Happy day before Thanksgiving. I spent it at the mall, trying to get my last minute shopping in before the cluster hits on Friday. LOL.
Meanwhile, I played some NHL 09 and remember when I said it was good? It still is good, but it seems to play rather slow to me…slower than I recall in fact. I was actually kinda bummed.
I am really liking Banjo Kazooie, although it’s not sports related. 
I taped a Colbert Christmas last night and just watched it now…WOW it is hysterically funny. Uh-oh, Mistletoe…this is awkward…
The music is great, and it’s now available on iTunes Plus for $7.99…time to use up my gift card leftovers for that. I think Feist could read the dictionary and make it sound good….
- Thank goodness I’m working tonight (not like that’s an enjoyable thing,) but at least I’m not watching the Packers game. What a terrible effort. Looks like the playoff picture in the NFC North just cleared up a bit tonight.
I forgot, this game is offline now, is that correct?
My son and I played it this evening and wow, I forgot how good this game is. We were losing 20-10 to the Jets (as the Pats) with 2:00 left and came back to go to OT and win on an FG.
The whole presentation is just great. While we can continue to lament, I can go back to All Pro and enjoy that — knowing that 2K got hosed by the NFLPA and EA, I guess.
- Still playing a lot of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff and am nearly done with my first season. I’m still holding off on commenting on things until I have that first season done. There are a few things that are annoyances to me, as a Tecmo fan, but I think the game is very solid.
- Wisconsin beat Cal Poly in overtime on Saturday to get to 7 wins on the season. When you need OT, and 3 missed extra points, to beat a Division 2 school (albeit the #3 ranked D2 school) your program isn’t playing at it’s highest level. I can’t believe this team was ranked in the top 10 at the beginning of the year.
- The UW basketball team is in the championship of the Paradise Jam tournament tonight… against UCONN. I’m debating buying the Sports pack on DirecTV to watch it… even though it’s on at the same time as the Packer game tonight. I just hope this one doesn’t turn out like the game that the Badgers played against Duke last year when they were run out of the building.
- Seeing as how I was looking to start up a new game, I started on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune last night and I enjoyed it a great deal. The gameplay is very solid and the story and voice acting are surprisingly good. It’s the first game in a while where I’m really looking forward to getting back into it again, just to see how the story continues to unfold.
Today’s Amazon Deal of the Day is for Midnight Club Los Angeles for the Xbox 360 (only) for $39.99.
Great Deal. Use our Amazon box on the right to order and give us $1.25 or something.
Happy Sunday to everyone.
Wow this Miami/NE game is like a game of Madden, non stop scoring.
This weekend I’ve been playing clean up my desk/office. God I have way too much crap around here. Here’s a quick gaming round up:
So, it’s a pretty good weekend of gaming.
- I got my copy of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff today and am 5 games into it and have some impressions, but I’ll post them in a seperate post tomorrow. I could do the IGN “If you like Tecmo Bowl…” but there is more to it than that.
- I saw this story on a few different sites, but I figured I’d link it here as there are some racing geeks amongst us. Gran Turismo 5 running in 3840 by 2160… at 240 Frames per second… that’s pretty amazing.
- To help hit the Amazon Super Saver shipping amount, I picked up Steve Martin’s newest book in paperback. It’s his story of his time as a stand up performer, and it’s pretty impressive thus far. I’d recommend it.
- Today is the 10th anniversary of the release of Half Life. As a result, Steam is selling the game for 98 cents. Well worth it. I love that game.
I’m kind if in a bit of gaming confusion at the moment. After finishing up Fable II, I’m kind of stuck on what game I should start up next.
I played a bit of Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour tonight, but neither of them felt like what I really wanted to play. (Although Tangled up in Blue is such a great song, I couldn’t pass up a chance to play that.)
So, I’m debating trying to play through Gears of War, as I only got through Act 3 my first time out. It’s either going to be that or getting back into NFL Head Coach or NHL 09. Decisions, decisions…
- Can’t believe that I didn’t comment on the Packers/Bears game… but there really wasn’t too much to say. I watched the game with a Bears fan and it was just plain painful. I’ve not seen the Packers handle a team like that in years… I’m just shocked that it was Chicago that they did it to.
- Dan and I are still working on a podcast schedule. I’m amazed that we were able to get so many in, early in the year. The weeks just fly by now with our new jobs.
Okay, you might think this is silly, but you have to give it a shot when the makers of Golden Tee Golf create a new Wii Ware game that has the strategy of curling with the mechanics of horseshoes but with Bean Bags…
Hence the release of Target Toss Pro: Bags…it’s only $7 and it is just a tad too addictive for me. Who thought that throwing bean bags in the wind would be so much fun.
While they have a lot of multiplayer modes, they are all hot seat…if this game had online, I would be really telling you to pick it up…the single player experience isn’t as addictive despite the gameplay…
For those that didn’t know, Netflix has a great blog and their most recent post talks about the encoding for Watch Instantly. It’s very interesting and explains why you can watch a movie in HD but not in 5.1 audio; and how close they are to matching a blu ray disc in streaming. Check it out here.
In gaming news, the best thing about NXE is the HD installs that eliminate all that spinning when play by play commentary is being done — it’s quite nice when you play FIFA with one of the downloaded commentary packs — although we all hate the proprietary hard drive, it is very quiet.
What’s the deal with Jamie Lynn (Meadow from the Sopranos)? She’s giving Turtle some pleasure in Entourage, then she shows up on How I Met Your Mother as a "woo" girl. Hey, not that I mind seeing her in Hi-Def, but it sure is looking like someone needs some work…
I bought the new Wii Animal Crossing game for my daughter with Wii Speak — boy that whole "download ticket" thing sucks. Basically it prohibits you from using the Wii Speak on a 2nd Wii or selling it. Doesn’t Nintendo have enough of my money? Oh and my goodness, could they have really put any effort into the new Animal Crossing game? Not much of a diff between putting in the Wii version of the game and the GameCube version — except you can talk and point and stuff. Gah!
Meanwhile my son loves the Family Game Night game on the Wii and Secret Service for the Xbox 360.
At least the game buying will stop until next year as the rest of the year is just ho-hum.
Posting on a Monday morning? I know I’m as shocked as you… but I had a minute and figured I would post a few quick updates.
- Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff comes out tomorrow. I’m totally geeked up about this. I’m not sure how many of you will be picking up a DS sports game, but if you do grab it email me your info so we can try to play a game or 10 online.
- I finished up Fable 2 over the weekend. When I started playing the game, I really enjoyed the story and the gameplay… but after a while, it became one of those games where I just wanted to be done with it. The main storyline took me about 10 hours, with a few mini-quests on the way… so the game isn’t all that lengthy, but there were a few issues that I wanted to comment on.
First off, there are some bugs.
I got married along the way in the game and my wife was in the first city that you encounter in the game. Then, one of the missions in the story line talks about how you need to go to this one city that is incredibly difficult to get to… and I had to run through hordes of monsters to get this portal open to get there. Once I arrived, who was there? My wife. Really? She just happened to get there? Must have had relatives there or something… of course, I have no idea what she did with our son while she went on this journey… just odd.
The primary issue that I had with the game though is the fact that there really is no penalty for dying. If you run out of potions, you die in a battle… and are then resurrected with an experience point loss. The funny thing is, I have no idea how experience points are used in the game. You don’t really “level up” in the game.. so it’s just odd.
Oh, well. I had a pretty good time with the game… and I can go back to get more of the achievements, but meh… I’ll pass for now.
- Also played through the demo of Left 4 Dead on the PC. I tried it on the 360 but didn’t care for the controls. I have no idea how people would be compelled to play this title for longer than a few hours. Seems like it would get pretty boring… but mabye there are things to spice it up later.
More later….
Thanks to lots of RewardZone coupons, I picked up GH On Tour for the DS, MK vs DC for the 360, Secret Service for the 360, Big League Sports for the Wii, and the Wii Animal Crossing/Wii Speak pack.
Chances are I will play none by Xmas.
Just kidding. Secret Service is a bargain bin ($40), First Person Shooter. GH On Tour is like the other GH.
The sleper is Big League Sports — don’t get me wrong, it’s not to be taken like any regular sports game — you have six sports to choose from and basically 3-4 games within this six sports. If you ever played Sports Jam on the Dreamcast, it’s somewhat familar except there are more mini games within the sports. My 7 year old was disappointed he couldn’t play real tennis, instead you could play tennis pinball (which is insanely fun), milk bottle tennis, and so forth…you can figure out where they are going — but the basketball slam dunk competition has its moments.
So there you go.
I’m just about to sit down to start watching the Badgers/Gophers football game, so I figured I would make a post before I did.
- Along with Dan, I was added to the NXE list yesterday and I like the new interface, but it’s not revolutionary by any means. The Avatar feature is pretty limited when compared to the Mii creation process. My daughters don’t think my avatar looks like me at all, so I have to take their word for that.
I’ve spent the rest of my time in the NXE testing out the install feature and Netflix streaming.
The installs take about 15 minutes per disk, as far as what I’ve seen… but I haven’t putzed with the games too much yet as I’ve spent most of my time installing my most currently used games.
Oh, if you’re interested to see an early look at how much space each game takes on the hard drive, there is a list compiled at Cheap Ass Gamer, of all places.
The Netflix streaming is very nice…. but here’s my complaint. You have no Netflix interface on your console. You have to use your PC to add shows to your Instant Queue to be able to watch them on your 360. I’m just perplexed as to why you can’t just access what’s available from the 360. Just annoying, but not a huge problem.
Also, the HD content is pretty limited at this point. Documentaries, a few TV shows, and a lot of B-Movies. I’m sure they’ll keep adding to that though.
- As Dan mentioned, we’re planning on doing a podcast again soon. With his promotion and all of the work I’ve had to pick up… life has been pretty complicated of late. Hopefully we can settle back into a routine with the show again though.
Ok… back to football. More later.
Well I was one of the lucky ones to get NXE early, and I am very impressed. The avatar creation was boring as most are (you can see my ‘gamer photo’ on my gamercard which is my avatar).
However, I love the Netflix streaming. You can stream in HD as well! This is the best thing since sliced bread.
I’m trying my first game install now — using a recent one — I’m trying to install Quantum of Solace — I knew that having a 120GB drive would be useful eventually!
Glen and I are trying to come up with a new podcast — things have been insanely busy and we haven’t been able to get the quality of guests that we have in the past - so right now you’ll just have to hear us yap. Yuck!
Wii Friend Code:
6159 3547 6488 9681
Glen:
Wii Friend Code:
8999 0845 9873 4438
Mario Kart Wii Code:
1633-4596-6492
