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

Tuesday notes

- Well, Nintendo sure does make a lot of people say... "Huh?" after their conferences.

I have no idea how good the Wii U controller will be because I haven't really seen how well it can be used for actual games.

I saw a tweet from Patrick Hruby yesterday wondering how good the controller could be for sports games.  Honestly, the only thing I could think of was to be able to use the Wii U controller as a 'psuedo-GPS/binoculars' for a golf game where you could point it at the screen and get a view of the green to line up your next shot.  Maybe in a football game it could function as your coaching interface, like we had on the VMU back with NFL2K.   It's possible that you could handle defensive shifts for your fielders in a baseball game via the touch screen as well.  You could use it for all sorts of pitching statistics in a baseball game (Inside Edge type data) as well.   Beyond those type of applications though, it seems like it would have very limited options in sports games.

Having said all that, some of the demos did seem interesting.  Since we have a year until the release though, I think we'll have more than enough time to hear about how developers are going to push the device and see if it's actually worth our time and money.

- Want to hear the most disturbing thing about E3? NCAA Football 12 isn't being shown at the EA booth.  When the game has 1 month before release and almost certainly has to be hitting gold status in the next few days, and you're not showing it to the general public... you're going to have some pretty spooked fans.

I'd love to hear an explanation for this one.

- My daughter's graduation ceremony went off without a hitch, but the thing that was the most disturbing to me was seeing the sign that said 'Class of 2023.'  Man, if there is something that makes you feel old.. it's seeing things like that.

- As Dan said, the ability to see videos of the upcoming 3DS games on your system is quite nice.  Hopefully they'll push new videos at somewhat regular intervals.

Along with those I tried out Excitebike 3D and I'll give you the IGN review.  If you like free games and liked the original Excitebike, I'd grab Excitebike 3D.   For some reason, I thought they were adding something other than 3D to the gameplay... but it's just the old Excitebike.  Still, it's free, so if you have a 3DS, be sure to grab it.

- Glad to see Capuano pitch well last night for the Mets, but it's too bad that the Brewers pen had to blow the game after Prince hit his 15th in the 6th inning to take the lead.

As I said in the comments section, the Brewers still have the 3rd best record in the NL, so they just need to keep pitching as they have and the hitting should be good enough to get them their fair share of wins.

Also, I didn't wear a Brewers t-shirt last night.  So, the loss should be entirely blamed on me.

- Since I was in my rehab chair after the Brewer game, I had a chance to watch the 4th quarter of the NBA finals again.

I know that Lebron is a terrific talent, but I can't recall seeing a situation where a guy like that didn't want the ball in his hands to take a shot when it really mattered in a game.  He passed up so many shots in the 4th quarter that it was almost laughable.   Dirk looked like death and still managed to take the ball into his hands to control his teams fate but Lebron just faded into the background every time that the Heat needed a big shot, while Dwayne Wade continued to look like the stud for Miami.  That was astounding to me.

Even with the win tonight, it seems like the Heat have a pretty advantage in the series.  Having the last two games at home, even if you're trailing, is a big deal.  I'm still pulling for the Mavs, but things look good for Miami.

- Lastly, Craig sent me a video link of a hit that Tim Thomas put on Henrik Sedin in the last game.

Being a goalie, I really disliked what he did.  My main reason for feeling that way is the fact that, as a goalie, you can't be hit by other players without them taking a penalty.  To be fair then, you shouldn't be able to hit other players either.

There is something to be said for playing the puck and defending your space, but he was doing neither of those.  The player no longer had the puck and he just hit him to hit him.  He wasn't playing as a goalie anymore, he was just a hockey player trying to hit a guy coming near the goal.

What he did wasn't a penalty, but it certainly wasn't something that I, as a (incredibly low level) goalie, would every think of doing to another player.

Hopefully Game 4 tonight will be a clean affair, but I really doubt that based on what we've seen in the first 3 games.