The Recycle Bin

Geoff and I played a brief five minute quarter game using the internet IP method. Took us a few minutes to configure my firewall, but everything was silky smooth during the game, where the mighty Texans defeated the Giants in a 10-0 defensive struggle. There were quite a few interceptions, but they more than likely were due to the humans pushing the buttons as opposed to the CPU. Playing on the default settings and no real complaints yet. There were penalties called, sacks were made, etc.

Round 2 of the Texans v. Giants will occur Thursday evening. I have to practice!

I’ve always been a fan of Madden internet play as opposed to the actual solo game. However, this season I will take a closer look at the franchise mode. The game on the field is good enough now that I might actually enjoy it.

The one thing that EA Sports never seems to understand is that if they want a hardcore, rabid, OOTP Baseball-like following, they have to allow seasons from current games to be imported into future versions. Do I want to spend all of the effort to grow a team and get attached to my players if I know in a few short months I have to start all over? The answer is no, and this is another reason I really don’t spend time with EA Sports franchise modes.

Of course, this may be the only EA Sports game that I am actually interested in running a franchise.

It seems I haven’t lived in Texas long enough. Houston actually IS the “bayou city.” I guess living in Louisiana tainted my view that anything out of that state could be related to the bayou. So Madden commentary can’t be faulted there.

So far, I’m pretty impressed with Madden on the field. This is the first time I’ve played it in a couple of years, but what I see I like. A very nice addition is the QB vision control. Each QB has a field of vision that is highlighted on the field after the ball is snapped. Passes thrown within the field of vision have a higher probability of success.

Peyton Manning has a huge field of vision while other lesser QBs have narrower “cones.” The complication is that during pass plays, you’ll have to lock onto receivers or cycle through them using your field of vision to complete passes. They can still be thrown outside the cone, but those passes have a lower complete rate.

I never thought I’d say this about Madden, but it’s very realistic.

The game has lost its arcadey feel for the most part. Teams can execute running games and it’s a viable alternative to passing offenses. Defenses are defending the pass. Sacks are occuring with some frequency. I actually saw a couple of coverage sacks, something I never was able to do in previous Madden iterations.

These observations are only based on four games to date, but I am not complaining at this point.

Why can’t EA Sports fix the commentary code in Madden? I’ve played two games so far. I was greated to the “bayou” stadium by Al Micheals, which is interesting since Reliant field is in Houston, the last time I checked. Team kicks a field goal, Al Micheals says “the offense will want seven from this,” or words to that effect. Huh?

Another observation – Texans fumble a punt return to the cheers of the crowd. The tackle after the fumble recovery led to Texans high-fiving each other. I don’t think so…

I purchased the last copy of Madden NFL 06 PC at my local Gamestop this afternoon. An odd thing occurred during the purchase. After looking around for the game, I asked the clerk if they had the PC version available. He walked over to the display case and removed the box, which apparently had no CDs inside. While I was swiping my credit card, I noticed that he went into a draw and removed CDs to place inside my copy of the game.

Since it was the last copy in the store I didn’t complain, but is this common practice at Gamestop? Some sort of security deterrent? I was initially concerned that my product ID code wasn’t going to work if somebody else used the CDs. But I’ve loaded the game and everything is working just fine up to this point.

The first thing you’ll notice when Madden loads is the “NFL Exclusive License” text added to the familiar intro screen. Graphics are gorgeous at 1600×1200 32-bit with everything at the highest level. I played a quick game (Texans vs. Colts) and will post more impressions as I move through various modes. Geoff is getting a copy so we can try out the online features.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should already know that Madden is selling at huge numbers. So for the doomsayers, there hasn’t been much of a backlash to the NFL license. In fact, almost every person who moaned loud and hard about this deal is either going to purchase the game, or already has it. Kudos to EA Sports for this business decision, because they understand the lemming nature of most sports gaming fans, and are exploiting their target audience with a precision that should become case study for business school students.

Heck, even I am going to purchase the PC version this year.

As one might hear in NFL Street, don’t hate the player, hate the game. From all accounts, Madden NFL 06 is about as wacky and bug filled as any other version, so the NFL deal really hasn’t changed much. I do believe that next year will be the true test. I figure that the 06 version was in the works before the deal was done. Madden NFL 07 will be the test to see just how much EA Sports will sit on its cash cow.

I have read that next generation games may cost $10 more on average (i.e. $59.99), but I really did not expect it to happen. Too bad, but it looks like it is coming if gamestop.com is any indication. I just too a look at their PS3 and Xbox 360 game listing, and there was sticker shock staring me in the eyes.

Life is sometimes funny. I will go for long stretches of time, not worrying about the “little things” in a game that used to bother me. Now that I am a borderline mass-market gamer, I just want to have fun with my gaming experiences. Then other times (such as last night) I revert back to my previous life of a jaded sports gaming bastard.

I think I have complained enough about QB sacks for the last 3-4 years that no one much cares about me complaining yet again – but that is what I do best! So here goes … I am sick and tired of getting my ass handed to me in the form of a sack when my QA is tackled (or hit) by a CPU defender mid-throw. It is so damn frustrating to watch my CPU tuck the ball back in and take a sack even if he has gone through three-fourths of his throwing motion. I could live with this (maybe) if the game was fair about it and also sacked the CPU QBs, but no, that would be too damn easy.

Last night this happened several times (North Texas vs. Florida Atlantic); one time the impact rated QA for Florida Atlantic completed some sort of crazy 180-degree behind the back, underarm pass. No kidding, I was in the process of sacking the CPU’s impact QB, who’s back happened to be facing away from the line of scrimmage; when all of a sudden, the QB flipped the ball 10-yards forward to a WR. Wow! That sort of stuff does not make my day. In fact, when I have not had any gaming time for about a week, it really sort of spoils the experience. I thought I had moved passed this already, but old habits die hard.

Another annoyance is that North Texas’s schedule is messed up. I finished up my schedule against Florida Atlantic on the road, but “in real life” North Texas’s last game of the year is in Denton hosting Arkansas State. I am not sure when it happened (maybe the schedule changed after the game was released), but the October 1 game with Troy was moved to Tuesday night – October 4 – on ESPN2, while the Arkansas state was moved to the end of the year Minor squabble, and to be fair, maybe not the fault of EA Sports. I was already jawed up, but I am happy to get to watch the Mean Green on TV!

At the end of my first season I was ranked 32nd in the country; a health 10-1 record, with the only blemish being a beating at the hands of LSU. My next game is the New Orleans bowl vs. the Zips from Akron (6-5). I am now ranked #20 in the country. I guess this mimics real life; sit back and do nothing for several weeks and watch your rankings climb! The whole Top 25 pole system in NCAA 2006 needs to be improved for next year.

I do still like the game, but sometimes the little things get me down. Hopefully I will have time to play and get over it tonight.

I should have seen this coming. No backups in a year or so, and now thanks to a nasty virus it is all gone. “It” of course is everything that I should have been backing up weekly/monthly – tax records, my wife’s legal documents, license keys to a few favorite software packages and games, and a crap load of email.

The bad thing is that I used to do backups fairly regularly, but I got lazy. I typically just backup data files from my C drive to my D drive, which under normal circumstances worked fine. But not this time; I paid dearly this weekend. The nasty virus attack that got by Norton cleaned my boot record and utterly destroyed my C and D drive partitions. Yes, these two drives are on the same physical HDD – I know, not very smart.

I think I slept a couple of hours this morning after trying, and trying, and trying some more to recover the data. The loss of the email is brutal � I have years of documents, contacts, and just all around important stuff. I especially feel bad for my wife because she just lost so much of her legal work.

So I guess I am just feeling a little sorry for myself, but I figured I would do the public service thing by reminding everyone of the importance of regular backups!

I decided to put Battlefield 2 on the backburner for now. The game looks fantastic and many friends are enjoying it, but there is a steep learning curve. That is, if you want to play the game correctly and not be one of the kool dudez that frequent such games. I�ve grown much less tolerant of the dudez as I get older.

My main gaming time (other than Out of the Park 6) is spent with my old friend World of Warcraft. A couple of things renewed my interest. First, my 6800GT runs liquid smooth with all of the graphics settings on high and at 1600×1200. Now, WoW isn�t exactly state of the art graphics, but they maximize what�s in the game. The fun part is that I can now see folks galloping down the trail far ahead of me, instead of having them appear as ghosts because my old graphics card only allowed shorter distances to be seen. I fly around and can see beasts and creators below me. Everything just looks better post-6800GT.

Secondly, big changes are coming to the hunter class in the next WoW patch. Version 1.7 tweaks the talent trees and adds all sorts of fun things for pets to learn. My level 50 Tauren hunter should benefit greatly from a re-do of his talent tree. I only play PVE (player versus environment) and not PVP (player versus player). I�ve soloed to this point in WoW, don�t belong to a guild, and am a little concerned that the closer I get to the level cap at 60, the fewer things there will be for the solo-player to do.

So I�ve started looking at Guild Wars to take up my time once I get toward level 60 in WoW. From all reports, it�s a more solo-friendly game in the sense that there are henchmen robots that can be fired to do quests with you. I just don�t have time to manage human relationships with WoW and play it. So one had to go. Guild Wars may be a nice compromise, and there is no monthly online fee.

I�ll keep you posted�

Greydog Software announced that Gary Gorski is developing a new text-based college basketball game called “Total College Basketball.” What’s interesting is that Arlie Rahn developed the bug filled and much patched Tournament Dreams College Baseketball for .400 Software Studios. Yes, that’s the same Arlie Rahn who is CEO of Greydog Software.

Gary Gorski’s Total Pro Basektball is a very good product from all reports, so text-sim basketball fans should not be disappointed. Scheduled for a Q4 release.

I think I am going to have to break down and buy a new PC, but I keep looking at the iMac solution. I think this would work for most of the things my family needs – but I would hate to give up Windows software (Word, Excel, Outlook, OOTP6.5, FM2005, and a few others). I am pretty much Mac ignorant; I know there is software to run/emulate Windows software on a Mac, but I have no idea what I should get, how well it works, etc.

Suggestions from the Mac faithful (if any)?

I just setup a public league at NFL.com. If anyone is interested in joining, please sign up in the next day or two; live draft is Aug 18 at 7:45PM EST.

I have played yahoo FF for several years, but my dad tells me that NFL.com is much better, so I figured I would give it a go. Look forward to seeing you there!

Not that I am a Bears fan or a Gators fan, but when are we going to say “the hell with preseason” and put a stop to the insanity? Grossman went down with a broken ankle against the St. Louis Rams earlier tonight.

Why not eliminate the preseason, and expand the rosters for several weeks? I say give the teams 10 extra roster spots for weeks 1-4, and 5 extra roster spots weeks 5-10. The practice squad could also be expanded by 5 positions for the first eight weeks of the season. This would give teams plenty of time to evaluate talent, and hold on to guys on the bubble well into the season to compensate for the lack of preseason games.

No one wants their team’s season to go in the ditch in preseason. Sure, it is not much better to have it happen in the first few games, but at least those injuries “count” while the preseason games do not matter for squat.

Take it from a Falcons fan, the NFL preseason sucks.

Well, it finally happened. I guess it was inevitable – my PC has been crippled by a nasty boot virus. I have been using Norton 2002 for 4+ years, and it has always been a trusty little friend. Alas, Norton let me down this week, despite faithfully renewing my support license year after year, in spite of running daily checks to pull down the latest virus definitions, even with scheduled full scans ever Sunday.

Yes, I am a beaten, bitter man. Hackers suck, and virus are just as bad. It is too bad that folks cannot put their creative juices into something more useful. Instead of enjoying the latest version of Madden (oh yes I will Chris), I have been trying to recover my machine, but my efforts have been fruitless.

I pulled down AVG Antivirus and gave it a spin. It did clean up a few things, but not enough. Ironically enough, my ISP is now offering CA’s suite (antivirus, spam, firewall protection, etc) for free, but it is several days too late for me.