The Nut and the Feisty Weasel

No High Scores

2011-02-14T09:21:00.003-05:00

Well, we're finally up and running, somewhat.

Still a few kinks to work out but the new blog, with the four JTS members plus Barnes is now live and ready for your perusal.

Hopefully we can bring our different gaming background together to provide you guys with something a little different. Making a new blog worth reading isn't easy but with Todd on board it'll be gravy!

So check out the site, register and comment and we hope you stick around.

Just What in the Hell is Going On Here?

2011-02-04T09:16:00.003-05:00

Blame Brandon.

Ok I realize that we have stopped updating the blog.

Seriously -- blame Brandon.

Ok...don't blame him. We should have been a bit more up front about our plans but truth be told we weren't entirely certain what we wanted to do.

Let me explain.

All three of us write for GameShark and partake in the now surprisingly popular Jumping the Shark podcast. We have a devoted following after 50+ episodes.

Nutweasel was always a way for Todd and I to vent a little, talk sports games, boardgames, and generally goof off. I have known Todd for nearly 15 years and consider him a great, great friend so writing with him has always been a joy for me, even though I constantly give him shit for pretty much everything he does. It's just what I do.

Gameshark is my job, and as a contractor for Mad Catz I am somewhat limited in what I can do there from a site design standpoint (don't get me started) and from an editorial standpoint. The blog was a way for me to just be me.

Todd and I maintained the blog for a long time (see the archive) and discovered a pretty solid following...for two doofuses who blathered about nothing in particular. Although the traffic soared every year when NCAA and Madden shipped.

Then came Brandon. Brandon has somehow ended up being one my closest friends, which either says a lot about what a great person he is -- or my choice of friends. I'm undecided as to which.

Brandon is also a great writer, but adding the third man didn't mesh well with Nutweasel. I mean what do we start calling the site? The Nut, the Feisty Weasel and the Transformers Geek?

Doesn't roll off the tongue does it?

So we hatched a plan that involved lassoing in another Jumping the Shark alum, the brilliant Danielle Riendeau, and another writing machine in boardgame/videogame savant Michael Barnes to form a daily gaming blog where we could all do our thing and provide various takes on gaming subjects from all angles.

All five of us come from different backgrounds (Todd and I being the most similar) and what makes the podcast so special (to us at least) will hopefully translate to this new site.

The new blog, which I will publicly announce on next week's podcast, will go live on Feb. 14th (Monday) and I will provide the links at that time. The blog will be a bit more professionally organized with many, many more updates than what Todd and I were able to do here -- even when we were updating as often as we could.

It should be a hell of a lot of fun and another way for all of us to just write about games -- be they PC, console, hand held, or cardboard. From news posts, trailers, game diaries, Brandon's Pokemon obsession dairy, Danielle will talk about the game design class she teaches, Barnes will write a thesis on Ameritrash and Eurogames, and Todd will...well we aren't sure yet but I'm sure it'll be awesome! (see what I mean, I can't help myself)

Basically if it interests us, we'll talk, about it.

So that's what's going on.

I'm sorry to have abandoned the site here for so long, but like I said--

It's always better -- and easier -- to just blame Brandon.

I Won't Be Eaten By Atlanta Zombies Either

2010-11-19T15:06:00.002-05:00

My last post was about how I'm smarter than your average Norwegian vacationer and as such, would not be falling prey to Zombie Nazis any time soon. Now that the Walking Dead is burning up the air waves, I find it necessary to quiet the raging concern that I might be eaten by Atlanta zombies when shit goes down. After all, I live about 30 minutes north of Atlanta and that's where the Walking Dead takes place, so put two and two together and you have reason to be concerned.

1. Location, Location, Location

There are a fair number of housing developments in the suburban towns surrounding Atlanta that are built right next to churches. More importantly, they're built right next to cemeteries. As with any major, metropolitan area, sprawl can be a problem and often times new shit gets built next to the old shit. Around Atlanta, many times the old shit is either a church, a trailer park, or a church trailer park. Many times there's a cemetery there too. Usually more with the churches than with the trailer parks, but I wouldn't be surprised. Many the times have we driven past these new housing developments and I say to my wife that there is no way in hell I would live to such places as when the zombie outbreak occurs, those people in the housing developments are the appetizers. I ain't about to get munched on by no zombie just because I wanted a swim and tennis community. Fuck that. I don't even play tennis.

2. Life in the Country

My county is pretty dang rural. In fact, not five minutes from me it turns into horse country and while horses have shown to be tasty snacks for rampaging zombies, they tend to live in areas that aren't very population rich. I'm not saying I live out in the boonies or anything, there is a SuperTarget about ten minutes from my house, but we don't have a lot of zombie rich environments: namely cemeteries and hospitals. All I'm saying is that when the zombie outbreak starts, I'll have plenty of notice before I start seeing walkers roaming up my driveway.

3. I Know All About Headshots

In trying to paint a realistic rather than campy image of a zombie outbreak the Walking Dead appears to take place in a universe that doesn't have fictionalized zombie outbreaks. I bet that for the majority of people reading this site, if I were to ask you how you kill a zombie, the answer would come out immediately: destroy the brain. The folks in Walking Dead don't seem to know this which I find odd. This seems to happen a lot with supernatural themed media. In vampire and werewolf movies, the only person who seems to know how to dispatch the beasty is some grizzled dude who has been hunting them his whole life. The rest of the people in the movie are all like "Really, turns into a wolf? That's so weird!" Supernatural seems to be the only show that tries to place itself in our universe, a universe that is steeped in monster fiction. I think it's part of why the show succeeds so well, as they can use the fictionalized aspect of monsters, silly tropes and all, to play with their version of monsters. But I digress. Bottom line is that I know how to fuck a zombie up and I ain't about to waste time while doing it.

4. Slow Jams

The one thing I have learned about Atlanta residents in my five years here is that they can not, to a person, drive to save their fucking lives. Traffic here is horrible, many times because Atlanta drivers become functionally retarded upon getting behind the wheel. I have hit traffic jams, like ground to a halt traffic jams, at the strangest of times. When Rick moseyed up into Atlanta (and yes, they actually filmed in Atlanta), and there were zero cars on the highway into the city, motherfucker should have known that the city was not where he wanted to be. If I'm heading into Atlanta and I'm not stuck behind some asshat who can't be bothered to put down his phone long enough to use his blinker, I know something's up and I'm turning around and going the other way.

5. OTP, Yeah You Know Me

In Atlanta, there are two types of people: people who live ITP, or Inside the Perimeter and people who live OTP, or Outside the Perimeter. In this case, the Perimeter is I-285, the freeway that encircles Atlanta proper. I live and work OTP and have very little reason to ever go ITP, except for the occasional rock show or cultural event. ITP folks and OTP folks usually don't hang together as it takes about three hours to go from one to the other. Plus, there are so many towns OTP that you don't have to go ITP for really anything, except the occasional rock show or cultural event. If a zombie outbreak were to happen here, you wouldn't catch me going ITP for shit, not even if I thought there were a refugee camp. Plus, CDC ain't even downtown so it's not like that's going to help. I'm sticking OTP where there's fewer people and more SuperTargets. I bet the toy looting will be epic.

So don't worry, gentle readers, I don't plan on being eaten by zombies of any stripe any time soon. Murdered by rampaging hordes of GI Joe toy looters in an abandoned SuperTarget? That seems more likely.

Why I Will Not Be Eaten By Zombie Nazis

2010-10-19T09:17:00.003-04:00

Or Nazi zombies for that matter. I never know how to phrase that. Nazi zombies make it sound like someone rose from the grave and then joined the Nazi party whereas zombie Nazis connotes Nazi who became zombies. Either way, I shall not die at the hand, or teeth of such undead fiends, and here's why.

This is all coming from my recent viewing of "Dead Snow" a Norwegian horror film that pits a group of monumentally stupid Norwegian people against hordes of undead Nazis. As a horror movie it was "eh". It wasn't ever all that scary, something I think is fairly important to the genre. It was more of the dumb, gory kind of horror a la "Evil Dead 2" and less of the "Sweet Jesus I just pissed myself" kind of horror as in "The Descent" or "Beaches" so as long as you know that going in to it, you'll do fine.

As a zombie film it wasn't bad. Nazis are always good villains because everyone hates them, including Nazis themselves. Turning the Nazis into zombies gives us even more reason to hate them and for those that lived during WWII, I'm sure there were times that the Germans seemed like an unstoppable force of evil, imagery always associated with zombies. At the same time, anyone who lived through WWII probably isn't spending their time watching "Dead Snow" so instead we have to just be happy with two great evils that taste great together. I will say that the movie kind of fudges a bit with the whole zombie lore. Not in a "28 Days Later" or Left 4 Dead way where the zombies are infected people but more of a "I'm not really sure these are zombies" kind of way. Clearly they looked dead but they also bled, steam came out of their mouths during the snowy bits (probably just as much due to low budget film making than an outright creative decision) and you could dispatch them without busting up Ye Olde Braine Pan. The end result was that they seemed like Nazis who just never died, rather than the undead, an unimportant distinction when being munched on by one of them but I felt it needed to be made.

Regardless, based on what I've seen in "Dead Snow", here's why I won't have undead Nazis wearing my guts for garters any time soon.

I Do Not Hang Out With White People Who Have Dreadlocks

Do you know a white person with dreadlocks? That person makes poor decisions. They are a bad decision maker and if you are in a situation that you feel will result in your safety being threatened, you can write that person off for helping you in said situation. If they feel that dreadlocks look good on them, or any white person, they are dumb. That's it. There was a white woman in the movie who had dreadlocks and the minute I saw her I thought "Oh, you're the dumb one" and she was. In fact, she was so dumb that she ended up paying for her stupidity with her life. Upon successfully escaping from the zombie Nazis she returned to the cabin where her boyfriend and his friend were fighting the undead legions. Her boyfriend was in the midst of a murderous rage, wildly hacking apart a Nazi's head with a hatchet. Rather than hanging back a safe distance and letting him finish his grim task, and then calling out his name to get his attention, she decided instead to walk up and grab his shoulder. He promptly turned around and buried the hatchet in her neck. See? Dumb. As she died he watched her pass, no doubt trying to find the words to say "You always looked stupid in those dreadlocks."

I Do Not Camp

I do not camp. Not ever. I abhor camping. This strategy would have saved the lives of multiple people in this movie. If you and I are going on a vacation and we stop the car on some remote road and then you tell me that our eventual destination is at the end of a 45 minute walk through the woods, I will punch you, take the keys and leave you to be consumed by the shambling hordes. If I have to walk 45 minutes through the woods to get where we are staying, it's a pretty safe assumption that this place doesn't have a) power, b) running water and c) cable. I am not a Neanderthal. I am not a bear. I am not a cougar or a hedgehog or a coral snake. I am a civilized human being and I will not spit on the advances made by our ancestors and shun the comforts that they worked so hard for. If the zombies attack me while I'm staying at the Holiday Inn then so be it, but I'm not about to tempt fate by staying in some remote cabin far away from a Coldstone or a Target. I mean, come on. Similarly, if I know that the mountains are haunted, I'm certainly not going to pitch a tent in said mountains. I'm not even going to pitch a tent in my own backyard. If my kids want to camp they're on their own. I hope they remember to bring shotguns.

My Zombie Repellent is Semi-Automatic

Everyone knows that a shotgun is the best form of zombie repellent. Everyone. Shotguns have a wide spread, ensuring total cranial decimation and they have excellent stopping power. Everyone should know that your shotgun has to be semi-automatic or you might as well have a puppy in your hand for all the good it will do you. In the movie, our hapless vacationers are visited by Scary Old Dude who then tells them that there's Nazi's in them thar hills. He then proceeds to camp in them thar hills and when he hears mischief outside of his tent he grabs his shotgun, a useless double barreled manual jobbie. Well dude, I hope for your sake there's only two zombies coming after you because they're not going to wait for you to reload. When the zombie apocalypse comes, and it will come, mark my words, there's going to be two kinds of people in this world: those with semi-automatic shotguns and those that are dead. Well, and the undead so that's three. Come to think of it, kids probably shouldn't have guns so I guess that's four. Or the elderly, they probably shouldn't either. Ok, so when the zombie apocalypse comes there's going to be five kinds of people in this world: those with semi-automatic shotguns, kids, the elderly, those that are dead and those that are undead.

I Know How To Fire A Weapon

Now I'm not saying I'm Frank Castle up in this bitch but I can hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun and I'll spray a zombie's white meat all over creation as it's running towards me as fast as you can say "Shaun of the Dead". I know that America has all sorts of gun crime and accidental gun deaths but when the zombie apocalypse comes, what country do you think will fall last? I can give you a hint: it ain't gonna be Norway. Not if the entire country shoots like these morons.

I Will Not Have Sex In An Outhouse

Yes, this is a thing that happened in this movie and there wasn't any nudity so it was nothing but ick, especially when the chick put the dude's finger in her mouth right after he had just wiped himself. In a movie where a dude climbs a mountain using a zombie's intestines as his rope, the fact that the outhouse sex scene was the most disgusting thing says a lot. I'm not saying I wouldn't have sex in a bathroom. Hell, my master bathroom is bigger than the room I lived in during my college years but a bathroom is not an outhouse. Bathrooms have nice counters and, more importantly, running water to take the poo and pee away to a happy place called Shit Meadows where the human waste can frolic in fields of filth. An outhouse is basically a shack that sits atop a shit filled hole. Maybe I've been married too long and the promise of regular sex has dulled me to what it was like to be young, in my twenties and so desperate for nookie that you're willing to have sex at any time, even when straddled over a still steaming pile of your own filth but I don't think so. True to the "first person who gets laid gets dead" rules of horror, the woman who did the deed was promptly then pulled into the poo pile by the zombies. She did manage to escape though and as she stumbled to the cabin, caked in shit and desperately trying to hold her guts in, all I could think of was "Ooooh, that's going to get infected."

I Know All About Pirate Gold

At its heart, "Dead Snow"is not a zombie movie, it's a pirate gold ghost story movie. You know the kind. Pirates get gold, they get cursed, they disappear, someone finds the gold and the pirate ghosts then terrorize everyone until they get their gold back. The same thing is going on here only instead of pirates it's Nazis. See back in the day, the Nazis occupied some Norwegian village and did bad things like steal the villagers' gold. When the tides turned against the Nazis the villagers said "Fuck that shit" or the Norwegian equivalent (fuck det der, loosely translated) and rose up and either killed the Nazis or drove them into the mountains, I don't remember. Oddly enough, they didn't get their gold back first. The dumb ass vacationers then find said gold and even though they had been told about the gold by Creepy Old And Poorly Armed Dude, and even though you could clearly make out a giant, gold SS eagle they were still all like "A-durrr, what's this? Derp, derp, derp." If some dude tells me a story about stolen Nazi gold and then I find a chest of it in the cabin I wouldn't be staying in because it's out in the fucking sticks, you best believe I'd be chucking that gold off of the nearest cliff with a quickness. Happy trails you zombie fucks, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I Do Not Ski

The first, and only time I've ever gone skiing, I almost fell off a mountain. I have been terrified of skiing ever since. If I don't ski, I can't try and ski through the mountains to get to a cabin and meet my boyfriend there. If I'm not skiing through the mountains, I won't get attacked and eaten by undead fascists. This ain't rocket science.

And finally...

I Am Not Dumb

I may not be the brightest bulb in the bulbarium (you know, the place where they grow the light bulbs) but I'm not nearly as stupid as the people in this movie. Granted, that's what you expect in horror films, to see dumb people making bad decisions and getting their faces eaten off for their dumb troubles. Still, the humans in this movie are so blindingly stupid that it becomes increasingly hard to feel anything but contempt for them and, as a result, start cheering on the zombies in the same way that if you were to watch someone climb into the tiger cage at the zoo, you'd be more inclined to see how it all plays out rather than rescue the guy from his own terminal stupidity. At least I would. Well, me and Katt Williams any way. (As an aside, that bit is one of my top ten favorite bits. Katt Williams is a fucking genius and if you can't see that, then there's no hope for you.) So yeah, I may not be the paragon of intelligence, but I can tell you this: if I get to the woods and there's a sign that says "Warning: Zombie Nazis Afoot" you can best believe I won't be sticking around.

NBA 2K 11 Review

2010-10-11T13:04:00.002-04:00

Posted this morning.

It's on the long side so Todd gets to yell at me.

Another great sports release and I am serious when I say in the review that picking a sports game of the year will not be easy. A lot of GREAT stuff in 2010.

Secretariat Film is a Pass

2010-10-10T09:16:00.003-04:00

The Secretariat movie was beyond disappointing.

I understand poetic/creative license when doing a historical film like this.

But this movie got SO many things just plain wrong that it was distracting to anyone who knows the story of this great Thoroughbred.

They turned it into classic Disney Hollywood schlock.

They turned good people into villains for no good reason other than every story needs a bad guy.

They filmed the damn movie at Keeneland -- this would be like filming a movie about the Daytona 500 in Indianapolis, and leaving in the symbols of Indy in place. Hey guys, we have technology to erase the KEENELAND signs.

They got SO much wrong. For no reason at all. The dialogue was cookie cutter and the directing was like a made for TV movie.

They got one thing right: Secretariat was a nationwide phenomenon and won the Triple Crown in 1973.

Good job guys.

NBA 2K11 Review Monday

2010-10-10T09:09:00.004-04:00

Review is pretty much done at this point.

So many things to like/love about this game and still so many things that need work. I think this is about as "complete" a 2K game as we have ever seen, but there are still a lot of head scratching decisions that were made by the developers.

In all, it's highly recommended but with caution: the main one being you better have some serious gamepad skills to get the most out of what this game is trying to accomplish.

It's the hardcore flight sim of sports games.

Cut Scenes From Hell

2010-10-05T15:00:00.004-04:00

I hate cut scenes in sports games.

Despise them.

NBA 2K11 loves them. With all its heart.

I am playing on full 12 min. quarters and games are taking a LONG time, because, well, I'm on 12 min quarters but also because every play stoppage, every sub, every free throw, 2K wants to show me how "TV Like" its game is.

I DO NOT CARE who the Sprite Player of whatever is, or the Gatorade whatever moment is. I do not need the Gatorade sub screen to show me who is coming in and out of the game. A quick flash of subs is all I need. I sure as hell don't need up close shots of players after a play.

Now, you are supposed to be able to turn that shit off, but in the presentation menu I only see a few options for such things and I still get to see these intermittent cut scenes far too often in this game.

GET ME TO THE ACTION. I don't give a shit if this is "just like it is on television."

This isn't television. I have shit to do. I am wearing out the A button on my controller pleading with NBA 2K11 to stop showing me stuff that has nothing to do with me playing the game.

As for the game itself, it's good, it's bad, and I hate Michael Jordan.

Seriously, it is a very challenging game when playing on the "PRO SIM" mode. I lost to the 76ers 104-101 as Boston in overtime. I didn't care to see Even Turner killing me with 3s because ...Even Turner shouldn't do that, but overall it feels pretty authentic.

I STILL think t egame is best played by gamepad gurus who can master a million different moves, and I still hate that slow PFers who get caught in rotation on Rondo can guard him like they are John Starks...but hey..

NBA 2K 11

2010-10-04T17:06:00.002-04:00

Been playing this one a lot today -- got this too late to have a review up tomorrow -- but it's coming ASAP.

Civilization 5 and Its Artificial Unintelligence

2010-09-29T16:12:00.001-04:00

So, if you’ve listened to this week’s Jumping the Shark podcast you got a plateful of Civilization 5 thoughts. At that point I had about six hours or so in the game and had a generally favorable impression. Now that I’ve had a full week with it (and about 20 hours), it has soured somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going back to Civ IV (yet). There’s a lot of stuff I like a great deal and, if I don’t get lazy, I’ll write about that too, in a later post. That said, I’m really distressed by the level of incompetence I’m seeing and reading about with regards to the AI.

Here’s the thing. I really want to be sympathetic about the game's AI issues given that the combat model is a total revolution (no pun intended) in the Civ series design. But I can't. This is something where Firaxis knows they're making this big change -probably right from the beginning- and they have to *know* that military AI will have to essentially be re-built from the ground up. That's something they have to get right. A few holes is one thing (and inevitable), but this isn't a game that, long term, can absorb having a toothless AI against an experienced opponent. And it is toothless. It apparently can't conquer a city state without a Herculean effort. How is it going to beat a human player once said player has grown comfortable with the rules and mechanics?

It would be one thing if the AI itself got better on higher difficulties, but from what I'm reading it really doesn't. It just gets bigger and better bonuses. (That’s a totally unverified assertion; your mileage may vary.) If what you see with the AI at the Prince level (where the playing field is totally level) is what you get, then they really have some work to do.

In my first game, played at Prince (4) difficulty, I achieved a science victory by 1985 (not totally unreasonable at that level), while the AI was still floating around in frigates and finding out gunpowder was kinda neat (way too inept at a level where the playing field is supposed to be level). Militarily… well, here's an example from that game, which I completed last night:

I'm (as the Americans) on a continent with the Persians and Greeks. I take out the Persians pretty early on. They never had more than a couple of military units and they threw them away by attacking the teeth of my invading forces (composed of archers, chariots, and spearmen; no siege units at all). With no siege units, conquering their two cities took a bit of time, but it was a speed-bump since Darius could not defend himself.

Later I went up against the Greeks, who were of equal or greater size to my civ, but were less advanced (later on, significantly so). I fought them, basically, in three stages.

The first phase of the war was fine. I attacked him where he was over-expanded and at his weakest. (He plopped two cities in a line, bisecting my empire in two.) No big deal that I easily won that confrontation. I should have, given my tech advantage and the fact that I had horses and Darius did not.

The second phase is where it was obvious the AI just didn't know what it was doing. When I started up hostilities again, Alexander had been picking on two city states (Stockholm and Venice). He'd mostly given up on Stockholm because I went in and positioned my own units around the city to protect them, so he appeared to have turned his full attention to Venice. And when i say “full attention,” I mean very nearly that. He left a couple of military units behind, but not nearly enough to protect his turf. So when I moved in, I basically had free range to roam his countryside and position myself around his cities however I liked. Bear in mind, any human player would have seen this coming. I had units all over my border with him.

Now, he's got at least four military units up to the north, basically laying siege to Venice, which was on a peninsula, sans actual siege units. I did not go to his capital straight-away, so even discounting my invasion was telegraphed a good five to ten turns ahead of time, he still had time to bring his forces back. Maybe even heal them up a little. As I took out my initial target (Sparta) he did nothing of the sort. I ended up taking his capital with nothing there to defend it because he was all about Venice. Again, I didn't even need siege units of my own. I just relied on my, now huge, tech advantage that had me running over his turf with Knights and Muskets. (I couldn't build trebuchet's if I wanted to, since I lacked iron.) He did eventually pull units back as I moved north, but once his capital fell it was beyond too late. Once I had conquered all but two of his cities I took a peace deal so I could deal with unhappiness from all these new puppet states.

The third phase was just mop up. Alexander had no means to build enough units in ten turns to mount any kind of defense.

Ignoring my ability to build a big early tech lead despite not yet being familiar with all the new gameplay concepts, what really bugs me is that it seems clear the AI is incapable of moving to defend itself, even when it has the means to do so. This is not the kind of thing that can be justified by, "well, it's a new combat system."

Alexander focusing on a city state while he’s got hostile forces marching on Athens is just not acceptable. Also, just to be clear, I'm an experienced player, but not a particularly good one. And that’s an important distinction because you don’t have to be one of the savants at CivFanatics to badly exploit this game. You just need enough experience with the game to understand how the different mechanics work. That’s just a function of time.

Now, balancing that is a host of stuff I really like. The Social Policy system is really interesting, even if I do think I like the old Civics system a bit better. I *love* that cities can now defend themselves to some degree. AI aside, I love the new military model. It’s so much better than the stacks of doom model of previous Civs. I like how culture works. I think I like the new global Happiness model that essentially replaces stuff like corruption and healthiness, although I’m not convinced it’s well-balanced yet. (Others seem to think there’s a lot of ways to exploit happiness, but this is probably more a concern for players more skilled than I. Still, Firaxis may have oversimplified in relying on that mechanic to dictate empire growth.)

And also, to be fair, I did see the AI do some things that were, well, if not especially smart, certainly correct. Long after I vanquished Alexander, Napoleon came trolling from across the sea. He surrounded the city state of Stockholm with galleons (I think). I was not looking for war with France, but I also did not want to lose Stockholm as an ally. So, I exploited my giant tech lead by gifting Stockholm with a destroyer. As soon as that ship was in Stockholm’s port, Napoleon wasted no time in pulling back, rather than fight an uphill battle. That’s good. (Also, there’s a perverse thrill to be had from launching a torpedo attack from your sub on a nearby frigate. BOOM!)

I think the take home is ultimately that this game is a load of fun early on where you're just learning how it's evolved from CivIV (or learning it for the first time). Firaxis took a lot of chances and tried a lot of new things with this game and I respect that *a lot*. That said, long term, it really looks to me like Firaxis has a ton of work to do to get this game balanced and running the way it needs to. Their history says they will, but until they get a legit patch in the field, you should buy the game knowing that long term enjoyment from the gameplay is probably limited for the foreseeable future. (And by long term, I mean in the 40+ hour range. I put about 15 hours into my first game on a standard size map and game length and am far from tired of it. I can just see some of the writing on the wall.)

Yes, you can up the difficulty, but personally, I don’t enjoy the game as much when I know I’m getting beat just because the AI has ridiculous production and research advantages. I like to be challenged on a level, or only modestly tilted, playing field. That’s something I got from the previous games that it looks like I’m unlikely to get here. I’ve started a new game on King (5) and we’ll see how it goes. I hope to be proved wrong.

OH-IO!

2010-09-29T13:02:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to share this picture I took at the Ohio State / Miami game a couple of weeks ago.

Our seats were awesome -- and this picture was taken right at the climax of Script Ohio.

Not a bad pic for a Droid phone...

FIFA 11 and Backbreaker

2010-09-28T12:42:00.003-04:00

Been a while since I wrote anything not work related.

Sorry about that.

In the meantime, here's my take on FIFA 11. Good game. Really good, actually.

In other news, my back is killing me. Played in my Monday night hoops league last night and had a rough, rough night.

If you play sports, or played sports, you know that there are people who simply have your number. I played against my nemesis last night. Whenever this guy guards me, I struggle.

He's taller and faster than me and for a guy who makes his hay coming off screens and shooting three pointers, that's a tough matchup. The guy just refuses to let me shoot and he's tall enough to take on screens and still affect my shot, which forces me to do one of two things: step back and shoot particularly long threes, or try and drive past him, or simply not look to shoot and play as decoy. (where's the fun in that?)

This brings us to my ankles, which is why I rarely drive past anyone anymore.

Well last night, after about 20 minutes and a grand total of 3 points on about 1-6 shooting I decided I had to try and change it up.

In our league I am known for three things:

1. Realistic range of about 20 feet
2. An inability to play moderately good defense (thanks ankles)
3. A scoop shot that I have perfected over the past 25 years. I can get this scoop shot off from anywhere in the paint -- it drives big men INSANE because everyone wants to block that shot, but rarely do.

I don't go near the paint much anymore but when I do you can almost guarantee that a scoop is coming.

Last night, I HAD to try and get past this guy guarding me because I was basically taken out of the game. I come off a screen, reverse drive around the screen, which trapped the defender, and I make my way into the lane where a 6'5 guy is waiting for me and I flash the scoop at him -- but fake the shot, keeping the ball in my extended hand.

He's salivating because he wants to block this shot -- but as most big men are -- he' s a tad over anxious and not too bright (I kid, I kid) so he leaps expecting to throw the ball into the stands and lands--

on me.

My back goes "pop". I'm now the one feeling stupid.

And old.

Wow.

2010-09-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

Mark Dantonio has balls as big as church bells.

Brandon's Weekend Sports Wrap-Up

2010-09-13T13:32:00.002-04:00

All hail the beginning of football! And not college football. Please. I went to a hockey school. I think we had football. Wait, I'm sure of it. Yes, their hallmark rivalry was with a team they played for a pair of shoes. Yeah I don't get it either. Bill and Todd handle more than this blog's fair share of college football complete with busing up some poor team from East ByJesus U to get their ass whipped on booster weekend all before dozens of bored sports reporters vote on who the best team is.

On second thought, that game for the shoes is beginning to make more sense.

No, I'm a professional football fan, namely a Washington Redskins fan which is funny because the Redskins haven't been professional for years.

So, did I watch the Dallas game on Sunday night? Hell to the no.

First of all, I'm old and old people can't stay up late. Second of all I get up very, very early and I already stay up late one night a week for the podcast. Two nights a week, one of which at the beginning of the week would very likely kill me. Third of all, this is the Redskins. Against Dallas. Had I watched I would have stayed up late, become very tired and all for some dumbass botched call and some last minute score that gets taken away by an equally last minute penalty.

You can imagine my surprise when I watched the highlights on SportsCenter this morning (for the record, I had no idea how to even find SportsCenter on my cable box so little do I watch ESPN) and that very same mix of shitty decision making and drive killing penalties happened only not to us, but to Dallas. Given the number of near heart attacks I had in that three minute game recap, had I watched the whole thing I probably would have died on the couch.

So here's how my football weekend started and ended: with me on my knees in my bedroom having just watched Dallas implode in our house and saying to my wife "I can't believe we beat the Cowboys." She's used to it by now so I think she said something to the tune of "That's nice dear. Now put on some pants."

So for the next week I'm going to enjoy being on top of the NFC East because based on our schedule we won't be there for long. The schedule makers at the NFL must have transposed our wins and losses from last year because our schedule looks fairly difficult unless Houston's rush-a-thon over the Colts on Sunday ends up being a fluke. Then we have Rams, Eagles, Packers and then the Colts. The Rams may suck but that has never stopped us from losing before. The Eagles are questionable and the Packers and Colts will be difficult when you can't put more than six offensive points on the board. That's not a stretch of games I'm looking forwards to, especially considering that the next three are 4PM games which means I can watch the games, for better or for worse.

Still though, we beat Dallas, in Washington and Tony Romo doesn't have TO or Jessica Simpson to blame it on and that's worth quite a bit. I plan on enjoying it while I can.

My Weekend Sports Wrap Up

2010-09-13T08:23:00.003-04:00

I was at the OSU/Miami game. Seats at the 40 yard line, C Deck with a view of the entire field. Perfect seats, really.

We had to suffer through a few bouts of rain, but it was well worth it.

It's a rite of passage for me and my father to attend an OSU game every year, and we aren't going to do it sitting in the corner of the end zone. We were at the Texas game and the USC game, which didn't work out as planned. But we were also at the 2002 and 2005 Michigan games, the 2002 Washington St game, the 2003 Washington game, and many, many other games where OSU rolled on to victory.

Saturday's game was one of the strangest games I have seen in a long, long time. 36-24 OSU and it could have been closer than that OR could have been a blowout for the Buckeyes. Miami returns two kicks for touchdowns, OSU picks off 4 passes, settles for 5 FGs -- 4 of which were red zone field goals and had a TD called back on a hold.

It was a huge win for OSU as the Bucks needed to get that early season OOC match up monkey off its back. That won't stop Mark May from calling OSU too slow to compete against teams from the south..or the east or the far east, but whatever. He's a tool.

Oh, yeah, the Browns managed to lose another 2nd half lead. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

NHL Slapshot Review

2010-09-09T10:51:00.001-04:00

Todd takes a look (a long, long, long look) at the new Wii hockey game from EA.

NCAA Patch #3. Oh Yes!

2010-09-07T15:44:00.000-04:00

Currently out for PS3, 360 coming soon:

Title Update 3 (TU3)

* The pump fake exploit was resolved. The entire defense will no longer rush the QB after a pump fake.

* Resolved an issue with setting SS/ FS to QB Spy and then blitzing, virtually unblocked.

* Increased the Overall rating for incoming freshman. This resulted in one and two star freshman coming in at a higher overall rating.

* In Season Progression is back! Players once again have the ability to get a slight boost to their ratings during the season.

* There was an issue with Hawaii's home schedule causing conflicts with particular teams. This has been resolved. In particular, teams in the Pac 10 and the WAC will now have the correct number of conference games.

* Resolved an issue with the Rush Defense slider where they were only impacting defensive line special moves. They have been adjusted to also impact win/loss chances for blocking.

Live Tuning Pack 3 (LTP3)

* Kick Power/Kick Accuracy progression for Kickers and Punters was adjusted to be in line with the new incoming freshmen. Kickers and punters will now progress in line with other players, but will start with a higher average overall due to the improved recruit ratings in the patch.

* Increased Awareness progression for all positions.

* Increased progression slightly for Elusiveness, Spin Move, and Juke Move for Wide Receivers.

* Increased progression of the Tackle rating for Corner Backs to be in line with WR skill ratings (Juke, Spin, and Elusiveness).

* Reduced the frequency of defenders successfully jumping the snap. Also adjusted how frequently they would jump early when the offense performed a fake snap.

* Tuned Man Coverage so defenders will not jump in front of routes so early. They will still jump the route, but not as early, or frequently, as before.

* Adjusted in season progression to be in line with higher rated incoming freshmen.

* Tuned Incoming freshman to better match the spread on the default rosters.

* Tuned team prestige progression to be in line with the changes to incoming freshmen.

NHL 11

2010-09-07T13:19:00.001-04:00

Is pretty damn good.

Boise St...

2010-09-07T00:06:00.002-04:00

... is why you can't take college football too seriously until there is a playoff format. Just have fun with it. But take it for what it is--a terribly flawed, uneven system setup by people with no sense of fairness or purpose outside of lining their own pockets.

In many ways, I suppose college football is like life.

After their win over a very overrated VTech team, Boise's road to a national championship game now runs through the mighty Oregon State Beavers.

Can this Boise St. team play with the "big boys?" Of course. They have proven that more than once.

Is it easier gearing up for two big games a year with the rest of the schedule filled with Power Puff Girls?

It kinda is, yeah.

Give Ohio State, Alabama, or hell even Michigan that schedule and watch as the Wolverines rattle off a 9 or 10 win season.

But congrats to the Broncos. They are half way home now to a potential title game appearance.

Digesting the Michigan Game

2010-09-06T09:30:00.001-04:00

So, I’ve spent a couple days digesting the Michigan game. I went into the year unsure of what my expectations should be. In general, I expected that Michigan would have an offense that would rank in the upper half of the Big 10 and a defense that would remain in the lower half.

What I saw on Saturday was *really* impressive. It’s easy to just say, “Well, it’s only UConn,” but 48 hours ago a lot of people, both on TV on and off and including myself, thought the Huskies had a legitimate shot of coming to the Big(ger) House and walking out with a W. It would be par for the course after three years of The Horror (Appalachian State), Utah, Toledo, etc.

There’s plenty of reason for concern, no question. Bill’s right. Denard cannot carry the ball 29 times a game on a Big10 schedule. I was starting to get upset he was still in the game into the fourth quarter. I was also really pissed that when Denard went out in the 3rd after dinging his hip that true freshman Devin Gardner came in. The game was still potentially in doubt and we’re running out a guy who’s never taken a college snap instead of the guy who started and played most of 12 games last year in Tate Forcier. Just how bad must this kid’s work ethic and attitude have been this past off-season for him not to have seen the field after being a reasonably effective freshman quarterback last year (given he played half of it injured). And, frankly, if UConn had shown any competence whatsoever in the passing game this turns into a shootout.

Now, to be fair. I think you have to give the Michigan D some credit for being disruptive. There were a lot times when the Dline put pressure and hits on the UConn QB (Frazer?). Also, for all the times UConn tossed an errant pass or dropped a ball, there was also a young player in Michigan’s secondary breaking up a pass or causing a fumble. If you’re going to point out a dropped third down pass in the first quarter that would’ve given UConn a first and goal, you also have to point out their second quarter fluke passing conversion on third down that did lead to a late touchdown. The game could’ve just as easily been 30-3. Good teams with experienced quarterbacks are going to shred that secondary this year. No question. I’m just saying it wasn’t all a fluke in M’s favor.

Offensively, I really think those guys are for real this year. Yes, Michigan leaned too heavily on Dilithium Robinson racking up a single-game QB rushing record 195 yards, but the man was also something like 19-22 passing on Saturday. That’s absurd even if it’s a low per pass average. Every time he threw the ball it was at an open receiver or put in place on the numbers. There were no flukes. If it turns out this guy can be an effective passer on passes over 10 yards, which he was on multiple occasions yesterday, what are you going to do as an opposing defense? You can’t stop the conventional running game (which, granted, ended up underwhelming a bit after a good start), the passing game, and the Shoelace. Also overlooked yesterday is the offensive line, which is now experienced and has Molk back. They were was superb against UConn. Barring injury, Michigan is going to score points this season.

So, belated prediction time, now that I’ve had a chance to see this team play for real. You’re gonna say I’m a homer and that I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. Maybe I am. But I think *if* you see this team win at Notre Dame next weekend you’re going to see them get off to a 6-0 start (UConn, at ND, Mass, Bowling Green, at Indiana, Michigan State). I’m probably underselling MSU, but let’s be honest, that team exists to disappoint its fans. After that, I think they win two of the remaining mid-season games (Iowa, at Penn St., Illinois, Purdue) before dropping their last home game in Wisconsin and, of course, getting beat in Columbus. That would be an 8-win season that all but ensures Rodriguez is back next year.

The big question in that is whether or not the defense improves as the freshmen in the secondary gain experience. If they do, Michigan will get tougher to beat over the course of the year. If it turns out other teams get better at exploiting them, then it gets dicey. ND and MSU could easily end up as losses and that could prove disastrous.

Is the ship finally about to be righted? Dare to dream.

Is Michigan Back?

2010-09-05T11:03:00.003-04:00

I must say that I am happy for a little college football sunshine in Todd's life. The man needs it.

Michigan played its best game in years yesterday, with a QB that runs the West Virginian's offense to the letter. What an amazing game by Robinson.

I have thus revised my prediction from a 5-7 season for UM to 7-5. I have no idea if 7-5 saves the man's job, but I do see 7 wins on that schedule. (UCONN, ND, UMASS, IU, BGU, Illinois, Purdue)

I think with Tater Tot playing UM may very well lose that game vs UCONN, and I think they beat ND Saturday, I really do. And hope they do.

The issue?

Robinson is going to get killed, eventually. I hate offenses like this because physiology tells you that if a kid takes THAT many shots something is going to eventually give. He got nicked up yesterday and as the season rolls on that's only going to get worse -- and *everything* hinges on this guy for Michigan to succeed. Even if he's not "injured" will this be the same guy in week 7 as in week 1? The grind of the Big10 is brutal, and Robinson doesn't have Slaton/Devine to take the pressure off. And the defenses in the Big10 are better than what WVU faced in the Big East.

I still think that defense sucks. UCONN failed to take advantage of plays that better teams will not miss out on -- UM matches up extremely well with a team like that. UM started 4-0 last year, too, so before you start punching Rose Bowl tickets I would advise some caution. But I am a firm believer that the Big10 is better when Michigan and OSU are both elite level teams, so congrats to UM for getting out of the gate.

A question: Was RichRod playing cat and mouse by not declaring Robinson the starter earlier? Or is the guy that poor of an evaluator? What took so long to give this kid the keys?

More Elemental

2010-09-03T20:42:00.001-04:00

If you have been following/playing this one, you need to read this.

Reason #876 ESPN Sucks

2010-09-03T10:36:00.002-04:00

College football kicked off last night which means all is yet again right with the world.

What was the story last night?

Let's play Pick the Website that has this as the lead :

1. "Looking for the first upset of the season? Look no further. Jordan Wynn throws for three TDs as Utah beats No. 15 Pittsburgh 27-24 in OT."

2. "Immediate Impact: Utah Edges #15 Pitt"

3. " Buckeyes, Canes ready for each other - The start of college football is here at last, but it doesn't provide much of a test for Ohio State or Miami. That challenge comes next week when they face each other."

4. "Off And Running USC opened a new era by hanging 49 on Hawaii"

These headlines are taken from SI.com, The Sporting News, CBS Sports line, and ESPN.

Which one is from ESpin?

If you chose 4, you realize how embarrassing ESPN is to the sports world.

Elemental

2010-09-02T17:38:00.002-04:00

Troy's take was posted yesterday.

It's such an odd game -- and I agree with Troy's opinion pretty much right down the line. It was released way too soon, has incomplete and undocumented features and an AI that simply doesn't put up much of a fight.

This genre is in my wheelhouse, and I'm shelving it until most likely this winter, when Stardock manages to finish what they started.

What I REALLY want to talk about is NHL 11.

But I can't.

But I really want to.

I love this game.

JTS Episode 33

2010-08-30T13:31:00.002-04:00

It's a very special Jumping the Shark this week as we get into why we play what we play. This is what happens when we can't get guests or come up with interesting topics. Navel gazing! Seriously though, I quite liked this episode as it gave me an opportunity to see where my cohorts are coming from. Knowing how Bill got into sports games makes his opinions on them much more understandable rather than the incoherent rage it usually sounds like. Kidding!

Here's the show should you want to get it.

Mafia 2 is very, very disappointing. I'm coming up on a bit of a lull of sorts and this game looked perfect to fit the bill however I have no desire to spend most of my time driving. That is when I'm not dealing with shitty checkpoints. The checkpoint save system needs to die screaming in a fire as a warning to any that would come after it. I still have the demo on my 360 and I still want to play it to see the good parts but that's pretty much all I'll do. I wonder if Danielle's comments about having a shortened time to put in actual gameplay are at all on the money. Only 2K knows for sure. Here's Bill's final review. It ended up being one of his better ones. I give the man shit but I forget how well he can make those words dance.
Elemental sounds really, really interesting but I'm sure I have neither the brain power nor the computing power to handle it. As I get older, I fear more games are going to fall into that category however for the former reason, not the latter.
I wonder if Gold's Gym had a lot of input into the game with their name on it. Having a dance workout game that involves bull fighting and kangaroo boxing sounds like something that didn't get an OK from corporate until it was too late. They should team up with Cabela's for the next game and have you jogging away from crazed grizzlies as you try to line up a shot on a caribou. You're welcome Gold's Gym.
I played some Scott Pilgrim with friends at lunch today and man, that game is hella chaotic with a bunch of people. I think I died more with teammates than by myself. It certainly is useful to have them give you all of their money towards Scott's rental fee, but there is a lot of friendly fire going on which can make things difficult. Still though, I'd much rather play it with other people than alone, however without support for Live co-op, once the review is up I won't be doing either. If I don't get the ending where Scott and Ramona live happily ever after I can only hope her next suitor doesn't have to go through the same bullshit for her affections.
And Yet It Moves is a very enjoyable game if you like kooky puzzle games.
Knowing the kinds of games Danielle prefers, I totally understand the whole adventure angle. Mowing down waves of soldiers or terrorists may be good for escapism or venting some anger but it's not very adventurous. Not in the same way as something like Mass Effect or Super Mario Galaxy. My tastes tend to run the same as Danielle's however I do like the occasional foray into the more realistic for things like GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption. I am defining realism very loosely here but you get the idea.
Those Ultima games sound badass. If I grew up playing those and then played Fallout 3, I'd be pretty pissed too. There's something to be said for going back to the older style of video game story telling where you had to have big ideas to make up for the limitations in your ability to tell the story. People are so enamored with graphics nowadays you can get away with horrible writing like "ten shitloads" and not think twice about it as long as the character delivering the line follows it up with chainsawing someone's nuts off.
I have no idea if Locust have nuts. Given that the Beserkers are the females, I hope for the sake of the male Locust that they do not. On second thought, I don't even want to go there.
I think it's funny that Bill was, as a young lad, so eager to play board games with his dad and I can't get my kid to focus long enough to play Chutes and Ladders. Then again that's not that funny. Chutes and Ladders is a horrible, horrible game. A blighted hellscape with no ending. No wonder my kids hate it. Seriously though, my son isn't big on rules, which are helpful for games, so board gaming isn't his thing. I'm considering starting him on the new streamlined 4E D&D however I'm not sure how well that would play with two people. At least with that game I can change up the rules to match his capricious whims.
I realized after the show that I got the name of the game in my story wrong. It was Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Trauma Team is the sequel for the Wii that came out recently. I'm sure the game isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be but, at the same time, were I to play it now I'd probably flash back to long Russian nights and Coca-Cola that tastes like pepper. Better to just leave it alone.
In truth, my love of Zelda has nothing to do with my son and instead has to do with the ability to hook up your GBA SP and go treasure hunting with Tingle. Oh Tingle, what a colossal freak you are.
I gave Todd hell in the outtakes, but it does come from a loving place. Todd and I occupy the parts of the show that involve the bulk of the technical work (with Todd doing the bulk of that bulk) yet we don't have the listener draw of Bill or Danielle. I know that I've enjoyed the camaraderie that has come with it and I express it by giving him shit and lots of it. Sometimes that expresses itself by threatening to put a Nerf dart through his skull but it's a Nerf dart of love tipped with friendship, or something like that. Plus, what you don't hear are the litany of "sex with your mom" jokes he throws my way so don't get too teary eyed over my abuse of poor Todd. The man is a deviant and, from what he tells me, possibly my step-father.

So that's it for this week. I think we're down a member next week as Danielle is road tripping but at the same time, we're recording early so maybe she'll be there. We should have Troy Goodfellow on regardless which is always a hoot. Troy is hella smart and very sarcastic which makes for good conversation. As long as there's beer, I'm happy and I aim to make myself very, very happy. As happy as Todd is with my mom.

Mafia II Sleeps with the Fishes

2010-08-30T13:19:00.003-04:00

So, I didn't like Mafia II.

The other big release I am messing with is Elemental, a game which we will have a review for tomorrow. Troy's review is very fair, as you'd expect from him. A very frustrating game -- I think there's a great strategy game buried underneath the obtuse UI and the weird AI and the flavorless world. But like many Stardock games it will need another few months of cooking time.

I'll talk more tomorrow after I post the review.

NHL 11 is in the house (it came a day after NHL Slapshot.) Both games we cannot talk about due to embargo limits. But we will have reviews for both games on the 7th. I'm doing NHL 11 and, as noted earlier, Todd is handling Slapshot.

Only three live reviews for NHL 2K11 Wii even though it has been out for a week which leads me to believe 2K Sports was very stingy with their review copies. Looking at those scores, perhaps that is not a coincidence. I'm just sayin'.

Finally, the new JTS is live. It's a good show. In fact this is the "very special episode" where we talk about our past and have a big group hug at the end. I smell Emmy.

The Cook, The Scorer, His Team and Their Victory

2010-08-27T11:28:00.002-04:00

Today we get our usual post-release game of Whirlyball. If you are unfamiliar with Whirlyball, allow me to blow your mind.

Imagine a basketball court, only take away the hoops the wooden floors and the highly skilled athletes. Replace the hoops with a plastic disc wired to a buzzer and situated behind a hole in the backboard. Replace the wooden floors with a metal floor. Finally, replace the highly skilled athletes with unskilled office workers. Oh, did I mention that everyone is in bumper cars?

Yeah that's right. Fucking bumper cars.

The point of Whirlyball is to score. To score you use one of those scoop on a handle things we all played with as kids and you then scoop up a softball sized whiffle ball and chuck it at the scoring panel. You do all of this while traversing the court in and making bone crushing hits with your bumper car.

It is quite possibly the greatest sport in the history of mankind.

In our office, the QA department, of which I am a member, has not lost one single, solitary outing of Whirlyball. Not one. We may have lost a game here and there, but when you tally up the final scores, every time we come out the victors. We are able to do this by recognizing one very important fact, a fact that is a bitter pill for many to swallow but is true nonetheless, namely that not everyone can score.

I am one of those "not everyones". I can not score to save my life. I can't play basketball and shooting in Whirlyball requires the same smooth wrist movements and ability to aim as needed in basketball. Being able to shoot a basketball while hauling ass in a bumper car helps too. What I can do, to make up for my lack of scoring, is everything else. I can get rebounds, take 'em on a breakaway and then pass them to our top scorer so he can make the points. I can knock someone upside the bumper car as they're about to shoot, thereby screwing up their shot and I can block the path of any one looking to do the same on our guys. In short, I am a Whirlyball position player.

It's a position I'm not only comfortable with but happy with. When I have to score I choke, pretty much every time. When I am providing support, no such choking occurs. The very same thing happens to me when playing most MP games so by now I'm used to it. If we're playing Team Slayer and I'm on your team, allow me to apologize in advance. If we're playing CTF and you need a driver, I'm your man. I can't play the Soldier or Leader class for shit in Transformers: WFC but I'm a decent scientist, flying in to deliver heals and buffs and then getting the fuck out of Dodge. I'm not good enough to handle all of the responsibility of winning, but I do well in support roles that help the team win.

In the end, it's not about glory, it's about winning. Let my coworker take the shot that I fed him. Shit, I'll feed him all day. Call me The Cook or Top Chef or Dude Who Works The Griddle At Waffle House. I don't give a shit. At the end of the match, if the number for our score is bigger than the number for Dev's score, then we all did our jobs and nothing else matters. A great man once said that he doesn't want to be The Guy, he wants to be the guy that The Guy depends on, or some similar nonsense. Ask Todd, I'm sure he can quote it exactly but the point is that by my age, you need to know if you're The Guy or the guy The Guy depends on and be that person to the best of your abilities. It may take some ego lowering to realize you're not The Guy any more, but once you figure that shit out, it ain't nothing but smooth passes and bomb ass bumper car hits from there on out.

To the bumper cars!

Games Games Games!

2010-08-24T13:27:00.002-04:00

After a nice little break from playing stuff for review, and getting a MASSIVE case of Fallout 3 burnout (tune in to the podcast next week for that story) new games have arrived!

EA has sent NHL Slapshot for the Wii which I thought was incredibly cool at E3. Todd is doing that review. Embargo is 9/7 but I will check with EA to see if we (well, Todd) can blog about it beforehand.
I'm working on an NBA Elite Q&A, look for that soon.
2K sent Mafia II a couple of days ago, which I am reviewing and will post some thoughts on that soon.
Elemental is out from Stardock, a game which Todd and I have been clamoring for since, well, a long time now. After a VERY rough launch I have warmed to the game quite a bit. It's very brown. Anyway lots to talk about over the next few days to stay tuned.
Oh, 2K did not send NHL 2K11 for the Wii. Shrug. Not sure why.

JTS Episode 32

2010-08-23T11:46:00.002-04:00

It's Monday. Woohoo! It's also the day my kids go back to school, which is even more of a woohoo! I work about ten minutes from home so now that my brood isn't hanging around the place, I can go home at lunch and play video games. Sure, I could have done that before but then I'd have to let them watch and Red Dead Redemption ain't exactly the game you want the second graders gathered around. Plus, were I to come home during the summer to play games I'd have to answer all sorts of uncomfortable questions from my wife about why I'm able to come home for video gaming but not to take the kids out to lunch and off of her hands. Explaining that one is a thing that I want to do while the other is not would not go over well so best to just avoid the whole thing and place a three month moratorium on lunch time gaming. Those questions could easily come up now, but if I'm lucky I can get down into the basement and into the Cone of Silence before they arise.

This week's episode was not planned as a guest episode but Bill had some last minute obligations that had to be met and as a result Mitch took his place. Mitch is always a good host because he's easy to talk to and, more importantly, he plays more games than all of us combined given that he writes for pretty much every outlet imaginable. The dude writes for Best Buy's games magazine for Christ's sake. Still, even with Mitch in the chair, Bill's presence was missed as is the case any time one of the regulars can't make it.

Here's a link to the show before we get on with the bullets.

Listening to the show I wish I had realized how completely dense I sounded during the Battlefield conversation. I don't know why I didn't get the fact that you had to blow up the control points, but I didn't. I thought that you blew them up so that other people couldn't capture them so that you then lost slower. Seriously, this was my thinking. In retrospect, that's just stupid and I should have kept my mouth shut. Now that I think of it, that describes about 90% of my interactions with other people.
The decision to take online co-op out of Lara Croft and the Light Whatever is seriously, one of the dumbest decisions to come down the gaming pike in some time. Yeah sure, it's a great co-op couch game, but seriously, who has people over to play co-op games? I'm 38 fucking years old. I'm not in third grade. I'm not going to ask my friends to come over and play Lara Croft. I don't care how great your game is, it's not going to happen. It's entirely possible I'm not the audience for this game, and I get that, but still, taking out online co-op was just plain stupid and in this hobby, asking people to wait a month for something like that is like asking them to wait a decade. By the time the co-op feature is available, people won't give a shit any more. I hope I'm wrong as it sounds like a good game and I'd like to see the people who made it rewarded for their efforts.
To Todd's Starcraft point, pretty much every game that has a multiplayer component does a horrible job at preparing you for said component when you play the single player, but in the case of Starcraft where things like build order and tech tree management is so important, along with a highly developed twitch response, I can see it being even worse. In shooters, the single player campaign is going to have you learning the basic mechanics of MP, namely shooting at dudes who are also shooting at you. Crank up the difficulty and you have to do a better job at shooting them, even if it's not as good as a job as you'd have to do in MP. In RTS's, if you have a mission that emphasizes the use of a particular unit, getting really good at that unit won't mean jack shit if Homeboy on the other end has a strategy that makes your unit useless. I'm just sayin'. Of course, having a useless unit is something Todd should be familiar with by now, so I don't know what he's complaining about. Zing!
I'm not kidding about the bears in RDR. They are frequent occurances, presumably because, unlike many of the other animals in the game, they only show up in one geographical area and that area is a very small subsection of the map. As a result, they pop up all of the time. In fact, elk and big horn sheep also show up there and unlike every other hunting challenge in the game which will make your current target of choice impossible to find even if you were ankle deep in said creature not seconds before they became your target, I had no problems getting enough elk meat and sheep horns. I also killed over 20 bears while doing so and this was in the space of about 45 minutes. This is not an exaggeration.
I wish Bill had been on the show to agree with me about Rock Band 3. I feel like we disagree a lot, or can't speak to each other's opinion so this may have been our only chance. I'm sure the game will be great, I just don't like the idea of starting all over. Plus, the achievements are not appetizing at all. I usually don't take achievements into account for rhythm games as I suck on pretty much every instrument, but with the Pro mode and the keyboard, the amount of points I can get is even further reduced. Yes I'm a slave to my score, and no I don't have a problem with it. I think Harmonix will do just fine without my 60 bucks.
As for Halo: Reach, I've been killing the Covenant for like ten years now. It'd be nice to shoot something new.
Hydrophobia looks interesting, even if the trailer is suprisingly bereft of water power action. See for yourself.
I'm with Mitch on Fable 3. I played both of the previous games and got all of the points in the second one, but I could give a shit about making my kingdom's subjects happy. Plus, the game simply will not deliver on what it promises and will instead shoehorn some shitty design invention into everything and take away from the interesting stuff as a result. Not to mention that they have some seriously shitty character design. I'd rather not spend another 40 hours with a female character that looks like the offspring of Frankenstein and an East German swimmer.
Danielle was not kidding about her room at E3. It was disgusting. It smelled like you were living in someone's armpit. And that was after Danielle watched the cleaning staff clean the place.
I still don't understand playing updated versions of old games for the sake of nostalgia, much along paying for the experience. As Todd has said before, I hate old games and this is pretty much true. Either do something really new with it or don't even bother. Hell, I don't even want to play updated versions old games I haven't played so much do I hate old games. Die old games, die!

That's it for this week. Hopefully we'll have everyone at the table for the next show as Danielle may be out for two weeks at the beginning of September so it would be nice if we could have full attendance before her departure. I may have to agree with Bill on whatever he says to make up for him missing the Rock Band 3 discussion. I fear this may lead to some troublesome revelations.

Madden Update News

2010-08-23T10:01:00.002-04:00

Ian Cummings has updated the Madden blog with some tidbits.

The money quote:

Moving forward, we are working on addressing some of the most common feedback in upcoming title updates. You all already know that we are planning on releasing an update to enable old-school pre-play controls right around the start of the NFL season, which also will include the brand new Madden Moments LIVE feature where you can replay the top games from each week. In that update we will also have numerous art, gameplay, and stability fixes included as well. Along with that, we have also planned a second update to come towards the end of September. Below is a list of the top priority issues we seem to be hearing the most about that we are looking at:

- Fixing a bug to allow friend invites to ranked games

- Generally making pass defense more effective

- Reducing number of broken tackles

- Fixing user blitz exploit(s)

- Tuning injuries

- Tuning CPU & GameFlow play-calling logic

- Improving play action blocking

- Improving kick return blocking

- Improving online connectivity issues with kick meter lag, media streaming, etc.

- Random stability improvements

Elemental

2010-08-18T10:28:00.002-04:00

Life isn't just about first downs and the Tampa 2.

Take a read of this 5 page mega Q&A with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell as he talks about the upcoming 4X strategy game, Elemental : War of Magic.

Can't wait to play this next week.

JTS Episode 31

2010-08-16T12:30:00.003-04:00

It's Monday, which means a new JTS. Whee. It also means that I blather on about said new JTS. Double Whee. Fuck it, let's go Triple Whee. I'm feeling saucy.

Whee whee whee, all the way home.

This week saw the gang all back together which was nice. When you do the show every week it becomes easy to forget what each person brings to the table but the minute they're not there you instantly remember. Like if Todd's not there we don't get any 80's movie jokes, if Danielle's not there we don't get to hear about Mass Effect, if Bill's not there we don't get any anger management issues and if I'm not there Bill has no one to get pissed off at, a point we'll get to in a minute.

This was also the first week that our podcast hosting provider Libsyn migrated us to their fancy new publishing platform. I had read horror stories of the migration process so I wasn't looking forward to it but so far things have all gone smoothly. They did change the URL of all of our past shows but insist that old links will work. I'm too lazy to go back and check but if the download numbers drop off this week then I'll know that they're all filthy liars.

You should probably go and get the show before I start breaking it down. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Jeff McAllister was our guest this week and Jeff is one of the most laid back dudes you'll ever talk to, as you can tell from the show. Part of his speaking style came from being nervous that Bill was going to yell at him. Wonder where he'd get that from. Jeff has wanted to be on the show since day one and we've been lazy in asking him to come aboard so I'm glad he finally got to be on. I liked the topic too, what with BioShock Infinite being announced that day.
Speaking of BioShock Infinite, I think the response of the gaming press bugged me more than the announcement of a game that's two years out. The latter is something that happens all of the time so it's not a big deal but the former seemed to be a whole bunch of incredulity that people would dare be disappointed that Irrational is going back to the BioShock well. I get it, it's a new city and the theme is different but it's still a dude with a gun and powers. Does that mean the game won't be great? Not at all but for folks hoping to see a new IP from Irrational there are reasons to be disappointed. The "trust us, we've seen it" twittering that came afterwards bugged me even more.
Monday Night Combat sounds interesting, but so do a lot of things that I end up not playing so that I can instead spend 45 minutes looking for bobcats to kill only to have one spawn on the roof in a Mexican hideout. True story.
Speaking of Red Dead Redemption, hoo boy, we sure lit a fire under Bill on this one. I think my new rule is going to be to not play games that Bill is playing, or at least find out if he had issues with the game before I play it. If I'm not playing a game for critical purposes I tend to let a lot of things go, or at the very least just say "yeah, fuck this" and quit so my anger level doesn't really get too high (Dragon Age DLC not included as you'll hear in the outtakes). Can I be a better critic if I look at all games that I play critically? No doubt, but that seems so much less fun for some reason. Bill and I chatted about this one day and he likes seeing everything critically to the point where things like Bonnie jump out whereas I tend to want to just go with the flow and have a good time. For recreational games both approaches work, however when the time comes to be critical I have to flip a switch whereas he doesn't and I can't say that the switch always gets flipped as soon as it should. In reality, I fucking hate gaucho pants so I'm glad the bitch left.
I also hate capri pants but that's a talk for another time.
Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin is a hoot, if only because you get a score at the end of the day and can then hoard that over your kid for the rest of the vacation. Nothing like a seven year old driven to tears because only the high scorer gets lemonade. Suck it Timmy!
My kid is not named Timmy, his name is Ben and I did not withhold lemonade. I'm just putting that out there.
The Snoop Dogg game I was talking about was called Fear and Respect. Here's a link to a copy of the mag with Snoop on its cover. It's funny, but I remember a time when the review of a game would be on the cover, not a preview, but I also remember Zips and that makes me incredibly old. I think Jeff and Todd's point about coming up, saying "hey, we're making this game" and then leaving is an excellent one. Two years out, what else do you need to say? I do wonder if people cheered at the end of the Irrational reveal. I bet they did. Boo, game journalists! Boo!
Here's a fun fact: Canadian Smarties are actually UK Smarties which are like M&M's and are not available in the US. US Smarties are small, sugary tablets wrapped in cellophane. With this knowledge, Jeff's comment makes more sense because I was originally thinking that Smarties are kind of lame and who gets that excited about Smarties, but if they're like M&M's in Canada I completely understand. Neither manifestation of Smarties explains why Bill doesn't know what they are. That level of candy ignorance is unacceptable in modern society.

So that's another episode in the can. I have no idea what next week's episode is about, but I should probably get on that as I've been pushing for a schedule of topics rather than our current method of doing jack shit until Thursday morning and then scrambling around for something relevant. This is all part of my plan to impose greater levels of control over the show until people get irritated and leave, allowing me to hog the spotlight. Hopefully Todd will still edit the show when that happens. It's not like he has anything else to do.

NCAA 11 Tuning pack #2

2010-08-12T16:51:00.002-04:00

The new tuning pack is out for NCAA 11.

The fixes are many.

This one caught my eye:

Tuned Kick Power and Kick Accuracy of progression of kickers and punters in Dynasty Mode

Hot damn! That was my #1 issue with Dynasty mode!

The problem? It's still 100% broken. This tuning pack does ZIP to address the real issue.

OK, let me try and make this as clear as I POSSIBLY can:

The issue is not just "progression" -- the issue is:

THE FRESHMEN KICKERS SUCK!

THEY COME IN RATED AS LOW AS 45 OVR WITH THE ABILITY OF MY 9 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER! THEY LITERALLY CANNOT MAKE EXTRA POINTS!

Sigh.

In 2012 USF still signs 1 kicker who is rated a 46 overall and can't make an extra point. Until THIS gets fixed Dynasty Mode, for me and a lot of others, remains useless. Utterly useless.

The Patch notes end with this:

This update is for you Mr. Passionate-NCAA-Football-Gamer.

-Russ Kiniry
Designer NCAA Football

*Insert forehead into open palm*

Requiem For A Horse

2010-08-11T14:16:00.002-04:00

Dapple, my horse in Red Dead Redemption died the other day.

I was doing the Tumbleweed gang hideout and I don't remember him getting in the line of fire, but when I came out of the main house after killing the bandits in the basement, I started looting some corpses and there he was, lying on the ground. Well, technically he was lying in the ground so it's possible a clipping error killed him but regardless my horse, my best friend in all of New Austin, was dead. It bothered me that my trusty steed was dead however I had been running on the autosave for a couple of hours by then so reloading to bring Dapple back would have meant losing a bunch of work. So while I loved Dapple, I didn't love him enough to reload and he stayed in that stable in the sky.

We had a lot of good times, Dapple and I. There was that time we rode all over hell to find flowers and he got killed by a cougar. Then there was that time we were hunting boar and I got killed by a boar. Then there was that time I got killed by a boar and he got killed by a cougar. There may have been a wolf there too. Seriously, it was like the ending of Reservoir Dogs, only with wildlife. Then there was that time he helped me cheat at cards. Ok, so that didn't happen but in my mind I see him sticking his head through the saloon window and then pawing the ground to tell me what kind of cards the other guy has. That game would be awesome. I would pay big money for that game.

Whenever a game offers an animal companion of great significance I find myself drawn to it over whatever human companions exist in the game. I loved my dog Homer in Fable 2 but never raised a family. When the time came to pick your choice at the end, I chose the option that brought my dog back. In fact, had there been a fourth choice where the world is burned to a cinder and you and your dog fly off into space on a rocket ship I would have taken that one. In Fallout 3, my only companion was Dogmeat and any time he died, I reloaded. Dogmeat dies a lot in that game so I reloaded a lot. During all of Broken Steel I sent him away so often was he dieing. Once I was done with that game for good I made sure to first go get Dogmeat and then save the game in my house in Megaton because I didn't want to think that Dogmeat was eternally waiting at the vault for me to come back. I took the Mabari warhound in Dragon Age in my party from the minute he could join and he never left. I also named him Dogmeat. Dogmeat, son of Dogmeat if you want to be specific.

So yeah, I tend to get a little attached to my animals.

Red Dead Redemption does a lot of things right and it does a lot of things not so right. I think the shopkeeper in Armadillo should work on beefing up security given as many times as he gets robbed. On a side note, I always feel bad buying from him what with him constantly badmouthing Jews. One time I didn't help him when he was robbed and he got killed. I have to admit, I didn't feel all that bad. Herbert Moon is a very unpleasant man. What the game does right, at least for me, is give you a connection to your horse. Granted, not enough of a connection to pass up several hours of work because your horse tried to take out some gang members but enough to where I care about the well being of my horse and actively try to keep it alive.

That is until it's time to kill two cougars with your knife. By the time I was done with that I was knee deep in horse flesh. I chalk it up to still grieving and being afraid of keeping a new horse in fear that they wouldn't compare to Dapple. In reality, getting knocked off of your horse by a cougar is easier to recover from than being knocked down by a cougar. I don't understand it either, but having had both done to me at least half a dozen times by now, I'm somewhat of an expert in cougar attacks. So the new horses became cougar bait, giving me enough time to recover, roll up on the cougar and stab them. The downside of this is that when the cougar then tries to run away you can't chase it very well due to the inherent difficulties found in riding a dead horse. You can however lasso the cougar and then stab it again which, I'm sure, is entirely realistic. If there was a way to break a cougar and then ride it around after lassoing it, Red Dead Redemption would be the greatest media property of all time. That and card cheating horses. Take notes Rockstar. I smell a sequel.

Once I get the achievement for not switching horses at a hitching post, provided I can get it by never having hitched my various new horses, I'll head out to the plains and break a new horse that I will then bond with like I did with Dapple. I'll honor them like I honored Dapple. I'll protect them like I protected Dapple. I'll love them like I loved Dapple.

Right up until the bear hunting starts.

The Proud Papa Moment

2010-08-10T12:36:00.002-04:00

So, Saturday.

For the past several months Ashley has been going to 4H. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of 4H -- here ya go.

Ashley's group works with dogs with the culminating event being the Hartford Fair Dog Show where the kids do their best Westminster impersonation.

Ashley has been working with our 5 year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Skipper. We think he's around 5. We got him at a local shelter a couple of years ago. Being that I work from home Skip attached to me immediately and Ashley was frustrated because he became more my dog than hers.

This was the whole point of doing Dog 4H. Ashley wanted to try to bond more with Skipper.

So we'd take the 20 minute drive every week to dog practice where Ashley would work with Skipper, learning how to show him and how to work with him in a formal "dog show" setting.

It wasn't easy and required daily hand feedings by Ashley so as to train Skipper to both listen to commands and to trust her. Months or practice.

We had been in a few "practice" shows over the summer, getting ready for the fair and Ashley did ok. There is the dog show part and an oral exam part where she has to answer questions from the dog handbook. She's a really smart kid but tends to get worked up when taking oral tests.

So anyway Saturday was Fair Day and the dog show lasts from 9 til around 4 so we were there literally all day. Ashley and Skipper performed so amazingly well Saturday that both Mary and I were stunned. So when Ashley was awarded the 1st place trophy and the blue ribbon for winning her Jr division it was one of those surreal parenting moments -- much like what a father feels watching his son score the winning goal or hitting the late inning homer.

I was filled with pride after she won because she had worked so hard on this for months on end.
I was shocked she placed first not because of the ring performance (she and Skipper really nailed that) but she also did great on the exam portion. Even Ashley couldn't believe it.

I think the best part of all, though, was when Ashley went over to her friend who also showed her dog and that dog flipped out due to being in close proximity to cows that were being shown the next day and stabled nearby.

Her dog simply would not perform. This little girl was devastated. Ashley walked over, after giving me the trophy and ribbon to hold, and basically consoled her for the next 15 minutes. It's just the kind of kid she is.

As parents we all have moments with our kids that we know will stick. Ask me what Ashley did over this summer or last summer and it's all a blur. Ask me 10 years from now what Ashley did over the summer of 2010 and I will immediately tell you: That's the summer she and Skipper bonded and won at the fair.

It was definitely one of those moments.

The Madden 11 Review

2010-08-09T23:48:00.002-04:00

It's live and ready for perusal.

Tomorrow I plan on sharing with you the totally awesome Saturday that I had.

One of the best days of my entire life.

But that's tomorrow.

JTS Episode 30

2010-08-09T12:28:00.002-04:00

So a while back I asked Bill why he doesn't post about the show any more and he "harrumphed" and said something about people here not caring about the show. So then I asked Todd why he didn't post about it and he said that Bill doesn't so he doesn't.

Do you see what I have to work with here?

Episode 30 is now live for those that do care. The full crew was still on hiatus with Danielle out sailing the Caribbean seas however we had Tom Chick and Michael Barnes sitting in so that we could talk about Metro 2033 and ask if it was better than Half-Life 2. We never got to a definitive answer on that topic which is my fault as host but you can add that to the list of failings as host. It's a long one. Here are some points about the show to peruse as/before you listen.

Along with being our 30th show, this marks six months in the podcasting business for us. When we first started this, had you told us we'd be doing it six months from now I think we all would have laughed at you. Then you would have gone to prom any way and ended up killing us in a blood soaked, telekinetic nightmare.
We had to go with the Skype feed as some of the individual audio tracks were messed up. I give Todd shit all of the time but his insistence on audio redundancy has saved this show on more than one occasion. The day we lose an entire show is coming and when it happens we'll have Todd act out Dr. Horrible in its entirety in the show's place. We all know he can do it.
Michael Barnes is, hands down, my favorite guest on the show because the man is an absolute force of nature once he gets started. On the one hand, it's like trying to corral a tornado but when you see someone so passionate about games, it's hard not to get caught up in it. I want to make a ringtone of him saying "Gordon Freeman!". It would probably also act well as one of those super-sonic mole deterrents.
I'm glad to have Tom back on the show because Tom is one of those people who makes you better at your job simply by talking to him. It's very easy in this job to get caught up in the "fun" and think a game is great because it's fun, and fun certainly has it's place, but Tom makes you think about why you like the things you say you like. I remember walking back from E3 with him and talking about Epic Mickey and when I told him what it was about, his response was "So it's just a platformer?" He wasn't dismissive, just probing to get me to think about what it was about the game that I liked. We don't have enough people like that in this business, and I include myself in that deficiency.
Speaking of Tom, I'm so glad Todd asked Tom his thoughts on being a contrarian. It is easy to remember the high profile dislikes of any reviewer and come to the incorrect assumption that they don't like anything. I know I've done it as I'm sure we all have. Getting Tom's take on things was great.
Since recording the show I have played Bonnie's last mission in Red Dead Redemption and I still don't get it. I guess Miss McaFarlane just didn't resonate as deeply with me as she did with others. Now that guy who likes to sleep with horses? We need more of him.
As I mentioned before, I we didn't come to a consensus on which game was better, Metro 2033 or Half-Life 2 but that wasn't really the point. It's like when the news tells you that there's an item in your house that can kill you and they mean some obscure food item that causes cancer and not the rack of unsecured shotguns. In talking about Half-Life 2 though I remembered how much I ended up not liking that game by the end of it. The two episodes afterwards didn't help much as playing Strider tag was an exercise in supreme frustration. I wish I had liked Metro 2033 more so that I could see these awesome set pieces and this amazing ending. I guess Metro was my Alan Wake in that I'd like to see the story but I don't want to have to play it to do so. For the record, I was able to make that distinction without calling Metro a "piece of shit." Not that anyone on the show did that with Alan Wake. No sir.

I think that's enough blathering for one episode. I don't want to wear out my welcome on the first day. If you like the show, don't forget that you can subscribe to it as well as rate and review it in iTunes. All hail the Apple hegemony. I have no idea what episode 31 will be about. Open world gaming maybe? It's only Monday. Way too early to be thinking about what Thursday's show will be about. Check back on Thursday, say thirty minutes before recording.

Howdy

2010-08-09T10:57:00.002-04:00

Hello all.

This is Brandon. I'm going to be writing here with Bill and Todd however right now I'm not sure how my name will appear in the opening credits. "Special guest", "featuring" or and "Brandon as Brandon." The agents are working out all of the money details. You know how it is.

So, yeah, a little about me. I work for Bill at GameShark, I have now shared two hotel rooms with Todd and we're all on the same podcast together. I'm married, have two kids, two dogs and live north of Atlanta in a house that is still bereft of ponies. It wounds me to this day. I play a lot of games, probably more than Todd and Bill combined, however with the exception of Tiger Woods for the Wii, not a one of them is a sports game. I don't know anything about college football and, to be quite honest, don't understand the allure one bit. Then again, my school was better known for hockey however I don't care about that either. I am a Redskins fan thereby completing the "Shitty NFL Trifecta" that Todd and Bill had previously 2/3 full.

I'm glad to be here and am honored that Bill and Todd would allow me to be a part of this site. I had my own site for some time but it eventually fell apart due to lack of use and I look forward to bringing the same slacker mentality here. Seriously though, maintaining a site on a daily basis is a tough thing, especially when you're only doing it for "fun". Working with these two clowns will allow me to flex my writing muscle yet not feel like I'm letting anyone down by not posting daily. Plus, this way I get to make fun of Todd publicly.

That Todd, what a gullamaroon.

Browns 38 49ers 21

2010-08-08T11:41:00.002-04:00

Another enjoyable game this morning as I got a much needed win against San Fran. If you have been following some of my games of late I have been in a huge offensive slumber which I awoke from today on the coast.

The stats

Grasu (49er rookie QB, with middling ratings) 15/36 242 1 INT (43 of those yards on a last dribe hail mary)

McCoy 13/24 174 1 TD. McCoy's best game in many a week.

Gore: 20 carries 155 yards. Could not stop him. He broke off a 79 yard run in the 2nd quarter.

Harrison: 20 for 162. Finally got Jerome back on track. First play of the game he went for a 59 yard sweep.

The games are starting to show a lot of variety which I love. This was the complete opposite of the Titans game I played the other night. A total 180.

After 10 games (I am 7-3 right now, in a 3 way tie with Pitt and Baltimore) here are some AFC team rankings for the Browns. Remember this is the 2011 season, not this year.

1st in Team Rushing. Again, don't chuckle at this. The left side of my OLine is brilliant, Thomas, Steinbeck and Mack are all 90+ rated linemen and I run behind them constantly and Harrison only lacks tackle breaking and awareness but with me controlling him he's a top 5 back with 90+ ratings in speed, acceleration, etc. The little dude is hard to catch.
9th in the AFC in passing. McCoy is having an OK year. I have been sacked 22 times in 10 games, btw.
LAST in Pass Defense. Yeah...sorta suck but we are getting better as I am learning what defenses we are better at running. I'm also doing a lot of zone in the middle of the field because the AI loves those over the middle plays.
8th in rush defense. I love not being #1 here. The AI can run the ball in this game. No doubt. And my only real beast on the Dline is Rogers. Everyone else is a 70 something rated player.
However we are 2nd in sacks. I tend to blitz a lot...which also contributes to me being last in pass defense...
Finally a huge reason I am 7-3? +10 in turnovers. We have recovered 14 fumbles in 10 games.

Anyway, I don't know if I will be able to get the review posted on Tuesday because I still have some online testing to do. But as for solo play I am reaching the conclusion that while I still wish the feature set was a bit different the on the field play is growing on me at a pretty fast clip.

Titans 24 Browns 10

2010-08-06T23:49:00.003-04:00

So...tonight Madden 11 received "some" sort of patch. No idea what it was (going to try and get some info from EA).

BUTafter said update...

I was DESTROYED by Tennessee. My 10 points? 7 were off a Joe Haden INT Touchdown.

This was with my custom slider set (see below posts)

Colt McCoy's stats?

12/31 98 yards 3 INT
Young was 15/30 203 yds 2 TS 1 INT
Johnson was a beast: 21 carries 120 yards
Harrison was a non factor (first time that has EVER happened in Madden 11) -- 45 yards for the game.

Whoa.

Now, if you have followed my games thus far you will see I never have been stoned like this by the AI defense. Granted this was with a heavy slider lean to the AI but...wow.

This was either a serious case of The Placebo Effect or that update did something to he DB AI because no one was open all game long.

Browns 23 Bengals 6

2010-08-05T15:35:00.003-04:00

The scores are finally starting to come down. The Slider Serum is working.

This was also the first game in a long while that I held a CPU QB to under 300 yards in the air and the first game that the CPU failed to score a TD. Ochocinco was hurt for this game, and that had a huge impact.

Here's the stat breakdown:

Palmer 21/27 255 yards 0 TD 1 INT (1 fumble off a sack)
McCoy 16/32 189 2 TD 2 INT

Benson 16/52 (1 fumble)
Harrison 23/88
Hardesty 8/28

Not too bad.

NCAA 11 Live Tuned.

2010-08-05T13:39:00.003-04:00

I find it utterly amazing that after all these years we are back living in the world of post release patches. It's 1999 all over again. Time to fire up High Heat Baseball!

I am not complaining. Better to fix/tweak/improve a game after release rather than just moving on to the next version. So, EA -- well done. Post release support is a great, great way to garner a more positive relationship with users.

I'm still in Madden Test Mode but if you want to know what's going on with NCAA.

Read this. And smile. We will most certainly get impressions up as soon as possible.

Maybe I can even get Todd to do something. (Zing!)

Madden 11 Post Slider Tweaking

2010-08-04T12:41:00.011-04:00

Before I get started I want to address a few comments from people both here and on other forums re: my earlier impressions.

Kickoffs. Yes, I get that in years past returning kicks/punts was too easy and really I'd rather have it be too hard than too simple. But the fact is that returning kickoffs, unless there is some trick of which I am unaware, is way too hard. Josh Cribbs, for me, is nothing more than a below average WR in my game. I am averaging, through 9 games, 21 yards per return. I have yet to return a kick 30 yards. I may as well take a knee every time I receive a kick. I don't like that.
The halfback screen/pass play. This is not a "money" play as it is usually defined. A money pay, to my way of thinking, is a play that works every single time you call it. That is not the case here. On default settings it IS way too easy to get a 7-10 yard gain by calling nothing but flat passes to the HB. That Oakland game was case in point. But it's not a guarantee that it'll be open. The issue is that the AI doesn't react to the fact that I am calling nothing BUT that play. Thankfully, after tweaking sliders this is a bit better than default.

OK the post slider impressions:

I have come to this conclusion. If not for the sliders, I would not be playing Madden 11 this year. (Offline anyway). With the tweaks I think it a much better game.
The item that now stands out to me most all of, regardless of slider adjustments, is defensive back awareness..or ability..or something. It's just not right. I am playing with Cleveland, and I am in year two of a franchise and my corners all have 85 ratings. Joe Haden is an 85 even though his awareness is still in the tank. Brown's awareness is good though -- 87. But I see Brown and Eric Wright making such insane movements in the secondary that you have to ask, "Dude, wtf are you doing?"

Example: I am playing Indy and Manning is on the verge of a 400 yard day. After each pass over the middle which is seemingly WIDE OPEN all game long I start watching replays. Eric Wright (84 AWR, 80-something man to man skill) is in man coverage with Gonzo. Gonzo runs a simple 12 yard In route. Wright is completely befuddled by this. He takes a step in the wrong direction, then stops all together, then races to catch up. 15 yards later, first down Indy. This happened over and over again in my game vs the Colts. And this was with Human DB Reaction Time at 80.

Same game I run a streak with my rookie, a WR named Abram who is no joke. Indy is in a zone. Now, on this play I did not "flood" the zone, I had Abram run a streak by his lonesome along the right hash. The CB let him go as he was playing shallow. Bob Sanders has the responsibility of picking up my WR. Sanders is totally flummoxed by this. He stops backpedaling and basically lets Abram race right past him. Sanders has to start running again but by that time my 92 Speed WR is lone gone. 70 yards later -- TD. This was with CPU AWR at 90.

Things like this are frustrating. And they happen a lot more often than they should. Perhaps this is just the way the game has players either beat coverage from time to time -- it just *looks* incredibly silly when players are seemingly walking around with a case if head trauma. This has to be a tough thing to code, in fairness. You don't want DBs to never screw up. They ALL get beat in real life. But I think the weird DB behavior is a bit more than that.
You know what I'd like to see football games do? Automate FG kicks the same way basketball games automate FTs. I HATE FG kicking in football games because it simply too easy. Madden is no different. I am 11/11 on FG kicks in my franchise. The only way I miss is if it's too far and I don't get 100% power. Just let me press a button and watch Phil Dawson try to make a 45 yard FG...it's more exiting and more realistic than me pressing two buttons.
OK so -- slider tweaks. For me they may save the game despite the wonky DB stuff. Passes in the flats are not "as money" now thanks to a high DB reaction time. The pass rush is better, the run game isn't as easy as it is on default All Pro, and more passes are dropped and jarred loose.

Here's some stats for you:

My previous game vs Baltimore -- when I got JOBBED (see below post). I lost in OT 20-17. Colt McCoy had a great first half (McCoy by year two, for me anyway, is a 77 OVR with precise short accuracy and long accuracy akin to Stevie Wonder) and could do NOTHING in the 2nd. Harrison was rolling early only to get stuffed in the 2nd half as well. My defense played great until they really needed to...very "Browns like."

McCoy was 21/37 for 211 yards 1 TD 0 INT
Harrison had 87 yards on 23 carries (maybe 20 yards 2nd half)
Rice 65 yards on 19 carries
Flacco 18/38 301 yards 1 TD 1 INT

Next game vs Indy which I won 31-28 (I am 5-2 with the Browns at this point, but 1-2 after the slider tweaks). If I played a season on Default All Pro McCoy would throw for 5,000 yards.

I won because Indy turned the ball over on its first 2 possessions which I turned into 10 points. Stats:

Manning 23/41 406 yds 2 TD 1 INT
McCoy: 16/33 187 1 TD 1 INT
Harrison: 23 carries 132 yds (Don't laugh. Harrison has GREAT ratings. 90+ where it counts)
Addai: 55 yds on 13 carries

Fun games, no doubt. Flawed in areas, but at least I am back to having a really good time with the game
The slider tweaks. Now -- I am not going to give you specific numbers because your mileage will vary with any set of sliders but this is what, I think, you should focus on when looking to tweak the gameplay:
QB Accuracy: Both CPU and Human need to be lowered. My human accuracy is VERY low (around 20)
WR Catching: lowered. Quite a bit actually for both (35- range I think)
Pass Blocking: Human I have increased. CPU I have decreased slightly.
Pass rush, slightly increased.
Human and CPU DB Reaction time. Boost a lot. A whole lot.
Interceptions: lower these both a lot. (I'm at around 20 for both human/cpu)
Tackling: slight boost to both
Block shedding: slight boost to both
Auto Subs. Raise these a bit for most positions otherwise your backup HB and Dlinemen will rarely if ever play.
More later as I continue on with the 2011 Browns season.

More Madden This Evening

2010-08-03T16:02:00.002-04:00

Played a few more games with some major slider tweaks with some (mostly) promising results.

However -- gotta admit this pissed me off and it takes a lot anymore to really do that with a videogame. And I know this is an OLD issue with this game.

So I'm playing the hated Ravens and they have no time outs left at midfield. They throw a 25 yard pass to Heap over the middle and he's tackled at my 25 -- he goes down with :08 seconds left. They go to a highlight of the play and come back and they are all nice and tidy and lined up for a FG.

Um, what?

There is no way in hell that they could get down the field 25 yards and get the FG team set up -- even if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they spiked the ball. (they didn't) With 8 seconds left? Uh uh. Not going to happen. The half should have ended right there but no..they kick a FG and take the lead at half.

Stupid Ravens.

But can you imagine losing a playoff game to something like this? Oh the humanity!

That Starcraft 2 Thing

2010-08-03T10:54:00.003-04:00

For my money, Tom Chick is the best writer we have in the games industry. Reviews like this are the reason why.

Enough Of This Madden Stuff

2010-08-02T19:43:00.003-04:00

The big news (for me) today is that FFG is making another Civilization boardgame.

Sold. Absolutely sold and I hope Mr. Wilson does it right.

Also, if you have not played the 100% FREE game on Steam called Alien Swarm -- wtf is wrong with you? Seriously. Go. Right now. It's free.

Ok as for Madden I will be testing the slider tweaks tonight. I'm scheduled to play Jacksonville in week 5 so we'll see how it goes.

Early Madden Impressions

2010-08-02T11:06:00.001-04:00

Before we get started I need to throw out a few important items of note.

This is not a review. I realize that there are going to be people who read this, run off to their forum of choice, and tell people, "This guy has a Madden 11 review posted on his blog!" I do not have a review posted on a blog. These are impressions after playing the 'retail' game over the past 3-4 days. The embargo for game impressions lifted today so I am simply sharing with you my early observations. Basically I am trying to get across to you that this is a not a review.
When in the main menu screen a bit of text scrolls across the bottom saying something to the effect of, "Welcome to the Madden 11 Beta. In game content is not final." What does this mean, exactly? Well, could mean a lot of things. Could mean we get a day 1 patch much the same way NCAA 11 did. Could mean nothing at all. But I think it important to state this up front -- what I am seeing in this current build may or may not be what you see on August 11.
I have not been able to play any online. The new team play, etc. is as of yet still untested.

OK, so, Madden 11. Rather than just write long winded paragraphs of info (AKA: What Todd does) I figured I'd break this down into the stuff I like and the stuff I don't. Since this is not a review I can get away with some amateur formatting.

The Stuff I like about Madden 11:

The run game.

In fact I like the run game more in Madden than I do NCAA 11. It's easier to see holes develop and the shedding of tackles feels a bit tighter and less random. I've had to make a few slight slider adjustments but I am getting very good rushing results with Cleveland. By "very good" I don't mean tons of yards, but Harrison can run behind Joe Thomas with pretty good success, which is fine by me as Harrison remains the most under rated HB in football IMO. EA rated him correctly.
Pass rush.

I see a lot of unpredictability here which is very important. Some blitzes work, others don't. I have yet to find a 'money blitz' which is automatic. Again, ratings in Madden matter quite a bit, especially in the blocking game. The same can be said for the game in the trenches in general. I can tell a huge difference when controlling Shaun Rogers compared to, well, basically every other lineman the Browns have.
CPU Offense.

The Browns defense has "issues" and this is reflected in how the CPU picks apart my schemes. I simply have a hell of a time stopping anyone. Hines Ward caught 12 passes for 110 yards in my last game. This also shows you that the AI will try to find its reliable players. Play against Arizona and Fitzgerald will get a lot more opportunities than Breaston. The CPU run game is also very solid on default All Pro settings. Again, my last game was against Pitt and they ran for 110 yards collectively. Love that.
Play by Play

For the most part, I like Gus Johnson as an addition to the team. He brings the added excitement that EA was looking for, no doubt. This is the first year with Gus so you should expect a few gaffes here and there. They need to tone down the Old Spice pimpage, for example. I don't mind ad plugs at all, but 4 times a game? Gus really loves that stuff. Also, they need to edit out the lines where Collinsworth calls him "Tom" (referencing Tom Hammond from season's past.) Still, Gus gets excited on big plays, and I like that quite a bit.
Franchise Stats

Very little chrome has been added to franchise mode. First off, I don't care what anyone tells you, the Extra Point stuff is in the game. It's pretty much just like last year but it's there. Most of the work on franchise mode has been under the hood in the form of stat tweaks, new hand made rookies, contract values, salary demands, and free agent factors. I have not fully tested this (the stats do look better in the 1 season I simmed). But if you are looking for a massive franchise mode update, this is not it.
Locomotion

If you have played NCAA 11 you'll know what this means. I personally love this. This makes tackling and running feel very realistic.
Bad passes

I love it when a QB simply misses a receiver. For me, this is like walks in a baseball game. Few games really do it but when they do I get all happy inside.

OK, so what's not to love?

In some ways, Madden 11 feels like a Focus Test game, whereas Madden 10, even with its blemishes, felt like a game designed by a team that went in the direction they wanted to go in. Let's take Gameflow. This feature is actually pretty neat. It's basically a more realistic way to "Ask Madden" so instead of calling base plays Gameflow looks at play style, and the new Game Planning to determine which plays to call. A defacto Offensive/Defensive Coordinator. Cool idea. But it's clearly there because apparently so many people use the Ask Madden feature over calling plays themselves. (Which I find utterly shocking.)

Again I have no issue at all with the idea of Gameflow as a feature. It's a cool idea but it's one of Madden 11's MAJOR bullet point features -- arguably the #1 new feature in the entire game. That sort of flies in the face of the design ideas we saw popping up last year. This, to me at least and you are certainly free to disagree, feels like it should be a 2nd tier feature rather than the game seller. A feature that is a "hey by the way...this is pretty neat" instead of the "you need Madden 11 because of this." Because, frankly, you don't.

Gameflow/planning also has some issues, especially on defense. This is not at all Madden specific but to really call plays effectively a coach needs to adjust on the fly. Sure you can have your scripted plays, your plays designed based on down and distance, but every game of football is its own self contained drama and coaches always adjust to what is happening on the field. If a team's WR is killing me -- I am going to adjust to try and take him out of the game. If a HB is getting 5, 6, 7 yards a pop I'm going to move more guys in the box. Gameflow doesn't account for this -- especially when playing the CPU. Again no game has effectively done this, but a big part of game planning and play calling is trying to take away a team's #1 strength and adjusting your plan based on the flow of a particular game. Madden's AI (in truth every football game's) needs to do this for Gameflow/Game Planning to be a really great feature which will please both hardcore Madden fans and the guys who simply Ask Madden what to do on 3rd and 12.
Returning kicks is futile. Using the Browns, thus Josh Cribbs, who is arguably the best return man in the history of the NFL -- I have yet to return a kickoff past the 30. The reason? My guys won't block their guys. Cribbs is the man but rarely can he avoid six players ganging up on him. Punts aren't much better. In fairness NCAA 11 has issues with this too.
Defensive AI behavior needs work. I have discovered that to beat the AI all you need to do is throw screens and passes in the flat to your HB. The AI just doesn't cover them well. Sometimes they do, but it's just because they got lucky and called the right defensive play (usually a flat zone.) Need proof this is a problem?

The Browns played Oakland (default All Pro) and my HB (Harrison) caught 38 passes for 287 yards and 4 TDs. Now, at what point should the AI decide "Hey wait he's calling the same two plays every down. Perhaps we should counter that?" It never did. This is such a frustrating issue because in order to play vs the AI I have to hamstring myself and not call screens or passes in the flat -- or if I do I have to limit the number of times I call those plays, and it's not easy to ignore that option when it's 3rd and 5 and you desperately need a first down. This will affect online play less than offline, but for solo players this is a biggie.
Along these same lines, you will need to play with CPU Defensive back Awareness at 100. Otherwise you are going to absolutely torch the AI defense. Again, I am using the Browns. I'm not using the 1981 Chargers here and I should not score 59 points on...anyone. (This was when playing on default All Pro, FWIW).
As a result I have already lowered QB Accuracy to 25, WR catching to 40, and raised CPU DB AWR to 100 in order to make the game more challenging when passing because unless the pass rush gets to me, I'm going to complete the pass on default settings. have yet to play a lot of games with these new settings -- results coming soon.
There are way, way, way too many instances when the pass rusher hits the QB and he throws a wounded duck in the dirt for an incompletion. How often do you see that in a real game? A few times, maybe? In Madden you'll see this several times a game. In fact I'd say a fair number of CPU incomplete passes are due to this. The QB should either try and avoid the rush or just see the guy coming and throw it away or maybe even force a pass. This is really a mild complaint but I still think it needs looked at.
The idea that you will play a game of Madden in 30 minutes is true...if playing on default settings. If you are reading this blog you most likely do not do that. You most likely, like me, play with 13 to 15 minute quarters with the Fast Clock option turned on so that you get a realistic number of plays. If you do that expect anywhere from 60-70 minutes per game. This is with Gameflow turned on, btw.
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The Strategy Pad. I'm getting used to it but I don't understand the need for it. Was the old system that confusing? For example: before if I wanted to put my DBs in tight coverage I simply pressed "Y" then pressed down on the Dpad. Essentially two button presses. Now I have to press the pad, select 'Coverage', then select 'Pressure'. Three button presses. Before idf I wanted to slide my Dline, it was a bumper press and a Dpad press. Now its Dpad, DLine, and Pinch/Spread. How exactly is this more efficient?
Big Plays. There are simply too many. In my last game vs the Steelers I had plays of 53, 59, 67, and 79. (3 passes and 1 run). Will sliders alter this? Perhaps. But this is a pretty common thread I am seeing each game I play. Big plays are exciting but right now the idea of playing a game of Madden with 110-120 plays a game and the score being 17-10 ...is unlikely.

I'll be testing some online and head to head games as soon as I get the chance as well as the new slider adjustments and I'll post the results later. I'm also going to sim a few seasons to see what the CPU roster management looks like.

Have to admit, I chuckled

2010-08-01T12:32:00.002-04:00

From Kotaku's story:

Another large patch coming by mid-August for NCAA Football 11 will address some notorious balance issues with recruiting in the game's Dynasty modes, and deliver "live tuning" for necessary gameplay adjustments without waiting for a dedicated patch. Although this is also being addressed directly in the patch, a big key will be its ability to fine-tune dynasty recruiting AI, because many have noticed bot-controlled powerhouses coming in exceptionally underweight with repeated lackluster recruiting classes.

Ok, that sounds goovy. Kotaku was pointed to the EA Blog and posted its story. Of course that isn't even the real problem (Lackluster recruiting classes). But that's ok.

Of course Kotaku is apparently not one of the "many" as those pesky and 'notorious' Dynasty issues are MIA in their review. (written by the same guy, btw) Funny how that works.

OK to be fair Kotaku isn't alone. No one else said anything about it either, and really I don't know why I let this get under my skin the way it does. I'm old enough and have been around the block enough times to just let this flow under the bridge and move on.

We ALL miss things in reviews. I have written reviews in the past and then noticed a major issue a week later and it leaves a lump of pain in the pit of my stomach. I try and take this shit seriously but when I see news posts from a MAJOR game site talking about these important game issues like they were on top of the story all along -- I have to admit it's rather "irksome."

Because the "many" who noticed those issues? The gamers. The people who bought the game primarily off of reviews by websites like Kotaku. The critics absolutely failed them.

Anyway, that's my last rant on the subject, I promise.

The good news? EA is fixing the dynasty mode problems and if they work -- this will get a ridiculous amount of playtime this fall and winter. And I guess in the long run that's what matters.

Don't forget --- Madden Monday. We'll have a lot of impressions from the front line of the retail build.

Madden 11 Day at the Feisty Weasel

2010-07-30T10:57:00.004-04:00

Happy Friday.

So what are your plans this weekend? A little house cleaning? Reruns of Top Chef? The wife making you pull weeds from the garden?

Yeah, sorry about that.

I'll be playing Madden 11, which arrived about 10 minutes ago. OK that was mean.

The plan, in case you were wondering, is to post impressions when the embargo on said impressions lifts which appears to be August 2nd for "final impressions" but full on reviews are embargoed until August 10th.

So come Monday you can expect me to start talking Madden with the published review ready for the 10th.

In the meantime, be sure to check out the Madden 11 Q&A with Ian Cummings that I just posted at GameShark.

Have a good weekend.

NCAA 11 Update in the Works

2010-07-29T17:28:00.003-04:00

First off, the number of people that have read the blog over the past week, linked from various sites, continues to amaze me. You know Todd we really ought to do a Google Ad Sense thing every July.

It IS discouraging that so many came from a Michigan blog and none came from the (popular) OSU site I post on. Thanks guys. Sheesh.

So, sounds like we may get an update to help alleviate some of the issues in NCAA 11.

Here's proof.

Money quote, "Our first LTP ( LIVE TUNING PACKAGES) should be arriving next week along with detailed notes on what the update contains. I can tell you that based on the collective feedback we've received, we will be carefully down-tuning the athleticism of defensive lineman and reduce the number of impressive picks by the big guys. We're also looking to address a few important dynasty progression and recruiting issues."

Will that fix address kickers as well as progression? We'll see. But at least they seem aware...

The NCAA 11 Review

2010-07-29T10:32:00.002-04:00

Late, sure, but hey...if you read the blog you know how I feel by now.

It proved to be a hard game to assign a "grade."

Faking the Moon Landing

2010-07-28T11:05:00.001-04:00

This vid, which I caught at Universe Today, details the plan to fake the moon landings. It’s got a few good chuckles in it, so I’m embedding it here. Ah, British comedy for the win.

The Madden 11 Q&A

2010-07-27T16:52:00.001-04:00

Ian sent back the answers to my questions and you can expect to see that online at GameShark this Friday. Good stuff, too.

Wow

2010-07-27T10:40:00.002-04:00

Have to admit, didn't see that coming.

Hope he gets his life in order.

The Art of Reviewing Sports Games

2010-07-26T13:05:00.002-04:00

This week we’ve got what just may be out best episode yet of Jumping the Shark. First off, we spend nearly an hour talking with Jon-Paul Dyson, the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and Vice President for Exhibit Research and Development at the Strong National Museum of Play with which ICHEG is associated. There’s some really good stuff in there.

After that, however, we get some full-on Abner rage; not over the problems with NCAA ‘11’s Dynasty mode (although we do talk about that), but how not one of the reviews listed on Metacritic mention them. I’m not going to elaborate much on that, but it’s good stuff. What I do want to get into is just what a pain in the ass it is to review sports games.

It really is. I hate reviewing sports games. I’ll do it just for the sake of having something to review and because I don’t think I completely suck at it, but sports games may just be the least fun games to have to analyze from a critical perspective.

I mean just reviewing the on the field/court/ice content is challenging enough because if you’re not a flat out expert in the represented game somebody is going to know more than you and tell you about six different problems you either didn’t see or didn’t care about.

Despite the sporting nature of this blog, I actually know relatively little about sports. I like sports. I know the rules, the positions, team composition, and all that jazz. But if you put me in front of a basketball game, I’m not gonna be able to tell you if it plays a *smart* game of basketball. I have a decent sense of what a good hoops game feels like, but I can’t tell you if they have the 76ers playing the proper offensive or defensive sets. I can’t tell you if they have the right backup center coming in for the Bobcats or if he’s setting up where he should in the paint.

And even if you do know that stuff, the presence of gameplay sliders that affect vitually every single aspect of how a sports game plays, makes any quick-look impression moot. Are NCAA ‘11 sack totals too high? Sure. Can you fix it with a quick slider adjustment? Absolutely. Do I know I can fix it with a quick slider adjustment without putting an hour into every single tweak of each slider? Hell no. And that’s the easy stuff to look at because it comes out just from playing the game.

It gets so much more complicated when you have to start thinking about all the poorly-documented off-the-field stuff these games have. When I reviewed MLB: The Show this year I was at complete loss for how to talk about this stuff. I only have so many hours to play a game. I can’t put 5-10 hours each into Road to The Show, Franchise, Online Franchise, etc. It’s just not doable. Does Road to the Show break down after five seasons? I don’t think so, but I haven’t got a clue. And if it does, and I’m playing as a Pitcher, that doesn’t mean if I play as a SS I’m going to have the same problem.

Baseball is stats heavy as it is, but it goes so far beyond that. Am I really going to test how well the AI manages three levels of minor leagues where players can take five years to develop into major leaguers? How do I begin to know how TV contracts affect the league or how improving my facilities reduces my team’s injury rate? The permutations of things that can affect or even ruin the experience is so long as to be ridiculous.

Now, all this is not to defend the plethora of NCAA ‘11 reviews that completely missed that by year two of a dynasty half the best teams in the nation or running out kickers who struggle to make extra points. The fact that teams in Dynasty mode fall apart three to five seasons down the road is not that difficult to find with just a little effort. It’s just that it requires different things of a reviewer to find this stuff than does reviewing other types of games. In most other genres you just play the games. In sports games you have to spend hours upon hours just running tests, looking at stats, comparing them to online stats databases.

In other words, you have to spend time researching instead of just playing and I think that’s where a lot of reviewers, and the editors who assign them, fail when it comes to handling sports games. It’s not fun work to review these games and the time investment to do it is probably not worth what a reviewer is getting paid to do it, if they’re getting paid at all. And even for the guys (or gals) who do a credible job of attempting to thoroughly play and test a sports game, you are sure to miss something big that someone buying and playing the game for fun will catch inside of a week. There’s just too much stuff.

It’s tempting to look at sports games, something that has a real world analog, and say that it should be easy to analyze them and come up with an accurate, thorough piece of criticism. In reality, though, I think sports games are among the most difficult genres to review. The only genre I can think of that I find more challenging is strategy games and that’s mostly because I’m an idiot who struggles to beat Civ IV on the Prince difficulty. But that’s a post for another day.

My Michigan NCAA ‘11 Dynasty

2010-07-22T16:42:00.001-04:00

Okay, so Bill is pretty much on top of every facet of the game at this point, so this post mostly serves as another perspective – the non-die-hard’s perspective. It’s actually been so long (somewhere in the three year range) since I’ve played either Madden or NCAA that I’ve practically forgotten how to play the game. This was obvious when we got some hands-on time at E3 this year, but it was drilled home even more when I played a couple of exhibition games last week and I couldn’t pass or run the option (something I’ve never done) to save my life.

If you listen to the podcast you know this already, but upon starting up my dynasty I actually took the humiliating step of knocking the on-field difficulty down to Varsity. For a guy who started playing this series when it was still available on the PC (circa ‘98?), that’s a hard pill to swallow.

Two shutouts later, against UConn and Notre Dame, and I’m feeling like I’m getting back to my usual mediocre self. Last night I dialed it back up to All American, but since Michigan’s third game this year is against Massachusetts (NCAA used some made up D2 school, FCS East) that ended up not being much of a test case (70-0; ouch). I’ve got games coming up against Bowling Green and Michigan State, the latter of the two should be a more interesting gauge of where I’m at since MSU pretty well whooped me in a pair of AA exhibition games.

Anyway, as Bill has noted, on the field, this game is so much better; especially relative to the last time I played it. I love running the option, although I seem to be having a hard time gaining yards on Read Option plays where I keep the ball with the QB. I’ve mostly been going with Tate Forcier at QB, but I’ve subbed in Denard Robinson a lot and the difference between the two when running with the ball is astounding. (I tweaked Denard’s accuracy just a little bit so that he doesn’t embarrass himself throwing the ball; I’m an eternal optimist that way.)

I really love the feeling of weight and speed between different types of players. Last night I ran an option play to my FB (Mark Moundros; 70 speed) where he shrugged off a couple of hits and rumbled down the field for a score. It looked way, way different (as it should) compared to when I took 91 speed Vincent Smith for a 50-yard score later in the game.

As the passing game “slows down” for me and I find myself able to get into a comfort zone with it, I’m really starting to appreciate how well it plays. The fact that quarterbacks can and will miss on throws and the fair balance of interceptions to defender drops (it’s drop heavy, but it stops interception totals from being insane) is gravy. I like the way the secondary reacts to a ball in the air, which is to say, the presence of robo-secondary guys who know exactly where to go the second the QB throws the ball is very much muted. I like the fact that I can control a D-lineman without feeling suctioned to an O-lineman and that I can actually threaten or get to the QB. (I had ridiculous sack totals on Varsity; am hoping those go down on AA.) I love that I feel like I can run the ball effectively both between the tackles and to the outside.

On the field, right now, I adore this game.

Off the field, I find myself wishing more and more that the browser-based Online Dynasty functions were more robust (depth charts, etc.) and more stable. There are times it work flawlessly, and times, like this morning, when I can’t even log in. Worse are the times when I’m doing recruiting calls and the page crashes and I lose both the minutes and effect of having made the call. That *cannot* happen. I know it’s beta and you expect some instability, but in that event you should just have to re-do the call. Losing from your allotted phone time, which has happened to me four times over four recruiting weeks, just isn’t acceptable.

It’s really a shame that the long term prospects of the Dynasty mode are so shoddy this year, because I could see myself sticking with it for the first time in a long, long time. At this point I’m enjoying myself enough to live with it for a season. I could even live with the issue of incompetent kickers. But if there’s not a patch to address the team regression issues Bill has brought up by the time I start season two, I may shelve it. There just isn’t much point for those of us who like to take a school through multiple seasons.

NCAA 11: The Year 2015

2010-07-22T09:41:00.007-04:00

Yikes.

I'm thinking dynasty mode needs a shade more development time. And that NCAA 11 needs a serious Dynasty Mode patch.

And it needs it ASAP.

EA is clearly trying. You can tell that the devs listened when people said teams were rated too close to one another, that freshmen came in and were way too good, that too many players ended up being 95+ rated, etc.

All of this is true and it did need to be addressed.

But now there are other (and IMO more serious) issues with this mode. EA has tried to fix an issue and ended up going too far the other way. There seems to be a little of the Madden Ratings stretch going on - more than I thought, really. But the ebb and flow of the dynasty mode looks -- off.

Let's take USC and Ohio State as two examples. Two Six Star programs according to the game (Michigan is too...which, well, we can argue that later)

Anyway.

By the year 2014 USC has fallen on hard times. As in...not being ranked in the top 25. They are still a 6 star program but the roster breakdown is just plain weird.

USC has five QBs. They have one Left Tackle. They have six at SS. They have one terribly shitty kicker. They have one TE. They have a TON of defensive ends. They have one MLB.

Thanks to this silly roster breakdown, USC is in serious trouble. I know this because during this test I was the defacto "coach" of the Ohio Bobcats. I randomly picked a team to start the dynasty with (I'm just simming this dynasty for testing purposes).

In 2014 I was offered the USC job. (I know...weird) When I was looking at the roster breakdown USC was in SHAMBLES. They had a QB rating of a B- but nothing else was rated higher than a C. And why?

Depth. They have no depth. There is a serious recruit planning issue going on here.

Relying on freshmen is a surefire way to get killed in this game, which is absolutely how it should be. But you have to have more than one MLB, right? And more than one LT. Injuries happen in this game and what happens what that 80 rated LT gets hurt? It ain't pretty.

Ohio State has fared a bit better. After winning the National Championship in 2010, OSU was left with a bare cupboard. Again, this is somewhat silly but it is what it is. OSU was left with Joe Bauserman as the starting QB as Pryor bolted for the league. OSU finished 2011 at 7-5.

This is a COMMON thread in NCAA 11. After a team makes a title run they fall off -- a lot more than they should. There isn't much "reloading" going on here.

Proof?

Michigan State won the Big10 in 2012. Texas A&M won the National Title.

It took OSU another year to get back to the top but they did, getting to the Rose Bowl in 2013. After that they again fell off the map a bit even though they came in as preseason #1 but was rated a B- across the board. (Well, sans the D+ special teams..)

There was no way OSU was winning the title in 2014 despite that #1 rank and they ended up 8-4.

I don't know how OSU did better than USC during this time period -- Texas hung around the top 10 a lot, too. But Wisconsin went from aces high in 2010 and 2011 to finishing 4-8 in 2012 and 5-7 in 2013 and 6-6 in 2014.

It's the recruiting. It's just plain odd.

Now, on the flip side let's look at the bad teams. The San Jose States of the world.

By 2014 here' s a quick breakdown of the overall team rankings. Actually, these are cribbed from Operation Sports; they are not mine but look almost identical to what I see:

A+: 0
A: 0
A-: 0
B+: 4
B: 8
B-: 11
C+: 17
C: 15
C-: 10
D+: 12
D: 16
D-: 27

So, what stands out here?

The lack of *any* A Rated teams should send off fire alarms in your head. But that's not the worst part.

55 teams are rated D+ or lower.

Basically half of all of college football.

To really drive this point home let's look at the end of 2014, when it's time for players to declare for the draft. To me this shines a big light on the real issue.

41 kids left early to go Pro. 11 Hbs, 2 QBs, 1 corner, 1 SS, several wide outs, no DTs, etc. That's kinda silly to begin with, but what's more jarring is this:

All 41 kids are from major conferences. All of them.

There was not ONE kid from as small school to go pro early. Why? They all suck. Plain and simple they are not rated high enough. The "worst" team to have a kid leave early was prolly Clemson, and that's hardly the school for the sisters of the poor.

But the small schools get zip. Because there's literally no talent.

So, take this with the frustrating "we have no kicker worth a damn" issue and you are left with a Dynasty Mode that is in serious need of some fixin' because this isn't just a "sim" issue -- it's an on the field issue because a human isn't going to recruit 5 QBs and no kicker, and not field a team with one MLB.

And when you play these CPU teams who are under manned? You crush them.

And EA has put a LOT of effort into Dynasty Mode this year from the Online Hub stuff to Story Builder right down the line and for it to fundamentally break down like this is a serious, serious problem. And for critics to ignore it is...frustrating.

Finally, let's look at the start of 2015.

I want to stress something before I finish this up -- I think EA is on the right track here. The idea is a good one, it's just that the screws need tightened. Here's what I mean:

USC is about to start 2015 with the following roster breakdown:

QB 3 players -- All of them are rated 71. Yes, this is low. But that's ok w/ me. Bigtime programs can have a bad recruiting class or two at a position. It happens. Ohio State is going to start a Senior QB rated a 98 by comparison. But OSU is also carrying 7 QBs. And there's part of the problem. The big schools are hoarding talent in certain areas -- mostly at QB, HB, and WR. Although Alabama has 7 MLBs on its roster. Why? I have no idea.

HB - 5 (82 is the starter's rating)
FB - 2 (91)
WR - 9 (91)
TE - 3 (80)
LT - 2(85)
LG - 1 (82)
C - 2 (90)
RG - 2 (87)
RT - 2(80)
LE - 4 (84)
RE - 2 (81)
DT - 4 (87)
OLB - 6 (88)
MLB - 2 (88)
CB - 4 (84)
FS - 2 (83)
SS 5 (80)
K - 1 (44, lol)
P - 1 (90)

This is fairly common throughout most teams. You'll see one or two positions with a TON of players and usually the offensive line is under recruited. In USC's case MLB, DT, OLine, Kicker, and Punter could use a few more bodies and 9 wide outs is just loopy. A lot of these guys will never see the field...and they don't always transfer and if they DO it's always to another top tier team -- and not a small school (which is usually what happens in college football because these kids want to see the field).

This means that the small schools -- and even the lesser teams in major conferences, are left with the bottom of the barrel. And the barrel is filled with grime.

Northwestern has 3 players rated in the 70s on its ENTIRE ROSTER. Northwestern isn't USC, but that's far, far too low when Ohio State entering 2015 has 8 players over 90.

So the idea of stretching the ratings are making the team talent spread out a bit is a solid one. But it's not right. What needs fixed via a patch? Here's my fixlist:

Make sure all teams carry more than 1 kicker and punter.
Make the kicker recruits a bit better to avoid having ANY team with a 40 rated kicker. At that rating they miss extra points like they're 35 yard FGs.
Recruits need to look at team depth charts and sign with a lesser school rather than be the #9 wide out on USC's roster.
Along these same lines, teams need to recruit more evenly by position. Carrying a total of 3 offensive guards isn't going to cut it when a team has 15 positions filled for HBs and WRs.

Small schools need to have enough talent in certain areas to at least make it interesting. It's mainly an Awareness issue. Players are fast enough but the AWR is so low that they are truly awful players with little chance to compete on any level. The Northwestern example above is apt here. Northwestern shouldn't be nearly as good as Ohio State but it shouldn't be like playing against my 9 year old daughter's soccer team. 55 teams should not be rated a D; that's insane.
Have players progress DURING the year. NCAA used to do this, now, it doesn't and it makes no sense. Your freshman rated a 60 at the start of the year is still a 60 by bowl season. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Finally, fix the bottom rung player recruits so that teams are not fielding players with the football IQ of my mother in law. After a few seasons you are going to see some magnificently AWFUL players in your dynasty. Dropped passes, fumbles, crazy throws...it's the bad news bears.

There's still time to patch this.

Let's hope they do it.

NCAA 11: Well, Shit

2010-07-21T20:16:00.002-04:00

As UConn sets up to play Cincy in order to secure a Bowl spot, I decided to do some solo dynasty testing to check the stat engine, recruiting, player progression...some of the nuts and bolts before starting to write my review.

And, well...shit.

I was really hoping that nothing would pop up that kicked the game in the nuts, and honestly I do not know how much this will upset people but I know it upsets me.

At the start of the game there are 12 teams rated in the "A" range. At the start of year two I only saw right. Which I thought was cool.

Then I saw why.

Special Teams.

Ohio State, USC, Texas, and countless other teams were rated a D or LOWER in Special Teams starting the 2011 season.

The reason?

Kickers. As in, the AI will rarely carry more than one. So, at the start of the 2010 season teams with a Sr. kicker must sign a freshmen kicker in order to field a team and they sign 1 star no names who can't kick a 40 yard FG. There are 70 roster spots and the game SHOULD have came preloaded with more than one kicker per team to avoid this from happening.

Ohio State played 2011 with a freshman kicker who connected on 43% of his field goal tries.

OSU lost 5 games.

USC's freshman kicker did better, nailing 55% of his kicks. If you're new to this whole football thing -- that's awful.

Last year in the real world of college football the worst kicker, percentage wise, was a kid from Akron who went 7 for 15 on the year. He was ranked last.

In NCAA 11, after the first season if you are playing a Dynasty, that's par for the course for teams who had to sign a new kicker.

Think this is trivial? Have you played a game against a kicker rated an overall 52? Let's just say it sort of takes the excitement of that last second 40 yard FG pretty much right out of the conversation.

More later as I sim into season 3 to see if these kids improve to the point of at least respectability.

Some NCAA 11 Black Eyes

2010-07-19T16:11:00.002-04:00

Thus far, we have been (shockingly) positive re: NCAA 11. If you have read my stuff over the years you know that I have had a love/hate relationship with this series ever since it went "next gen"

NCAA 11 is, I think, the best version since 2004. That's a lot of underachieving years in between but this version has turned an important corner.

But flawless?

No.

Here's a rundown of what is not to like about the latest version

The aforementioned play action pass bug. EA knows about it.
When AI controlled backs get in open space they cover the ball up like it's the 4th quarter and they will do anything but fumble. It looks ridiculous and slows down the runner.
Pursuit angles still suck. Here's a great example of this. Look at the video along the scroll bar at the bottom. My HB takes the handoff, make a nice hesitation move and a double spin, then is off to the races. The Rutgers CB (#4) has the angle and there's no way I should beat him to the end zone, but watch what he does. This issue has hurt this game for years -- I have no idea why it is so hard to fix.
I want you to watch the next video from that same game. I'm about to score on Rutgers on a toss sweep. Look what the AI defender does at the last moment. He basically "turns off" like an unplugged toaster. Now, I do not see these glitches every game but seeing them once is too many IMO.
The Online Dynasty Hub is AWESOME, but it's down WAY too much. It's very unreliable at the moment.
Clock management/late game playcalling still needs a rewrite.
Too much no huddle from the AI.
Penalties are still screwy. Pass Interference simply does not exist.
Use of subs isn't high enough for my taste.
I still want a fast clock to allow me to play 15 min quarters. (I currently use 9)
Simulated QB stats are still wonky. Look, I love Pryor but if the kid throws 27 TDs with 2 picks in 2010 I will streak down High Street naked wearing an I Love Michigan banner covering my naughty bits. And that's not gonna happen. Is it better than before? Yeah, but Pryor was 18 TDs 11 INTs in 2009 and the game sees 27/2 for 2010?

UConn Gets Big W

2010-07-17T11:03:00.002-04:00

I guess you can call a win against a winless SEC team a big win, right?

Well, that's what I am calling it.

Even though this Online Dynasty Hub thing is still buggy, I am utterly amazed at how cool it is. I said this on he podcast we recorded Thursday, but from now on every big budget sports game absolutely needs to have this feature. EA Sports MUST make this SOP for all of its games. It's brilliant in its idea -- it's just still a bit kinky.

So, yeah, we beat Vandy in a game that again highlights how the games tend to play out differently this year in NCAA.

I turned the ball over six times. Six. I was picked off four times and fumbled twice. That hasn't even been remotely close to how my other games have played out. Against Vandy I threw two really bad passes that were totally my fault. The other two?

One was deflected at the line, traveled about 12 yards and was picked off by a LB.

The other was on a post route and it hit my RS Freshman dead in the hands, bounced straight up in the air and the Vandy safety dove and picked it off. Totally cool.

How did I win after a six turnover Husky Meltdown?

I returned an INT for a TD (you can view the video of this play on the Dynasty page) and Vandy fumbled a kickoff which I turned into a TD a few plays later. That's 14 points that you can't count on every game.

Plus my run game was killing the Commodores. People are saying that running on AA lvl is tad easy and they may be right but you all need to know one very important thing -- the sliders this year work. (well, except the pass interference one..)

Do a test. Put the QB Accuracy slider at 0. Then go practice. It is EXACTLY what you should see. You will be lucky to complete a pass even without the defense on the field. Perfect. Sliders SHOULD be extreme. You will see a difference between a 50 and a 60 in this game, which makes tweaking things SO much easier.

You will also see a difference between a WR who can run routes and one that can't. You will see a huge difference in catching ability this year -- my RS Freshman WR needs to take a game off. The dude is a wreck. My SR? Catches almost everything near him.

After some slight modifications to the sliders -- I am no longer a 7 sack per game team.

The AI on AA lvl can run the ball -- with some slider tweaks. The Vandy HB had 19 carries for 85 yards and as a team Vandy ran for over 100. It still struggles when running a true spread and it sucks with misdirection plays but overall, it's competent.

And even though the game has issues it's this unpredictability that I find alluring -- I can't wait to play my next game and the last time I felt that way about an NCAA game?

NCAA 2004.

Yes, it has been that long.

Coming up next, the season sim stat test -- I forgot to do this last night.

Sacks and a patch

2010-07-16T10:13:00.002-04:00

First off, I haven't been reading any NCAA forums so I dunno how widespread this is but I have now witnessed first hand, two times, the "CPU QB fake hand-off stuck in an animation and drops back 30 yards" bug.

I will forgive any glitch once. Shit happens. But Todd saw it yesterday in a game he played and I have now seen it twice.

That's officially an issue.

On the plus side, UConn got its groove back against lowly Buffalo. My first two 50+ yard runs. Buffalo is awful.

Stat wise my games have looked shockingly realistic (boosting CPU running is important btw) sans one area: sacks.

The Huskies lead the NCAA in sacks -- I have 23 in four games. And my Dline isn't quite the Fearsome Foursome.

I haven't messed with sliders at all in this area but the issue is more QB Awareness -- QBs (especially bad ones) hold the ball WAY too long. This results in a slew of coverage sacks. Add to that the fact that the AI doesn't know to keep a HB in to block and you get a lot of pressures and a lot of sacks, which looks nice in the stat sheet but after a while it starts to get a little ridiculous.

NCAA 11: Some Good, Some Bad, and Some Bugs

2010-07-15T18:48:00.002-04:00

So, I am ruining the tradition that is Connecticut football. We lost to Temple. No BS, no gamey nonsense, I flat out lost to Temple.

Here, look.

A few caveats:

I am now playing on AA lvl but with boosted CPU run blocking and run ability and Human QB Accuracy at 45 (makes it tougher to throw on the run and lead receivers).

I wanted to see if boosting the CPU running (to 60 I think) helped and the Temple HB (their star player) responded with, well, look at the stats.

Still, losing is a sweet, sweet feeling. And on AA no less. Granted I am playing with a weakish team but Temple was rated slightly lower and they jumped out to a 13-0 lead and held on.

Against Akron my HB was dynamite and here he was held in check until the 4th. We're still dodging patterns to some degree and that's great, great news.

There is no more massive INT issue. Again, look at those stats. The Temple QB picked me apart to the tune of 291 yards on 27/38 passing and no INTs. I don't CARE if some should have been picked. I can extend my suspension of belief to accept that. I'd rather have my DBs drop picks than get 5 per game. Is it canned? Yep.

But so what?

If I can keep this level of competition with the CPU I will play this game a long, long time. I see bad passes, I see bad passes when under pressure, I see DROPS -- but not too many -- missed assignments, great catches, missed blocks...it's pretty wild stuff for an NCAA game. I'm waiting for that other shoe to kick me in the face.

That said -- there are issues.

Go back and click that link up there to view my Dynasty page. You can view images there and there is one video -- on the far right of that scroll bar. Watch that video and commence the snickering.

Yes, that's a bug. That was the CPU running what looks to be a play action screen near the goal line and then...well...yeah.

There were other eye catchers in that game. The old bug when a player's AI routine stops is back in effect here. It's like the player is a robot and someone pulls the plug and he stands still until you switch to control him. Annoying -- and needs a patch.

Penalties are still basically: offsides, false starts (after you boost it to 100), facemasks (keep this no higher than 55), holding (55 max here too) and...that's it. Defensive PI looks to be MIA yet again, which sucks.

I'm a tick leery of the late game playcalling, but I cannot say that with complete certainty.. Temple seemed oblivious that all they needed to do was take a knee in the 4th and was still running no huddle on me.

Yeah, I was shown up by TEMPLE.

Oh, and I will not forget.

Madden 11 Q&A

2010-07-15T12:59:00.003-04:00

Questions have been sent to EA PR who will then make sure they are hunky dory and send them on to Ian. Hopefully I'll have something soon. This is not the epic size Q&A we did last year, but hopefully will have some good nuggets.

Online Tools for NCAA ‘11 Dynasty Mode (Plus, a bug)

2010-07-15T11:27:00.001-04:00

I was going to resist NCAA again this year. I really was. That said, our longtime readers know just how much I cannot stand team management in console sports games, so the fact that you can run your recruiting from a web browser when using an online dynasty in NCAA ‘11 made this a must purchase. (You can, for the record, have a single-player online dynasty.)

I’ve only just begun to play with it, but this is fantastic. It’s not all the way there in execution, there are several ways I can see already for it to be better, but the fact that you can do this at all is a stroke of genius. Let me run my franchise/dynasty over my lunch hour in a browser that makes information much much MUCH more accessible, so that when I get home I can just fire up the game and take to the field. That is awesome. Off the top my head, though, here’s a couple of things that need to be addressed (two now, others later):

- First of all, there is at least one bug in the online tools. On the recruiting page you cannot see listings for 4-star recruits *when using the Caliber filter.* Bill and I have both tried this and it’s the same for both of us using different dynasties, web browsers, etc. If you set the Caliber filter to 4 Star you will not see an actual 4-star recruit in the list it generates; just 5-star guys. You can get around this by just not using the Caliber filter; annoying, but hardly lethal. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of other more insidious bugs that we have yet to see.

- Stability. This is surely a short term issue, but both online and on the console data transfers often fail and need to be redone. The good news is I have yet to lose anything. Just a quick refresh or re-upload and all seems to be well. I’m okay with this for now, but the screws clearly need some tightening.

- More team management stuff. Let me manage my playbook and depth chart this way; not just the recruiting. This is something that could revolutionize dynasty and franchise play across the spectrum of console sports games. Could you imagine managing a MLB: The Show franchise this way? I can, and it gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies.

- More information and better interface. The only way to see a player’s full ratings is on a page for that player. On the team roster screen you can only see a player’s overall rating. If I want to see just my cornerbacks along with all ratings related to CB play so that I can compare and contrast guys, I should be able to do that on one screen without clicking back and forth. I should then be able to open a separate tab for a depth chart (you can do the separate tab thing now) and go back and forth between them to manage my team.

I’m sure there will be more as I actually start doing recruiting with these tools, but so far I’m really pleased. I’m waiting to start my franchise until there’s a downloadable roster with player names, so, for now, I’m just experimenting. There’s loads of unexplored potential here that will have to wait for another year, but as a proof of concept, this is genius.

So, Michigan Wins

2010-07-14T19:27:00.004-04:00

Another cool part of the new Online Dynasty settings is that people can share their dynasties easily with other people.

Like this.

Hopefully you can see that. You should see a headline that says:

Connecticut falls In Ann Arbor

It's true. We lost. You can also view stats so I don't have to rattle them off here.

What a great, great feature. Automatic story updates, photos...this is crazy!

What is not so great is this:

This game started to show a pattern -- the AI can't run Michigan's spread very well. Yes, they won 23-13 and yes Forcier (I have auto names on so I think his name is Parker) threw for like 270 yards but two were on bombs. The AI WILL go deep this year. Love that.

But I hated the last sequence of that game. I was down 16-14 with 1:03 left. Michigan had the ball on its 20 and I had 3 Time outs

The plays they call? Run (time out, a PASS in the flat (time out) and now with 1 TO left and 3rd and 7 they call a deep post? OK, yeah, it worked for a 75 yard TD but that's some crazy aggressive playcalling there Mr. Rodriguez.

Michigan also scored on a fumble return. So I'm calling this a moral victory.

An issue that popped up again with UM: look at those rushing stats. UCONN's defense is rather suspect so Michigan really should have been able to run, but on default All American sliders, that didn't happen. But remember my OSU/Wisky game and Clay ran well..so who knows? I do think the AI still has a hell of a time just running in a straight line. Stop with the jukes, guy, just run.

Let's see how the Huskies handle Akron.

Oh, yeah, I also lost my QB for 4 weeks. Nice start.

NCAA: This is great! Hey you need to fix this...

2010-07-14T17:05:00.002-04:00

Tonight is one of the big personal NCAA tests, when I sim some seasons to view the numbers. This series has always been a bit...sketchy with this part of the sim. If we see any QBs with 47TDs and 1 INT, that "Noooooooo!" you hear will be from Johnstown, Ohio.

However, one thing I know works (well, sort of) is the new Online Dynasty stuff.

Holy cow this is the coolest thing to happen to NCAA in *years*. I have grown tired of recruiting in NCAA because it feels more like busywork than anything resembling fun. But with the ability to log on to the EA website and do all of your recruiting online, it speeds things up exponentially. When we were told this at E3 we both raised eyebrows because we're in the same boat as far as recruiting on the 360/PS3 is concerned. (We hate it)

But I have tooled around with it today and man....it's SO much faster using the mouse/keyboard, I just hope where you work doesn't block the EA site. Talk about using your lunch break for peak effectiveness.

However, you have to use Online Dynasty to use this feature and today I discovered that it doesn't always work. After red shirting my players (on the console) the game wouldn't save. I tried ten times (just pressing the retry button over and over) before it finally worked.

It's as annoying as it sounds.

That said, I chose UCONN as my test team because I want to see the recruiting with a middling program. Of course, my first game: Michigan. I forgot all about that.

One thing about NCAA -- it still doesn't use subs as well as it should. For example, OSU will use Saine at RB exclusively (that's not gonna happen this year) and Tater Tot will take every snap for Michigan and Robinson or the freshman Gardner will not see the field unless Forcier gets hurt. They really need to mix that up next year.

They also STILL need someone to go in and really fix the player ratings. I love Brandon Saine but he is simply not a 90-something rated halfback. He's just not. He's good. But when I see 90+ I think great. Boom Herron isn't either, folks. There is no way to defend his numbers being that high EXCEPT for that he plays for OSU and they want to make OSU really good.

NCAA needs a Madden ratings stretch, stat.

Lack of Patterns

2010-07-13T23:57:00.002-04:00

So far, I think what I like most about the new NCAA is its lack of any discernible patterns. Again, this is still very, very early in the testing process, but after my 31-0 sha-LACKING of Michigan, after my Tuesday night hoop league I hopped back on to play against Wisconsin. (still default All American.)

It was a totally different game.

In year's past it was extremely easy to see patterns after one or two games of NCAA. It's always one of the very first things I look for when reviewing a sports game because patterns are really the absolute bane of these types of games. Patterns basically rip away any unpredictability and when a sports game gets predictable -- it's over. Immediate shelfware.

These patterns still could be there -- but so far they aren't showing up. Case in point, I lost to Bucky 21-14. It was 21-6 at halftime.

Plays that Michigan called that were repeatedly stoned, Wisky pulled off with great success.

Wisconsin connected on a 68 yard TD pass -- a FLY PATTERN. Yes, the AI went deep. Several times. Pryor was like 14/17 against UM. It was easy (this was a potential pattern) but was 15/28 against Wisky. I threw three INTS. One was my fault, the other I was hit as I threw and the other hit Carter in the hands (they need to remove him from the game btw. He's no longer at OSU, but anyway...) and it bounced right to a Wisky DB.

John Clay had 88 yards on 20 carries. He was hard as hell to tackle.

Michigan? I shut that team down with impunity. I had a chance late to get the ball back against Wisky and they marched 30 yards to nail the coffin shut.

Against UM my DE Cam Heyward was UNBLOCKABLE. He was KILLING whoever the Michigan RT is. 3 sacks, multiple pressures, etc. In years past this would raise a quick red flag. This is a potential pattern that could really kill the game because before--something like this simply meant...the AI blocking sucks.

Against Wisky? Heyward was as non factor. And believe me...I tried.

Still so much to look at and test and fiddle with but while the game does feel a tick arcade-y in spots (Brandon Saine wishes he could make cuts like this) I am very eager to play more. A promising start.

NCAA 11

2010-07-13T17:16:00.002-04:00

The blog here at The N&FW is not dead. It's just that we don't have time for daily posts anymore. Kids, jobs, and other outside factors have kept us from posting much. You can always hear us weekly on the podcast, though.

That said, when something comes up that we want to talk about this is the place for us to do that.

NCAA 11 is finally in hand (I bought it just like you guys this year)

And early returns I think are very positive. A lot of gameplay stuff has changed this year and so far -- I think for the better. I'm not going to get into impressions yet but I will be blogging here quite often over the next week or so putting this game through its paces.

I started off beating Michigan 31-0 on All American so NCAA 11 has the realism DOWN PAT.

E3 2010

2010-06-21T14:05:00.001-04:00

Here's our report on everything we saw.

Whew.

Back From E3

2010-06-19T12:31:00.003-04:00

Much to discuss.

From a slew of games to rioting Laker fans to fire alarms in the hotel at 2am.

Ah, Los Angeles.

I will be working all day writing, editing and getting ready for Monday's enormous GameShark E3 A-Z page.

Just know this: Strongest EA Sports show -- maybe ever. EA Sports had a great, great show. I am under embargo until June 23 re: the new NBA game but ....yeah.

A seriously good show for EA Sports.

Tiger Woods Wii

2010-06-14T08:53:00.000-04:00

So yeah Tiger IS the best game in town...but it's only on the Wii.

Tiger 360 Review

2010-06-08T17:13:00.001-04:00

Embargo lifted. Review posted.

This is actually a really entertaining game after you sink enough hrs to be competitive.

Tiger 11

2010-06-06T16:45:00.002-04:00

Been playing a (retail) review build of Tiger 11 on the 360 the past 5-6 days and I am under a strict embargo until launch -- I appreciate all of the Xbox Live questions sent by many of you, but really...just wait til the 8th and we can talk all you want.

Backbreaker Review

2010-06-04T11:02:00.002-04:00

Pass.

Hahaha

2010-06-04T11:02:00.001-04:00

Backbreaker Embargo Lifts

2010-06-01T11:48:00.003-04:00

I'm finishing up some work on the review, testing some things out before putting my final verdict on it.

But I will spare you the long version and cut right to it:

This is a great tech demo. The collision detection and free flowing unpredictability and animations are wonderful.

But as a game, this is not nearly ready for primetime. Not even close. So much needs to be done before the game actually matches the tech from playcalling AI to blocking patterns to offensive AI (this part is REALLY bad).

Is this sort of tech the future of football? I think so, yes.

Is Backbreaker worth buying in its current state at full price?

No. It's not.

There is going to be a vocal support group for this game, but I am not one of them until things get fixed.

Backbreaker talk will have to wait

2010-05-29T20:43:00.001-04:00

I am under the 6/1 embargo -- sorry guys, the BB talk will have to wait until after the release date. I was specifically asked not to talk about it.

Been playing it a lot though and have a whole lotta stuff to talk about in a few days.

The Blog Lives: Backbreaker In hand

2010-05-27T13:07:00.001-04:00

You know, between daily duties at Gameshark, podcasting, twittering and facebooking ye old Nut/Weasel blog has taken a downtime break of late.

Well, with the release of Backbreaker that should change at least temporarily.

505 Games sent my copy today -- so let's see how this puppy plays...

Jumping the Shark #15: Retro Gaming

2010-05-10T16:14:00.004-04:00

On this week's Jumping the Shark we get into retro gaming with Tom Ohle, the North America VP of Marketing and PR for Good Old Games (GOG.com). As much as I like it when we just have our regular crew, there's no denying our shows are always better when we have a guest and Tom was a great one.

This week there's much more Mass Effect 2 discussion (with quite the debate on the game's sexual content), I get schooled in Batman Arkham Asylum combat mechanics, and Tom reveals his not-so-secret love affair with FIFA 10.

The meat of the show, however, is the retro gaming discussion as we talk about the merits of playing games older than Danielle (not really) and how GOG fits into the equation. I downloaded Heroes of Might and Magic 3 off the service last week and even on the 64-bit version of Windows 7, it ran without a hitch. Great stuff. At some point I have to get on there and purchase Sanitarium, which is supposed to be a fantastic game. I purchased it off a bargain rack years ago and it wouldn't run on my system, so if GOG has a magic touch that gets it going they'll have earned my money for it.

Also of note, Tom does the PR for The Witcher, so we got into The Witcher 2. It was nice to, for once, talk about a game's lack of presence on consoles instead of vice-versa. Yay PC!

Mourning a Legend: Ernie Harwell

2010-05-05T09:12:00.000-04:00

I’ve no idea how much national play this story is getting (surely there must be some), but if you have a Tiger fan friend on Facebook or on Twitter you know that Ernie Harwell (92), the Hall-of-Fame broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers for the better part of 40 years, passed away yesterday from bile duct cancer. It’s amazing how much the man meant to the countless numbers of us that grew up with him. I’m not going to write much about it, rather I’ll just pass on some links I’ve collected this morning.

Information on ceremonies and other links: The Detroit Tigers Weblog

Tigers broadcast team Dan Dickerson and Jim Price announce Ernie’s passing, also courtesy of The Detroit Tigers Weblog.

Beck’s Blog, Tigers beat reporter for MLB.com.

Detroit News column from Tom Gage and Lynn Henning.

Detroit Free Press column from Mitch Albom. (Albom can be a tool sometimes, but this is the sort of thing he excels at.)

Al Beaton reflects at The Wayne Fontes Experience.

If you don’t know much about Ernie, this quote (shamelessly lifted from the Bless You Boys blog) about sums up the graciousness of the man:

"I'm not leaving, folks. I'll still be with you, living my life in Michigan, my home state, surrounded by family and friends. And rather than goodbye, please allow me to say thank you. Thank you for letting me become part of your family. Thank you for taking me with you to that cottage up north, to the beach, the picnic, your work place, or your backyard. Thank you for sneaking your transistor radio under the pillow as you grew up loving the Tigers. I might have been a small part of your life. But you have been a very large part of mine."
-- Harwell's final broadcast, 2002, quoted by Tom Gage, Detroit News

For multiple generations of young Tiger fans, Ernie was the voice of summer and he always will be.

World Cup 2010 360 Review

2010-05-04T10:22:00.000-04:00

I likes this one.

Jumping the Shark #14

2010-05-03T16:50:00.001-04:00

It’s up. This week we dove head first into the whole Ebert-Can Games Be Art? thing. Although I did push for us to go with this topic, it was one I was nervous about treading on because there are two big groups of people in this debate: Those who get pissy at anyone who has a different opinion than they do and people who think the debate is stupid and pointless and not worth talking about. Also, I’m likely to say something stupid. Fortunately, that last point is hardly a rare occurrence for me and I’ve reached a certain comfort level with knowing that at some point(s) during editing the show I’m going to cringe and bang my head on the desk over something I said. Such is the price of being a star.

Fortunately, I think the show came out pretty good this week. Not as good as last week’s show on Metacritic, which I think was in the top three shows we’ve done so far, but #14 was not the disaster I feared it might be. Danielle, in particular, I thought really carried the show and the topic, so if for no other reason, tune in to listen to her sound smarter than the rest of us combined.

The Inexorable Passage of Time - Redux

2010-04-29T16:11:00.003-04:00

About a year and a half ago I wrote this post about my daughter turning five. Yesterday my son reached that milestone and as I reflect on this barely-contained ball of energy I find myself confronted with much different feelings. Make no mistake, I’m incredibly proud of my li’l buddy. Like 99.9% of the population he is not a prodigy, but as I felt back then I continue to believe there is this sense of unlimited potential about him. I truly think this child could do anything he puts his mind too. The thought both excites and terrifies me because in every way I can can conceive of, he is exactly like me.

Because I see myself in him, I fear for him much more so than I do my daughter, or at least I fear for him in much different ways. I know what I went through growing up. Being small. Being shy. Lacking in self-confidence. These are not recipes for easy times during one’s grade school years and I struggle with how I might help him find the courage to endure these years with confidence in who he is.

At the same time, because things sometimes came easy for me early on, it didn’t take long for me to just want everything to come easy. I didn’t want to work hard; I just wanted to have the answers and move on to something fun (games). There is no doubt my lack of drive and unwillingness to take chances has cost me in my professional life and when I look at my son and see just how much like me he seems to be, it’s monumentally difficult not to be hard on him; to push him to not be me; to be better than me.

Somewhere there is a line between coddling and being an overbearing monster of a parent and I struggle with it daily. I worry in equal parts that I am both too hard on him and then not hard enough. How do I strike that balance that will bring out the excellence I know he has without making him feel like he disappoints me whenever he inevitably missteps? (The truth being I’m far more worried about being a disappointment to him.) How do I help him to find his bliss in life and go after it with every ounce of determination he can?

Ultimately, I know these are concerns for another day. He’s five years old for goodness sakes and he’s already such an amazing kid that I know I should set worry aside and enjoy him for who he is right now, because who he is, is a bright, surprisingly articulate, fun-loving kid who is quick to smile and laugh. He is everything I could possibly have asked for in a son.

Happy birthday, Kyle. Your mom and I could not be more proud of you and you will have our love, always.

Also, please stop hitting your sister. That’s not nice.

GameShark Podcast #13: Metacritic

2010-04-28T16:25:00.002-04:00

The latest podcast is arguably our best. Lots of great discussion -- so much so that Marc Doyle of Metacritic emailed us about the show. He didn't even yell at me. He did demand that Brandon be kicked off the panel.

Is Your Mother a Prostitute?

2010-04-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

The Dolphins would like to know.

Rules

2010-04-27T12:04:00.003-04:00

Once a month I get into a debate over this when playing basketball at the rec center and I am continually amazed by the fact that so many basketball players don't know how this works.

If the ball simply hits your foot, it's not a kick. If you dribble the ball and it bounces off my foot unintentionally -- it's not a kick. If I raise my leg in an attempt to deflect the ball -- that is a kick. If you throw a bounce pass and it hits my shin (and I'm playing defense) and I didn't raise my leg in an attempt to kick it. That is not a kick.

I have found that people will almost come to blows over this rule because everyone thinks they know how it works-- but most don't.

I think this rule, as well as the "shooting the ball over the backboard is the ball still in play?" rule are the two most misunderstood pick up game rules in the sport.

That and the definition of a moving screen.

America: The Story of Us

2010-04-26T16:48:00.002-04:00

So I watched the first episode last night, "Rebels", which discusses the Revolutionary War.

Now, I fully understand that covering the lead up to the war to its conclusion in 2 hours is impossible so the fact that the show was a CliffsNotes version of history was, by me at least, expected.

They have to jam Jamestown and the Pilgrims and the entire war into two hours. That's just asking for a pretty sterile documentary.

But what I didn't like was that it was also *bad* history. Almost revisionist history.

The Boston Massacre was portrayed in the show last night much like it was in Revere's newspaper account -- that British soldiers gunned down unarmed (maybe a LITTLE rowdy) Boston citizens in the streets -- like a death squad firing line. Forget the fact that none other than John Adams defended the soldiers (and won) and it's regarded today that Revere was a propaganda expert and his portrait was made to rile up the citizens and it was not the cold blooded murder originally thought. You get NONE of that in the show.

Or that the Boston Tea Party where the 'rebels' dressed up like Native Americans? Nah that wasn't mentioned Just that the rebels tossed the tea overboard. You miss out on a lot of important context when you don't mention how they did it.

So the final 1:15 minutes was about the war itself.

How you do ANY history of the war without mentioning -- not one time-- Benedict Arnold, General Gates, General Howe, General CORNWALLIS, the early strong loyalist movement, Washington falling out of favor after many, many losses.

This is all glossed over in a pretty little bow and poof we see Morgan and his sharpshooters, Valley Forge, von Steuben and -- Yorktown! I know this as not supposed to be a detailed look at the Revolutionary War. I really do get that.

But what are you supposed to get out of watching that show? That Brian Williams and Rudi Giuliani know basic American history?

I honestly have no idea.

Mr. Brees

2010-04-22T10:28:00.003-04:00

Not that I personally care about this but Drew Brees will appear on the cover of Madden 11.

Never have understood the whole cover thing but hey -- it's news.

Oh No! Ebert Says Games Aren’t Art!

2010-04-21T16:28:00.001-04:00

So gamers around the Internet are irate that Ebert is again insisting that games are not art. First of all, it would be nice if we poor oppressed gamers could get a grip (those of us screaming the loudest I mean). So Ebert says games aren’t art. I had a step-grandmother who, at one point, thought I was a head of cabbage. People say things. It doesn’t have to matter.

Gabe (Penny Arcade) has it pretty much nailed:

Of course video games are art. They are nothing but art. They are art piled on top of more art.

...

So Ebert says games aren't art. That does not make it true. I say games are art and last time I checked, I was beating Michelle Obama, Oprah and Taylor swift in Time's 100 most influential people list.

Game. Set. Match.

The thing is, I read the article in question and aside from some really bad logic and arrogant statements there’s not much to be in a huff over. The guy has an opinion and a newspaper company willing to print it. Let it go. Next week he’ll write something most people agree with and they’ll all proclaim him a critical genius.

I Cannot Stand Todd McShay

2010-04-21T10:26:00.001-04:00

And I guess I am not alone.

A Wargame Protest?

2010-04-19T16:49:00.000-04:00

Words sorta fail me.

Blood Bowl Video From Angry Man

2010-04-19T11:04:00.001-04:00

I can really relate...worth watching the whole thing.

Naked Gun Redux

2010-04-19T09:50:00.004-04:00

So I'm just about done w/ solo play in Splinter Cell. It's a short game and fairly entertaining. It's nowhere near as good as I'd hoped it would be, though.

I was chatting with Brandon this morning and the best comparison I can make is that solo play in this game is like The Naked Gun.

Remember the scene in NG when Frank Drebin is firing from behind a wooden crate and then the camera pans out and you see the criminal he is shooting at -- is also behind a crate but only like 2 feet from Drebin?

That's SC: Conviction. Only in the movie it was hilarious. The game takes itself seriously.

Gameshark Podcast Episode 12: Gaming Lulls

2010-04-19T09:32:00.001-04:00

This week's show is about what we do during our gaming downtime. Brandon reveals he never has downtime and then goes off about Pokemon. Seriously.

There's also some Mount & Blade and Wario DIY is there as well.

Back from Blogging Hiatus

2010-04-16T09:21:00.004-04:00

Yep it's been a while. I would "apologize" but I won't. I need my downtime from gaming, blogging, and constant Internet interaction.

So with my batteries (somewhat) recharged I can get into what's going on the Abner Gameworld.

EA sent me an early copy of World Cup 2010...there's no embargo info attached but I learned my lesson with THAT a while back (see NCAA 09 Fiasco) so I need to call EA before I can start talking about it. I imagine it's good because I enjoyed Fifa 10 quite a bit.

Out of the Park Baseball 11 -- a game I shockingly forgot to mention on last night's podcast (duh) has been eating my time. I have played every version of this game starting with v3 and every year I go into saying "no way will this be worth the money" -- I say this because I really enjoy OOTP but it suffers the same as do big publisher sports games -- what can you really expect in a 10 month cycle? And we're now on the 11th edition and with text games it's even tougher because you really can't sell "better graphics".

Well, so far OOTP 11 is a surprisingly big upgrade over 10 -- not so much for the sim engine (I really can't tell much of a difference there) but from an interface, speed, and tightening of the screws perspective. Version 10 I still find to be buggy. I play V10 every single day because I run an online league. I still see duplicate players, weird sign/release bugs, batting order bugs and other anomalies. So far anyway V11 looks rock solid and for such a *huge* game that's pretty rare.

Being such a large game doing a review takes a while but thus far all signs point to "upgrade". Today is a big test as I try to import my OOTP 10 online league and see how that shakes out.

I STILL hope one day OOTP adds rudimentary graphics. Nothing big. I don't need motion capture. But man I sure would like to see some graphics ala MicroLeague Baseball circa 1984.

Anyway, tonight is co-op Splinter Cell with Brandon. Nothing like simming baseball games all day and following that up by shooting a terrorist in the face.

2K Marin + XCOM = WIN

2010-04-14T09:07:00.001-04:00

2K Games Announces XCOM® - Suspense and Mystery-Filled First-Person Shooter from Creators of BioShock® 2

Award-winning developers set their sights on re-imagining the suspense, tension and fear of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises only on Xbox 360 and Windows PC

New York, NY – April 14, 2010– 2K Games announced today that XCOM®,the re-imagining of one of gaming’s most storied and beloved franchises,is currently in development at 2K Marin, the studio behind the multi-million unit selling BioShock® 2.Currently in development exclusively for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC, XCOM combines the strategic core of the groundbreaking franchise with a suspense-filled narrative and distills it into a tense and unique first-person shooter experience.

“With BioShock 2, the team at 2K Marin proved themselves as masters of first-person, suspenseful storytelling, and with XCOM they will re-imagine and expand the rich lore of this revered franchise,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “Players will explore the world of XCOM from an immersive new perspective and experience firsthand the fear and tension of this gripping narrative ride.”

XCOM is the re-imagining of the classic tale of humanity’s struggle against an unknown enemy that puts players directly into the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with identifying and eliminating the growing threat. True to the roots of the franchise, players will be placed in charge of overcoming high-stake odds through risky strategic gambits coupled with heart-stopping combat experiences that pit human ingenuity – and frailty – against a foe beyond comprehension. By setting the game in a first-person perspective, players will be able to feel the tension and fear that comes with combating a faceless enemy that is violently probing and plotting its way into our world.

Madden ‘11 is Doing the Locomotion

2010-04-07T16:26:00.001-04:00

I know. It’s okay to hate me for that title. I hate myself for writing and posting it. And yet, I couldn’t make myself change it.

Anyway.

There’s a great post from Madden 11’s Lead Gameplay Designer, Ryan Burnsides, up at the EA Blog. It details how the changes to the player locomotion engine as well as how they’re improving how speed and acceleration are handled this year. It’s interesting stuff and it’s clear that –as Bill is fond of saying- the Madden guys “get it.” Here’s a snippet, but if you’re a Madden player the whole thing is well worth reading:

Momentum: In Madden NFL 10, players couldn’t turn as fast when they were sprinting as they could when they were not. One of the mechanics around this was forcing users to let go of the sprint button when they needed to make sharp turns (like trying to choose a run hole for example). This wasn’t very intuitive for a lot of our users. We knew that we had to make a change that would allow people to move where they wanted to on the field, while still making skills like Agility matter. We tried a few different things, but the mechanic that felt the best was to allow the player to go where you are pressing on the left stick, but slow him down to make the turn you are requesting (based on his ratings of course). It feels pretty natural to gradually round off a turn if you want to keep your speed up, or move the stick sharply to sacrifice speed for making a necessary cut. As soon as we put this in, the game felt way more responsive. You can feel the momentum of trying to turn a big lumbering lineman, but at no point do you feel like he isn’t going where you are trying to make him go.

Obama V Kellogg

2010-04-06T17:56:00.002-04:00

I love this video -- know how you can tell Obama is a real player? It's not that he's able to hit the occasional three.

Listen to him as he fires off what will end up being the game winner. Ball is in flight and Obama says, "wap!"

I don't know what I think of the new Healthcare just yet. But I know Obama has game.

Will the iPad Blend?

2010-04-05T15:01:00.002-04:00

Spotted this at Mashable today and it’s great.

There’s two more vids at the Mashable link where PC World does a sturdiness test and some punk kids –with rich parents?- appear to be wrecking two iPads for no apparent reason.

What’s better is there is a whole series of these Will it Blend videos. Love the style. It’s the kind of theme music the podcast should have. Anyway, here’s one more where he blends glow sticks. Hilarious.

Jumping the Shark Episode 10! Now With 50% More PAX East!

2010-04-05T14:08:00.002-04:00

They said it couldn’t be done. We’d never make it to double-digits. But we proved them all wrong! Wrong I tell you! Celebrate the #10 milestone of Jumping the Shark by tuning into episode 10 of Jumping the Shark. It’s good for your digestive system and it won’t give you glaucoma! Don’t believe me? Just remember the wise words of Dr. Spaceman: Science is whatever we want it to be.