In my excitment over PureSim’s release, I forgot to mention that SEGA shipped the North American version of Eastside Hockey Manager 2005. Rumor has it that this is an actual shipment as opposed to the Worldwide Soccer Manager fiasco.
Shaun Sullivan’s latest and greatest version of PureSim Baseball has been released. There’s an option to spend $29.99 for the digital download or purchase a box set that will be released at some point (and not listed on the site yet), but read the fine print. For some reason Matrix Games only allows 30 days access to the file, so make sure to backup the installation software.
This is a much slicker version of PureSim than what I remember. It ships with a pretty comprehensive 50 page manual. Amazing that some text game developers can do that these days. Just ask all of the Out of the Park Baseball owners when their manual shipped for version six.
Will post impressions as they come.
The Texas Rangers hired a 28 year-old General Manager today. Where do you go from there at such a young age? Does Daniels even shave yet? I guess the Theo Epstein hire was the beginning of a trend.
Wow! I think I may have just wasted $49.99 (+ tax + gas money). It looks like the random “system” issues that I have seen (game randomly shutting down, lock ups, etc) are rather common.
EA Sports Forum Madden Issue Thread
Evil Avatar Madden Issue Thread
Most of the issues that I have found after a few minutes of looking describe random shut-down problems with the franchise mode, but I have seen problems loading the game, trying to get to the wireless mode, and within a single player exhibition game.
I wish I followed my normal routine and ordered from EBGames or Gamestop because I would send this turkey back to the store. Un-f’ing-believable!
I am not sure what the deal is with the game. I described some of the “system” problems in the previous post, but this game seems to be packed with all sorts of system problems. The game has turned off on me twice while trying to load (once in the online mode, and a second time when trying to play a game). The load times when trying to move between the various songs is really bad. The deal is a good 2-3 seconds when trying to move from song to song (in order to turn off everything but the NFL Films music).
I setup an online account (could not believe that jcalvert, calvertgames, calvertj, meangrean, etc where all taken) in order to download roster updates, but alas, roster updates are not currently available. That pretty much sucks since the Falcons still have Price.
When I setup my account I was told I need to allow ESPN to pay my $2 online subscription (to play on the EA Madden game servers) or I need to charge $2 to my credit card. WTF – I could care less, I just wanted to get some roster downloads (and of course there were none). So now I guess ESPN is the sponsor of my account and can email me all sorts of crap. Thanks EA – great customer service.
I have only played a quarter so I do not have much in the way of gameplay experiences to write about. I guess I am going to have spend some time trying to see if others are having some of the same system issues that I am encountering. I do not have any problems with my other games, so either Madden is a big fat turkey or my PSP is just going to have problems with this game. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come with my other PSP games.
This week was a perfect reminder of why I shop online – I cannot find jack-crap in the local stores. I am going to London this weekend for a couple of weeks so I wanted to load up on some new games to help me pass the time (9 hour flights suck). It took a trip to Best Buy (after unsuccessful trips to Target and Circuit City) to land Madden and Namco Museum Battle Collection. I am not sure if Madden was under produced or just plain in demand, but I ended up with the last copy from Best Buy.
I also wanted to get Battlestar Galactica Season 1 on DVD, but no suck luck. Not sure what the deal with this one is; looks like I am going to have to place an order with Amazon.
I have not had much time with either new game. Namco Museum as a nice collection of classis and a few special arrangements of several games (Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga, and New Rally-X. My only comment so far is that the analog stick is either not suited for some of the games (Ms. Pac-Man and Mappy come to mind) or I just have to get a better handle on the controls. I made mistakes too many times as I went left instead of down. I will certainly post more as I have time to play.
Madden has been a no go to this point. The first time I attempted to play, the game locked up when it was trying to find a profile. Then the game would not load at all (some sort of internal error code). I finally got into a game, but it locked up during the kick off. I have not tried again.
Battery life is so bad that I am going to have to buy another if I want to be able to play for more than four hours. The stock Sony PSP battery is $44.95, which is pretty expensive to extend my playing time to 7-9 hours.
This trip is going to really test the value of my PSP and each of my games. So far only FIFA has been sold, but any game that does not receive significant playing time is going to be thrown up on eBay after my trip. If nothing else, I need to make some money to pay for Namco and Madden, and I planning to pick up some games while in London, so there is not a place for the slackers in my gaming library.
A little digging in the Matrix Games forum reveals that PureSim 2006 will include multiple minor league levels. This is excellent news. With Out of the Park Baseball’s uncertain future, I beleive more commissioners will look for game alternatives in the coming months. There will more than likely be very loud howls if the new version of OOTP is not backwards compatible with OOTP 6.5 leagues. I will purchase PureSim 2005 Gold Edition to assess whether or not it makes sense for me to start a PureSim multiplayer league. I honestly believe that Shaun Sullivan will never create a new version of PureSim that isn’t backwards compatible. He understands.
There’s about to be some competition in career baseball text-sims in 2006!
The folks that develop Out of the Park Baseball learned some hard lessons about backing up data these past few days. I won’t add to the “how pathetic it is to back up to the same hard drive” pile on that is occurring in the forums. I will just mourn all of the great information that is now lost to the OOTP community.
What is done is done.
PureSim, now a Matrix Games franchise, will be available in a 2005 “Gold” edition next week. There are a couple of interesting new features, including what looks to be a very comprehensive multiplayer mode. The only problem with PureSim is that there still isn’t a comprehensive minor league system included in the game. So from the start, it is behind Out of the Park Baseball even if it really does (as claimed by Shaun Sullivan) have the best multplayer system on the planet.
I can honestly say as an OOTP Commissioner that any multplayer mode that makes my life easier, I am going to check out. PureSim needs to evolve the minor league system. Then and only then will PureSim compete for OOTP multiplayer market share.
There’s a new beta version of OOTP 6.5b available for download at the Out of the Park Baseball site. You’ll note that I don’t provide a link to the patch. The site hasn’t worked all day for some reason, but when it’s back up there will be a new patch available. I promise!
Last weekend I had a momentary (and my first) graphics stutter playing rFactor while I was driving. A few minutes later I was in the paddock space waiting for the session to end and the PC just shut off. Power supply turned out to be dead as a doornail.
Since Chris just did an upgrade, I asked him for some advice and he steered me towards Antec. For $70 from Newegg and about $7 bucks for UPS ground I had a new 500W Smartpower 2.0 when I got home from work on Tuesday. I resisted the temptation to install at that point as I had an 8:05AM flight out of Laguardia to start a business trip.
So, back at home here on Saturday, I just installed the new Antec, complete with modular cables. It’s really nice to be spared the bulky, fixed wiring loom and the cables have a nice mesh wrap covering them. I used three of the supplied cables. The SATA cable went to the pair of SATA drives. The first molex cable is powering my DVD drive, floppy (yes, I installed one), and the 6800GT. The second molex cable is covering the 3 case fans and the front power switch/LED’s. This Smartpower 2.0 also came with a fan control cable and a flip through the Asus manual told me where to connect that to the motherboard.
The wiring arrangement in the case must be better for airflow, as I have no less than a dozen small wire ties holding power cables in the small space between the chassis and the external case, as far away from intake and exhaust locations as I could get without making the bends in the wire too sharp. Two other changes were some re-routing of the (very long for the application) SATA cables from the drives to the mother board, and, maybe critically, the reversal of the side case fan from exhaust to intake. I probably wasnt doing myself any good having the PS, the two rear case fans and the side fan all doing exhaust, as I look at the Raidmax case and wonder if the oval grills low and forward, the strip of holes below the rear fans, and the small slots on the right side case cover would pass enough air to keep up with the exhaust. It’s a little cool today, but I did a little test with rFactor, letting 19 AI cars race at Orchard with the video on full screen. Neither the video card nor the exhaust fans have kicked into high RPM to this point, which is a pleasant surprise. I wish I had done some samples and written down the case temps per the BIOS, but since I blow out the case on a somewhat frequent basis, I’ll do some tests on case fan direction and see how it goes. As for now, things appear cool (:-P)
It’s a bit windy outside, but not much rain and we still have electricity. The storm shifted to the East, so College Station isn’t getting hit as hard as predicted.
I move from Florida to Texas thinking it will be nothing but longnecks, BBQ, and SUVs. Now a huge hurricane appears to just ruin everything. Life isn’t fair. Looks as if the storm has shifted to the East, so College Station will experience mucho rain and wind this weekend. But it shouldn’t be as bad as first predicted.
The pictures on the news networks of the long lines of cars on the highways is something you can’t appreciate until seen firsthand.
Opera has decided to join the other browsers and is offering version 8.5 as a free download. I’ve been using Firefox these past few months, but I am switching to Opera. I continue to experience problems with various web pages in Firefox. Not having the same problem in Opera and I love tabbed browsing. Firefox doesn’t feel quite as polished as Opera.
There’s a nice Civilization IV preview at Gamespot. There are very, very few games that I purchase on the day they’re available, not to mention pre-ordering them. Out of the Park Baseball is one. Civilization is the other. I own all of them and the series is one of the reasons PC gaming is my hobby of choice.
Now with that being said, I wasn’t a big fan of Civ III. The combat system was downright silly. When folks with swords can defeat modern day infantry in a game, it’s something that I don’t want to play. The good news is that it appears the combat system is going to be fixed in Civ IV.
From the preview:
“The combat system has undergone a lot of work from previous Civs. The new strength rating goes a long way toward determining the course of a battle. It may sound like a simple idea–the “stronger” a unit, the better its odds–but it’s one that has eluded earlier Civs for some reason, as you can hear countless stories about a Stone Age spearmen unit defeating a modern-day tank.”
I’m one happy camper! In other news, there’s a Navy SEAL combat unit added to the game that’s supposed to be some sort of super-infantry. I’ll give the developers a pass, but anyone who knows anything about infantry will tell you that while the SEALs are very good at some things, they are not an elite “infantry” unit. The idea that SEALs would, for instance, defend Boston from attack is quite funny. They aren’t designed to do those sorts of things. Neither are Green Berets.
But if the combat system is finally fixed, then Civ IV could be one of the greatest games ever developed for the PC.