones and have been curious to see where it would have taken my character.    Just curious, how often when you play those sorts of games do you take the 'evil' route?  To date, I've never done that.  I don't know why, but the good route always just seems like the right way to go for my characters.

- It's not very often that Sports Illustrated posts a large article about hockey, but the current issue has a great article about the Lamoureux family and the issues that they've gone through raising 6 children who have all gone on to play college hockey.

Having 2 girls that are starting to show some interest in hockey already frightens me to know what sort of effort it is, just as a parent, to be a "hockey dad."  To read the details of how hard these parents worked, and how hard the kids worked, is an incredible story.

- We also got a press release from EA Sports indicating that they are bringing FIFA PC Online to Europe and the U.S. over the next year.  Can't complain about free sports games, right?