Month: July 2005

I started my Race for the Heisman game last night; little ‘ol freshman quarterback Jonathan Calvert took the field for #92 North Texas down in Louisiana against #9 LSU. The results were pretty much as expected – my ass was handed to me, 35-21.

I have written many times that I almost always start my games on the default level, Varsity in the case of NCAA 2006, so I can get a better feel for what the developers intended for the average player and/or mass-market target audience. It has always been my experience that I can more easily “tune” a game when I start with the defaults, but these days I do not have the time or patience to tune games. Anyway, on Varsity it was obvious that LSU was much better than the Mean Green. My next game was at Middle Tennessee State, and I ran away 42-14; in this year’s game there is clearly a different between top programs and the bottom of the barrel.

General impressions are favorable; so far, so good. While I am seeing some dropped passes, they do not see as blatant as with last year’s game. The running game seems improved, especially for the AI. LSU pounded the crap out of me the entire game, but Middle Tennessee could do next to nothing on the ground. Interestingly enough the Middle Tennessee did continue to try to establish a ground game, but they were really over matched by my swarming defense.

As mentioned in my previous post, the CPU almost always manages to get rid of the ball instead of taking a sack once the throwing motion starts, but human players have no such luck. This may not bother many of you, but it pisses the heck out of me that EA cannot fix this problem. I know the developers are trying to enhance the game to make it more challenging (or maybe more realistic), but it needs to be applied fairly to humans and the CPU.

The new slow-mo action that takes place when an impact player makes a big play is actually growing on me. I figured it would be annoying, but now it builds some anticipation because I know something interesting is about to happen. Well, most of the time something interesting happens.

At this point the Heisman mode thing seems to be more of a gimmick instead of having substance. You cannot set your rosters except during the in-game setup screen. The fan letters are stupid to the point of being absolutely pointless. And I have no idea what the playbook feature does. It is suppose to let you improve your attributes, but I cannot really make heads or tails of it doing anything.

More still to come …

Sci-Fi Fridays are back tonight with new episodes of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and my favorite television show, Battlestar Galactica. Can’t wait to see how they resolve the BG season ending cliffhanger!

How the hell would I know? I have only played one game, and I am not into the whole “best ever” bit after a few minutes of play. So here are my free-form opening remarks …

As the game loaded up I was immediately put into the race for the Heisman mode thing. I am not sure why they force you to do this out of the gate, but that is what EA Sports deemed best, so it must be good for us. I created a scrambling QB; all of 6 feet, 180 pounds. I guess I did OK, but not great. Scholarship offers came in from #48 Minnesota, #49 Arkansas, and #55 Kansas State. As if I would ever consider playing for any of these teams; I signed up as a walk on for North Texas.

Just in case it needs to be said again, my favorite college teams are Georgia, Texas, and North Texas; in that order. I usually go with North Texas because there is not much of a challenge playing with a great team (in terms of video game potential) such as Georgia. I digress.

Next up I created my player profile; my ratings were not bad, but certainly not great. I think I would like to be a little faster than 78, but what can you do?

The race for the Heisman thing looks pretty interesting. You can import your dude into Madden 06, which is nothing new, but you can also become a coach in Dynasty mode, which is cool, if not a bit of a novelty.

You are then taken to your dorm, which is pretty much your NFL 2K style crib thing; I suppose. I did not mess around here (or with this mode); instead I took it back to the main menu and played a rivalry game: Georgia Tech vs. Georgia. Unfortunately the bumblebees got the better of me.

Are drop passes better compared to NCAA 2005? I think so, but I had at least 4 passes that were dropped that should have been caught (my opinion anyway). Tech ran back a punt for a TD. I am rather pissed that the who “tackle the QB while throwing” animation thing still looks to be “in the game.” I could live with this if it happened to the CPU, but while it happened to me three or four times, the CPU QB always managed to avoid such misery.

What else? Impact players are highlighted in white – kind of a shadow effect. This actually adds to the game and reminds me of Sony’s GameBreaker franchise. I missed an extra point; too soon to tell if the meter means more and/or if it is faster.

A pass interference call was levied against the CPU on a crossing pattern when their defensive back kept my player from reaching the ball! That is a minor improvement, but will actually be a huge game play enhancement if it is called on a regular basis. Your mileage may very.

You have several options once you are inside of two minutes including running a no-huddle offense and spiking the ball.

I lost 32-16; boo hiss and all that. Out of the gate, stats were more or less in line with last year (Tech / GA):
Total Yards 257 / 297
Rushes 12-106 / 19-73
Comp-ATT-TD 6-11-2 / 11-24-2
Passing Yards 151 / 224
TOP 5:50 / 10:10

Tech got several big players including a 64-yard TD pass off of a screen after three of my guys bounced off the freaking HB! Needless to say, that was ridiculous. Other highlights were a 55-yard TD pass and a 64-yard TD run (also featured several missed tackles). The only real highlight for me was a 60-yard TD strike from DJ after a timely INT with about 20 seconds left before the half, which put me up 16-14.

Interestingly enough, Tech went for 2 when the score was 20-16; not sure why because two points would not have help much. I stuffed the play, and if things did not go south from there, I think you would have to consider that a questionable call.

Too soon to reach any sort of verdict, but figured I would do my part to contribute to the yearly hype.

Sometimes writers-block hits, and when it does, the results are not very pretty. I was going to write about being a member of eBay since 1997 and a whole bunch of stuff about how I used (and currently use) eBay, but I think I will just say “screw it” and move on to my main point.

OK, enough of that. I can never just get to the point; you guys know me too well. Back in the day I found eBay really useful for collecting old video games, strange oddities, and RPGs � pen and paper not the rocket variety. These days, trying to use eBay to support a hobby can be a pricy proposition, so I just use eBay for selling stuff; rarely do I buy anything.

I found a recent washingtonpost.com article about eBay’s “E-Commerce Growing Pains” rather interesting reading, especially for those of us who have been around eBay for a while.

As an eBay buyer I have only been burned once, and that deal was more out of ignorance than anything else. I thought I was buying an “original” VHS version of Disney’s Song of the South, but it ended up being a bootleg copy from Japan (or some other Asian country). At the time I did not know I could file fraud complaint at the Post Office; live and learn I guess.

As an eBay seller I have had great luck – I always require Shipping Confirmation or Insurance since I can use those as “proof” that I shipped a package. In 7+ years I have only had three people claim that I did not send the goods. Two dropped the claim after I told them I would send them a copy of the insurance and confirmation receipts. Unfortunately for the other one, my wife forgot to include a delivery confirmation number � I was out $35 or so dollars. I guess the bad news is that two of the three happened in the last few weeks, while the first one happened several years ago. I hope that is not a sign of the times.

Recently I have had a heck of a time getting folks to pay; I would say that 20% of my transactions over the last three or so months have ended with me having to file for a refund. It seems like that is a growing trend, but all in all I have been fairly happy with eBay, and will probably continue to use them for selling items until another competitor makes it worth my while to stop using the giant garage sale known as eBay.

As promised, the hype will ensue as soon as the kids go to bed. Happy days are here again; thanks to a 12 pack of Samuel Adams Summer Ale and a tasty new NCAA football treat.

More to come?

Gaming magazine continues to suck. Details at eleven!

We’ve discussed this many times before, but Gamers with Jobs does another nice “job” pointing out the declining state of certain print gaming magazines.

I say again, Ooooouuuuccccchhhhh!!!!

Shaun Sullivan has announced that version 9.0 of his popular PureSim franchise will be available soon. There’s a pretty extensive list of tweaks and additions (including multiplayer) listed on the site. There are still hints about a publisher/distributor but no announcement yet.

Anybody else find it odd that folks are talking about a console college football game when we’re at the Major League All Star game?

With a pocket full of birthday money, and a sale at Best Buy, I decided to give MLB 2K5 – “powered by ESPN” – a try. I must say, desite all of the horror stories I heard about this title, my one-game experience was pretty positive. I didn’t encounter the deadly passed-ball bug, or any crazy bugs with runners on, numbers of outs, and so forth. Granted, one game is hardly a sample size, but I left with a favorable feeling about the game. Also, it seems that hardcore fans have found workarounds for the biggest problems, as reported in many gaming forums.

First off, the atomosphere is over the top! The crowd rose to the occasion, and really pulled me into the game. The “thwack” of bat on ball, or a missed swing, was pretty poor, but other wise, the action was very ESPN-like.

I love the myriad of gameplay styles and options. For my one game, I stuck with “True Aim” hitting and “K-Zone” pitching. After a couple of at-bats, I was able to put the bat on the ball pretty consistently, albeit without much power. I slapped 14 singles, but got no runs! A couple of untimely double plays and a pickoff did me in, plus some extremely conservative baserunning on my part. Actually, the baserunning was almost exclusively station-to-station. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the speed of the ball in the outfield, the outfield size, the outfielders’ speed, their arms, or my aforementioned lack of aggressiveness on the bags.

The K-Zone was pretty easy to pick up as well. I through about 85% strikes. Sometimes I would miss badly, and throw a “meatball,” but usually, I could hit my spots. I did walk one batter, but I was pitching around him. Their are four other pitching styles to choose from, and I’m looking forward to playing around with them, to see which one suits me the best for realistic play.

The most encouraging thing is that there are about 50 or so sliders for the AI and human player to adjust. I’m assuming they’ll have a measurable impact, so the game can be tweaked to my preception of “realism.”

Hopefully, I won’t run into these “bugs” reported across various websites, and I can find the right combination of sliders (without too much effort) to make the game suit me. After game one, and after spending only $15, I’m pretty excited about this title. We’ll see…

Nice article at ExtremeTech about SLI and ATI’s “CrossFire.”

A lot changed during the two years since I last upgraded my PC. I expected the chip sockets to be different, but poor AGP interfaces are no more? I was so happy to finally get an AGP 8x video card, only to see it become a dinosaur so soon? So here are some new terms I learned during my current upgrading process:

SLI � This one seems like some sort of video card developer�s wet dream. Get this. You buy a motherboard that is capable of running two fan screaming and heat producing video cards that are supposed to be equivalent to the current best single video card. This is an all NVidia, all the time model, although ATI recently announced their own double-card solution. In fairness, the idea is that if you own a 6600 NVidia card, instead of spending $600 for a 7800 card, you purchase another 6600 at $170 (or so) and get the same performance. In theory. I�m an ATI-man, so I was not interested in any SLI solution.

SATA � This is a new interface for hard drives and I guess other devices that is supposed to transfer data faster than the old-fashioned �EIDE� interface. Oh wait a minute, no it really doesn�t transfer faster right now with current technology. And there is SATA 150 and SATA II already, so make sure your drives match the motherboard you�re getting.

PCI Express � AGP is dead, long live the new King! There are a couple of PCI Express variants (for what devices I do NOT know), but the one that is replacing the AGP standard is PCI Express 16x. I guess this is supposed to be faster (maybe?) but with current technology there doesn�t seem to be a whole lot of difference between the interfaces.

How you progress down an upgrade path will be determined by which of the above is on the new motherboard. Since I currently own a nice ATI 9800 Pro that runs everything thrown at it, it was a painful decision to keep that in the �old� box and buy a new ATI X800 XL video card. No sense in upgrading if you can�t get the new tech, and PCI Express is where it�s at these days.

Hard drive choice is a bit more complicated because you can run SATA and EIDE drives on the same motherboard. But I wanted one of the new Maxtor 300 GB 16MB buffer SATA II drives, so that�s what I�ll get. I will probably move my �old� Maxtor 200GB EIDE drive over for storage and keep the even older 160 GB Western Digital Drive in the old box.

In part three I discuss my free game maximization strategy�

Well, I gave it the old college try; I attempted to not buy NCAA 2006 right out of the gate. I suppose that I did actually manage not to pre-order the game; that should count for something. This is the first time that I have not placed a pre-order for this game; yep, first time that has ever happened in the history of EA’s wonderful little franchise.

I just placed an order thanks to EBGames.com and their free two day shipping coupon. Deep down inside I think I understood that a certain part of me just had to *have* the game, but I am still amazed that I made it this long.

Now to actually find time to play the darn thing …

I never really followed hockey, except for the occasional Sports Center highlight and a videogame here and there. At any rate, I do not really give a flying crap that players and owners cannot figure out how to get their heads out of their collective ass. Players and owners makes so much freaking money that it is really hard to feel sorry for either side; Lord only knows why it had to come to throwing away a whole season. It is just hard to understand strikes and lockouts in professional sports. I guess I am just a jealous little shit.

Apparently Jeremy Roenick thinks we should all go take a dump. Unfortunately for Jeremy or anyone else that thinks fringe fans – people like myself that just love sports – will bother to tune into hockey when it eventually resurfaces may be in for a big surprise. Who does Jeremy thinks pays for the privilege of playing professional sports?

“If people are going to sit and chastise pro athletes for being cocky, they need to look at one thing and that’s the deal we’re going to be signing in about three weeks … Pro athletes are not cocky. Pro athletes care about the game. Everybody out there who calls us spoiled because we play a game, they can kiss my ass.”

“I will say personally, to everybody who calls us spoiled, you guys are just jealous,” Roenick said. [Just Google for a source.]

Me jealous of the life of a professional athlete? No thank you.

I do not know Jeremy, but I can only assume he is a first class asshole. Whatever; Jeremy does not what me back, so I will not bother to watch (if I can actually find hockey on TV at some point this year). Does the NHL even have a TV contract now that ESPN pulled out?

Oh yeah; I almost forgot. On ESPN radio this morning I heard that part of the new CBA would expand the number of playoff teams by 4. So pretty much any Tom, Dick, and Harry team will make a playoff run, but will anyone give a flying f’?

Expectations were high when Juan Pablo Montoya moved to McLaren from Williams over the winter, and I’ve always like the way JPM races, so I was pleased to watch a perfect drive at todays British GP that brought him his first win for McLaren. Three things have worked against Montoya in 2005. The first is the switch; you’re definately at a disadvantage in F1 if the driver and his race engineer are early in their relationship and have not developed their “ways or working”. The second, I believe, is that Montoya’s desired car setup is not similar to most other F1 drivers and certainly not the kind of car that Raikkonen, Coulthard or Hakkinen liked to drive. Watch Montoya enter a corner with a medium to hard braking zone and you’ll see the car rotate very quickly when he cranks the wheel. Race teams these days are slaves to their data acqusition, and I don’t think you can underestimate the diffuculty that drivers on new teams face in convincing the engineers to move outside established setup parameters (as an aside, I think Jacques Villeneuave had the same trouble both with Williams and with Sauber when he first arrived). The third problem for Montoya was “Tennisgate”; the broken shoulder caused either by stepping on a tennis ball or taking a spill on a motocross bike (you decide). In any case, Adrian Newey has certainly penned another quick car, and Mercedes is back on their game in terms of horsepower (reliability I’m not so sure of…Kimi needed ANOTHER engine change?!?). McLaren looks like it will have two cars able to take on Alonso’s Renault each weekend, and that should provide continued entertainment.

By the way, I didnt watch this morning’s GP2 race, which preceded the British GP broadcast on SpeedTV, but the Sunday GP2 race from Magny Cours was racing at its best. Young lions racing wheel to wheel (or wheel against wheel) in cars that slide around is good stuff.

Every couple of years or so, I embark on a wonderful journey to learn about the marvels of modern PC technology. This experience usually begins when something on my computer breaks, isn�t working correctly, or a game that I want to get won�t run at optimal levels with my hardware.

Yes friends, it�s time for a computer upgrade!

My computer has this annoying problem that it won�t always turn on after I turn it off. Sometimes it will work and other times I need to unplug the power cord, wait a few minute, plug the power cord back in, and then try to start it. I suspected that the power supply is slowly ending its life or couldn’t handle the current load. So my initial purchase was an Antec TruePower 2.0 550 Watt power supply to replace my 300W Antec PSU. My PC was underpowered when I did my last upgrade, so I knew I�d eventually have to do this replacement.

Then I started thinking � which we all know is a dangerous thing. Why not upgrade my AMD 2700+ machine while I�m at it? I�m a big fan of Mwave and Newegg for computer hardware purchases. Both are reliable and with reasonably fast order processing and shipping. And their prices are very good. I like Mwave�s motherboard/CPU combinations and they�ve been providing my motherboards for roughly ten years.

I decided to purchase an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ �939� socket motherboard. There are all sorts of new sockets for CPUs available these days since I made my last purchase. The sockets are how the CPU connects to the motherboard and since I knew nothing about the 939 motherboards, a little research was in order.

Let me first point out that doing an individual upgrade and piecing together parts probably is not the cheapest way to go. The individual components I purchase are generally going to be more expensive when everything is added up and compared to how much Dell would charge me for the same thing. I just enjoy making each individual choice and customizing my PC as much as possible.

I am a big fan of Asus motherboards. There are plenty of other fine motherboard vendors out there, but I know that I can rely on Asus boards, so that�s all I�ve purchased over the years. So here�s where the fun began. I needed to choose from six different Asus 939 socket motherboard variations.

And learn about something called �SLI.� And nForce 4 and Via motherboard bios. And �PCI express.� Read what I learned in part 2!