No CPU Sliders

Confirmed by Ian of EA at the OS Forum:

There are in fact no CPU sliders. I discovered this myself about 2 weeks
ago as well, and was kind of wondering when I should break the news. I wish I
had an explanation, but I don't.

There's not all that much more I can say about it... There's one other bit
of bad news that I discovered at the same time, and that is there is no custom
controller configuration any more. Again, I don't really have an explanation.

PS - In the build where I was adjusting sliders, I was adjusting User INT's
to zero - so the human wouldn't pick off the QB as much (since I know people
were originally concerned that the CPU QB threw too many picks). (ducks out of
way of flying chairs). So anyway - I don't know what else to say
really.

***

So, the good news: I am not going crazy.

The bad news...well...there's no CPU sliders in Madden 09.

Rematch

I decidced to play the Browns/Steelers game again this time using the "My Skill" setting -- this is the game's settings based on my Madden IQ score.

When I took "the test" I was good at passing and running, and REALLY bad at defense. I NEVER play as the DB in Madden or NCAA so this is not a shock.

Pitt is rated a 94 in Madden and Cleveland an 88.

I won this one 21-11. The stats:

7 min quarters:

Anderson: 16/21 150 yards 1 TD 0 INT
Rothliuasdftydtaid: 16/26 162 yards 1 TD 4 INT

Lewis: 25 carries 46 yards. I had NOWHERE to run all game because of my Madden Test plus Pitt is damn good at run D. The game boosted their reaction time and Pitt defenders were living in the backfield. Of course their reaction time didn't help as much in the secondary... Anderson had a very efficient game.

Parker: 14 carries 21 yards

Laughable, really. Again I think this is because I tested poorly. If Willie Parker does this against us this year we'll win both games.

And yes, I am almost certain at this point that the game has no CPU slider settings in it. If there are they are hidden to the point of absurdity.

This was a better game than the 42-7 drubbing, but 4 picks by Ben? Parker getting 21 yards? Methinks my Madden Test was bogus. :)

Browns 42 Steelers 7

Uh, yeah. Wow.

More on this later. Dinner time.

I cannot wrap my head around the sliders in this game. I had my accuracy at zero and while I tossed a wounded duck on a deep ball ...I was still 24/36 for 310 and 3 TDs..against the STEELERS.

The Weirdness Continues

Ok so I am reading the press sheet that came with the game and it says right at the end of the feature list -- More Detailed Sliders. More sliders that allow you to tweak certain parts of the gameplay, etc.

So I start looking around like I'm on Candid Camera 'cause I don't see these new fangled sliders anywhere.

I start a franchise -- maybe it's in there. Nope. You can't even change your settings *anywhere* inside franchise mode. So the franchise that you start will use your settings from the main menu. Ok...so that isn't the answer either.

I eye the box. The big pretty Collector's Edition box. There is a manual in there...there has to be. Maybe it will...

So I open it up and leaf through the 7 or 8 pages. Disgusted with myself that I even considered that an option, I fling the manual near the TV.

I am determined to find these.

I finally decide to look over the difficulty lvls again and one of them is "custom" which allows you to change the base settings which are "Passing, Running, Pass D and Run D." I can move those settings but damn that's pretty generic, eh?

I accidentally press "A" when moving the pass slider and lo and behold a hidden list of settings pops up.

Here, I can tweak Pass Accuracy, WR Catching, and Pass Blocking. There are in fact more settings like Break Tackles, Reaction time for DBs, etc.

However, EA makes FINDING these settings akin to looking for buried treasure without the map.

The settings are now geared towards YOUR play and not the CPU. I dont think we can edit the CPU's game at all from what I can tell. We can make our DBs better, or make it easier for the CPU to pass by lowering our DB reaction time, etc. But as far as a base CPU Acc slider, for example-- I don't see one.

Madden

Well, I dunno what to think right now after a few games under my belt.

I need to scour the menu system because for the life of me I cannot find the gameplay sliders.

I see the "settings" where you can change the gameplay to either Rookie, All pro, Custom My Skill, etc. but no custom sliders to change QB accuracy, etc. They HAVE to be there. The EA rep at E3 said they were there -- but I do not see them. I see penalty sliders. I see "Special Team" sliders. But I do not see ONE CPU slider anywhere in the game. Maybe this is what that My Skill thing is supposed to do?

I hope they're there because on All Pro lvl the CPU QBs are stupid-accurate. In my exhibition games on All Pro passes are either dropped, picked, or caught. This is par for the course on default settings so I am hoping I am just overlooking the slider stuff. I swear I can't find the damn things anywhere, though.

The new player models look great but they also move ...different. Everyone can cut extremely sharp. You'll see what I mean. The game feels extremely different from NCAA 09.

Punt coverage is better.

The pass rush...I dunno yet. The CPU pass rush is fine. Mine sucks. :) That might very well be user error.

Madden IQ ...not sure what I think of this, either. I am apparently All Madden at running and passing but I'm a rookie at pass defense. What that means in game terms..I have no idea.

I LOVE the new Backtrack feature. Really, really cool.

Also, again, maybe I am missing something but did they take out the Accelerated clock? Again -- I don't see it.

Anyway, more later.

I'm going to play a game with the My Skill set, with my pass defense getting a major boost because I can't guard anyone for shit, and see what happens.

Surely they didn't remove the CPU sliders, though...

This Just In: Dr. Horrible is Terrific

I posted a teaser for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog a few weeks ago. So I, of course, completely forgot to tune in when it was actually available for free at its homepage. So, I sucked it up and purchased all three acts from the iTunes store (gotta support the Whedon family), only to find out after the fact that you can still watch them for free at Hulu.com. (I am unable to get the page working, but it could be because I'm at work.)

Anyway, I finally watched all three acts during my lunch break today and it's fantastic. Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day (between her appearance on the Gamers With Jobs podcast and this, I'm offically in love with her, btw) are all just monumentally entertaining. (How has no one thought to tap this whole superhero/musical/video blog thing?) I think my favorite moment comes at the end of Act I. But to explain it, I have to explain something about the wonder that is me.

You see, when something happens that I don't like I have a tendency to say a certian word. For example, if I'm racing Bill to build a Major Line in Railroad Tycoon and he beats me to it, I'm likely to say the word. If a meteorite were to drop out of the sky and destroy my car, I'd probably say it. I don't know when, where, or how I started saying it. I almost certainly got it from a movie or something, but for all I know it could just be something my brain came up with for no reason whatsoever. I have no idea. All I know is that I'm the only person I know who does say it and I also get odd looks from whomever is around when I do say it, so it can't be that commonplace an expression. The word?

Balls.

Something happens that I don't like and I just mutter the word balls. Nobody else seems to think so, but I think it has a certain ring to it (zing!) when said just so. Anyway. I'm watching Act 1 of Dr. Horrible today and at the very end of the episode Dr. Horrible is able to gain posession of something he's been seeking the entire episode, but the cost is the probably loss of something else he holds dear. As he's walking off, dejectedly, he mutters... you guessed it: "Balls."

Power Pros

This showed up today from 2K.

I LOVED the first game -- I even called it my 5th best baseball game of all time.

The new one literally just arrived via UPS and I'll put it through its paces right after we get done making huevos rancheros in Order Up. That little game is really addictive.

Rock Band 2 Controllers

I took these pics at E3 -- these Mad Catz items look kinda slick.

Todd? You're the Rock Band maven. what say you?

NCAA Review

It's moot at this point, but here's my thoughts.

With NCAA done I am moving on to the cooking game on the Wii, Order Up. If I manage to get a copy of Madden early like I did NCAA I'll get some thoughts up. I am not holding out hope for that. ;)

ANY game that comes with a paper chef's hat -- I'm in. OK, actually, it's a lot of fun to play this with (well, watching) Ashley.

EA Sports Back to PC in 2009. Does Anyone Care?

Found this one this morning at Rock. Paper. Shotgun. (Excellent blog, btw, if you're not reading it already.) So, EA Sports wants to bring their games back to the PC in 2009?

"We are retooling these titles [on the PC] to take advantage of the online connectivity in a bigger and more meaningful way," Moore said today, noting that EA's usual sports offerings--Madden, NCAA Football, NBA Live, etc.--will reappear on PC in 2009.

Did they not miss the collective yawn when they originally said they weren't releasing most of their sports games on the PC this year? And I'm a PC gamer. The problem isn't the platform. It's the genre. It's composed almost entirely of games that are either shit games or games that have grown incredibly stale because they've been relying on the same code base and status quo for years. There is absolutely nothing interesting happening in the vast majority of sports game franchises right now. (MLB 08 and NHL 2008 are excepted; as are text-based PC games, which are a different market.)

If I ran EA Sports or 2k Sports, this is what I'd do right now. (And who knows? Maybe they are doing this.) Put new teams together in every sport into which I want to publish on the next generation of consoles. These teams should be composed of people who are not only quality developers, but people with real exposure (ie - played on an organized level and not just a fan) to the sports they're endeavoring to emulate. Call it the Harmonix model, if you will. Stick them in a room for the next few years with absolutely no access to the existing code and just see what they come up with. From a gameplay standpoint, I'll bet you the results would be amazing. (Flawed, sure, but still amazing and rife with potential.)

Laugh Til I Cried

Ok, this video has F-Bombs dropped all over the place so you have been warned.

I laughed until my side hurt.

"What Kind of Defense IS THIS?!?!?"

I was killing a few minutes before leaving work this afternoon and came across this OS sports forum thread, via a link at Digital Sports Page. It's a bushel of YouTube videos done by a couple of guys (there are three videos by one guy, and another -I think- by someone else) that highlight fundamental football problems with NCAA 2009. But that's not why you should watch 'em. You should watch 'em because the commentary is flat out hysterical. I'm embedding one of the vids here, but check out the rest if you've got 5-10 minutes to kill.

I love my daughter

To all Head Coaches and Assistant Coaches for Johnstown Youth Soccer 2008:

This is a reminder that we will have a mandatory coaches meeting on August 2nd at 9am at the Belt Park Batting Barn. I will pass out team roosters, practice and game schedules at this meeting.

Practices will begin the week of August 11th (the week of August 18 practices will not be mandatory due to the start of school). Games will begin Sept 6th. Immediately following the coaches meeting, the high school soccer coach will have a coaches clinic -- Site TBD. Please be prepared to participate in the drills.

At 2:00 I would like to reconvene at Belt Park to layout the soccer fields and complete any maintenance that is needed. Please bring a shovel and wheel barrow, long string and tape measures for laying out the fields. Josh and the high school soccer team will host a free Soccer clinic on Aug 16th.

***

So, for those keeping score at home: that's a Saturday spent, apparently, acting as the grounds crew creating soccer fields and running 40 year old men through soccer drills with a HS soccer coach. That should be awesome.

However -- it's all good. At least we get a team rooster. I'm going to put mine in a shirt and call him Rufus.

The things we do for our kids.

Power Pros and OOTP

Today we have a quick write up on the Power Pros conference call. This call was ...less than thrilling. I loved Power Pros but this sounds like MOTS.

Also, Todd's review of OOTP 9 is up. I get the feeling Todd and I agree pretty much point to point but I was a bit tougher with the final grade.

My review of NCAA 2009 at Crispy Gamer was submitted early last week and still isn't up, so I'll post the link when it's live.

I ended up "frying" the game (The Crispy equivalent of "bad game") simply due to all of the problems that I reported here on the blog. In its current state I think it's a game that is simply impossible to recommend to serious college football fans. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with it; hell me, Todd, and Billy Baroo are about to start an online dynasty (fingers crossed it doesn't crash like my first try..). But with so many glitches and serious gameplay gaffes, it's hard to say anything but "wait for the patches." It's a tough pill asking $60 for that game.

Top 10 Games of E3

Our list of the "best" games of E3 is up today at GameShark. Well, it went up Friday but I forgot to post it.

As a rule, I hate E3 awards. Hyping beta and alpha builds just feels...wrong to me. BUT despite my liberal leanings I am in fact a capitalist and we need those web hits! So, we have awards.

When GameShark does its big, expensive GameShark 2.0 redesign, which will in fact be ultra cool of they do everything that they have planned, we'll be able to create and host custom videos both from companies and from users. Should be slick.

In the meantime, I have to embed Youtube trailers. Still, some of the trailers are really worth watching, especially the ones with gameplay footage like Spore and Fallout 3.

If the Spore trailer doesn't make you want to play that game then turn in your gamer hat. You are officially a lost cause.

Jack Thompson Truly is America

This, too...pure gold. Again, adult language...so...yeah. The Thompson bit is actualy pretty funny. Then there's a bit with a model, which isn't nearly as interesting. I saw this over at Fidgit, Tom Chick's Sci-Fi Channel blog, which should be a daily read.

From Crackle: Jace Hall, Ep 8: Video Game Violence & HOT CHICKS!

Kevin Smith Talks About Superman

This has adult language so take heed.

But this is absolute gold.

Madden at E3

My quick take is online today.

I did manage to see The Dark Knight last night. Great movie, and if you haven't heard -- don't take the kids.

NCAA Online Dyntasy Update

Straight from EA via the OS forum:

We have been looking into the issues that some people are experiencing with games not being updated and people having their dynasty "hijacked" the last two days. The engineers have found the problem, but aren't yet sure how it is happening. We are probably going to take a preventative approach if we cannot find the bug.

In a nutshell, files aren't always getting uploaded to the correct locker but instead to someone else. Our server guys have estimated this effects 2% the lockers.We have found that we can repair broken dynasties by removing the bad files from affected lockers.

Once we have figured out how to fix all the issues, we are going to run an automated script against all lockers to clear the issue, then prevent it from happening again. Right now it looks like all the fixes will be server side and not require a patch. On the subject of a second patch, we are planning on getting it out a couple weeks earlier than originally planned. So I should have an update for what is going to be fixed in it pretty soon.

Well, at least they're fixing it.

Comics! Comics! Comics! Buy Some!

Okay, the garage sale we had last week wasn't a bust, but a lot of the comics I'd hoped to part with didn't go anywhere, so I'm gonna give you guys a shot before I go the eBay route. Some of this stuff I'm practically giving away. Other stuff I want legit money for either because they're worth it or because I want to replace monthly issues with trades and if no one wants 'em I'm happy to keep 'em.

Note that none of this stuff includes shipping and while I'll vouch for the quality of the newer stuff (it's almost all bagged and boarded), the condition will vary on 25 cent stuff and older stuff; little of that I would classify as very fine or better. If you're interested in any of it email me directly; don't use the comments. (My email is on the sidebar.)

Let's start with the cheap stuff.

Stuff you can have for a low, low, low 25 cents an issue, plus any shipping costs:

• Avengers Milestone: Reprints #1
• Avengers Milestone: Reprints #16
• Avengers West Coast: #94; 102 (final issue)
• Captain America vol. 1: #427
• Captain America vol. 2 (Heroes Reborn): #6; 13
• Captain America vol. 3: #24-29
• Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty: #1-2; 4
• Daredevil vol. 1: #207-211; 214-215; 321-324
• Daredevil/Bullseye: #1 (Unfinished Kevin Smith miniseries)
• Fantastic Four vol. 2 (Heroes Reborn): #4-10
• Green Arrow vol. 1: #2, 5, 7-8, 16, 18-19
• Batman: The 12 Cent Adventure
• Batman Chronicles: #10
• Nightwing: #92-94; 99-100
• Batman/Superman: #11-12; 15-18
• The Incredible Hulk vol 1. #263; 417; 419; 430-432; 447
• Ion #1
• Amazing Spider-Man vol 1. #325
• What If #75-78
• Superman Elseworlds Annual #6
• Superman (1986) 3-4; 31; 33; 50; 53; 15-16; 69; 74-75
• Superman in Action Comics: #501; 503-504; 506-507; 529-531; 596; 675; 760; 762; 844
• Adventures of Superman: #451; 458; 488-489
• Superman: The Man of Steel #6; 18-19; 28-29
• X-Men Classic #11; 37; 101-102; 105-110
• X-Men: The Early Years #1-10; 12-17
• Professor Xavier & the X-Men: #1
• X-Men/Clandestine #1
• Xtreme X-Men: #20-22; 46 (final issue)
• Xtreme X-Men: Savage Land #1-2
• Cable vol. 1: #1; 9-15; 17-19; 21-24; 26-37
• Excalibur vol. 1: #7; 20; 60
• The New Mutants vol. 1: #79
• X-Factor vol. 1: #52; 132; Annual #9
• X-Factor (2002) #1-2
• X-Force vol. 1: #1-2; 26-37; 39-49; '95 Annual
• X-Man: #5-8; 11-18

Stuff That's Cheap: (prices are total w/o shipping)

• Inhumans (1998) #1: $1
• Martian Manhunter (1998) #1-2: $2
• The Nam #1-2: $2
• Hawkman (2002) #1: $1
• Punisher (1998; Marvel Knights) #1-2: $2
• Spectre (Infinite Crisis Mini) #1-2: $1
• Bishop Miniseries #1-4: $2
• Gambit Miniseries #1-4: $2
• Rogue Miniseries #1-4: $2
• Logan Miniseries (2008) #1-3: $2
• 17 Marvel 2099 Comics (2099 AD #1; Ghostrider 2099 #1; 2099 Unlimited #1-4; X-Men 2099 #1-11): $10
• Marvel Team-up Batch (Marvel Comics Presents #7, 141; Marvel Tales #110, 179, 227; Marvel Team-up #76, 106): $2

Stuff you have to pay for (I've provided links to some of these to show I'm not just greedy): (prices are total w/o shipping)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #1-15: $60
• Angel: After the Fall (Season 6): $1-9: $25
• Serenity: Better Days (Mini): #1-3: $10
• New Avengers #1-10; New Avengers Illuminati #1: $50
• Captain America: Fallen Son #1-5: $10
• Batman: Dark Detective #1-#6 (Complete Miniseries): $10
• All-Star Batman and Robin #1-4: $20
• Spectre #27 (2001; Final Issue): $7
• Ultimate X-Men #1; 3-6; 9-10: $50
• Ultimate Spider-Man Trade v1 (Issues 1-5); 10-11; 13-15: $30
• Hellshock vol. 1 #1-4; Hellshock vol. 2 #1-2: $10

Spawn Collection: $200 for main Spawn title; $50 for spin-offs or $250 for all; Includes:

• Spawn #1-95; 105; 109-110
• Curse of Spawn #1-29
• Spawn the Undead: #1-8
• Spawn: Blood and Ashes (graphic novel)
• Spawn: Bloodfeud #1-4
• Spawn: The Dark Ages #1-4
• Spawn/WildCATS #1-4
• Spawn/Witchblade #1
• Angela #1-3
• Violator #1-3
• Sam & Twitch #1-8

Robotech Collection (172 comics!): $30
*A lot of this stuff is in rough shape.
From Comico:

• Robotech: Macross #2-27; 31-34; 36
• Robotech: Masters #1-21; 1; 3-18 (yes, for some reason I have duplicates of a lot of this)
• Robotech: New Gen #1; 3-20; 22; 25

From Eternity:

• Robotech II: Sentinels vol. #1-16
• Robotech II: Sentinels Wedding Special #1-2 (don't ask)
• Robotech II: Sentinels vol. 2 #1-10
• Robotech II: Malcontent Uprisings #1-12

From Antarctic Press & Other Publishers:

• Robotech Annual #1
• Robotech #1-3; 9-11
• Robotech: Covert Ops #1-2
• Robotech: Wings of Gibralter #1-2
• Robotech: Class Reunion #1
• Robotech: Final Fire #1
• Robotech: Invid War Aftermath #1-6
• Robotech #0-4; 6
• Robotech: Love & War #1-3

Non Comics:

• Robotech RPG: 3 Books
• Robotech Graphic Novel
• Protoculture Addicts Mag: #1; 5-8