jcalvert

Team US F1 – Dream Unrealized

According to Racer, Team US F1 has closed its doors, which probably comes to no surprise to anyone following the team’s recent troubles.

Against the backdrop of weeks of uncertainty about the future of the American team, which had been struggling to get a car ready for the start of the season, sources have revealed team personnel have now been informed they are no longer required as the operation was not continuing.

It’s unfortunate. I never expected the upstart to be a front running; I did expect Team US F1 to put together a decent package, finish some races, and build some US enthusiasm for F1. Chasing after foreign drivers with serious sponsorship backing would have ultimately limited any appeal to US racing fans, or those just curious about this form of auto racing. I think Americans would have backed a true US based F1 team effort, but alas, it looked rather doomed from the start.

MLB 10: The Show Arrives

I am far, far away from my home, so hopefully my wife will make sure MLB 10: The Show (MLB10) does not sit neglected on the porch too long.

It has been a couple of years since I embraced a console baseball title; I want it back – MLB10 will pave the way. MLB 10 looks to do everything right. From online leagues, to a more realistic gaming experience, MLB10 looks to set the stage for the greatest game of console baseball ever produced.

Sony’s boys and girls in San Diego have been incredibly busy this year, refining the game, and making little adjustments that put the game into a whole different ballpark from what we have experienced with past titles. This 30 minute gamer [I need to TM this quickly] will appreciate the warm up features.

Among other options to note, we brought back the classic L1/R1 baserunning controls for you old-schoolers. The RTTS Baserunning option will default to New, but if you prefer the single button press style controls, be sure to change it to Classic. We’ve also added in the ability to take pregame batting practice when you’re in the starting lineup for that game. You can step into the cage and take ten swings to help get your timing down before game-time. You won’t receive any training points or attribute improvements, but this will definitely help get you into a nice rhythm. To ensure you participate in batting practice, set the Pre-Game Batting Practice option to On. Lastly, we’ve added a new Mound Warm-Up feature that will give relievers a chance to throw eight warm-up pitches on the mound, after coming out of the bullpen. Just like pregame batting practice, you won’t receive any training points for this, but it does give you the chance to get a good rhythm before facing live hitters.

Hopefully the statistics engine will be spot on. While I have OOTP for statistical simulations, it would be pretty damn impressive if MLB10 could satisfy my twitch urge, and keep the stat-head in my happy.

Cannot wait until I get to get my hands on this puppy!

PSP – One Last Chance For Glory

As mentioned earlier, today is travel day. I cannot think of the last time I turned on my PSP, so if it does not get much use on this trip, it is high time to ditch the little brick. There is not a direct flight from Atlanta to Calgary, so I am going west (Salt Lake City) before heading north to the frozen lands of Canada. With a combined 6+ hrs in the air plus a layover, you would think that the PSP would be the perfect way to pass the day. There is also the return adventure on Friday; some PSP gaming must be in order, right?

I charged up both batteries, which in my opinion is the primary weakness of the PSP – the battery life basically sucks. I have a handful of UMDs at my disposal – Lumines, Final Fantasy Tactics, two different Pinball Hall of Fame collections, Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Loco Roco, Untold Legends, Pangya, and Wipeout Pure.

Taking 7-10 UMDs with me makes me think about the appeal of a PSPgo with a digital library. Not too much; just a passing thought as I write this article. To be honest I am just not that excited about my current library of PSP games. Hopefully something will float my boat and make the trip pass a little quicker.

Kicking Off March

I am traveling to Calgary for business; will be back to regular posting action starting Saturday. Check back daily for some articles to help you pass the time. Yes, I have several articles lined up, coming your way in my absence. Most likely I am going to miss a few days of posting, but that cannot be helped.

Happy March! Welcome madness; it’s almost here.

Sunday Falcons News, Notes, and Mock Drafts

First up, the Falcons secured the 19th position in the 2010 draft; Texans get the 20th spot via coin toss. In the middle of the draft one spot may not matter a whole lot, but with the loss of their 2nd round pick, I think every spot does in fact matter.

NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks has put together his latest mock draft, which has the Falcons taking a linebacker.

19. Atlanta Falcons
Navorro Bowman, LB, Penn State

Mike Smith needs a playmaker at the weak-side linebacker spot, and Bowman’s athleticism makes him a perfect fit in the Falcons’ scheme.

I do not know much about Bowman; I think it is critical for the Falcons to get help on the d-line and in the secondary. If DT Peria Jerry is expected to make a full recovery, the Falcons could go in a different direction, but I think the first pick has to be an impact player on defense that can start right away.

The official Falcons site has an article with some quotes from GM Thomas Dimitroff and Head Coach Mike Smith. Nothing really earth shattering, but worth a read during the long buildup to the draft.

Weekend Site Maintenance Redux

This weekend I am offering up another round of site maintenance for your viewing pleasure. Several upgrades are in the works, and should be appearing throughout the weekend.

Tags Away
With the upgrade to WordPress 2.9.2, I can introduce tags, or more importantly, Clouds of Tags. Calvert Games has amassed over 2000 articles in its current database; there are literally 1000s more that were left behind in previous incarnations of the site. Archiving those into WordPress is a job for another day.

I have probably only put tags on 15% of the articles. I will slowly work my way through the archive, tagging as time permits; watch the cloud change over time.

I had to make a few decisions on what to tag, and what tags to create. First, the primary focus of the site (see Site Focus below) is videogames so generic entries such as Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Racing pertain to videogames. Some games such as WKC:I, MLB: The Show, OOTP, and Madden (to name a few) get their own tags. Second, some specific real life sporting topics that I enjoy writing about have been given their own tags. UGA, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta Braves all get their own tags, while there are also some broader range sports tags to cover NFL and NCAA Football. There is a method to the madness.

Check out the new Tags Cloud on the side-nav; when it actually appears. For an example of tags in action, check out the White Knight Chronicles: International (WKC:I) tag.

Site Focus – Airguns, Videogames, Sports …
And don’t forget the beer! Let’s be honest; Calvert Games lost its direction over the last 18 months. While the focus was primarily videogames, the site did go in directions that did not make a lot of sense. Over first two months of 2010 I am attempting to remedy the situation.

If you have noticed, this year the site has been extremely focused on videogames and sports coverage. I intend to continue to cover videogames in earnest, from my own unique perspective as a contrarian gamer. For me videogames are a hobby, a family activity, and a great stress release. Videogames will remain (or return as) Calvert Games primary focus.

Sports, primarily diatribes and commentary on the Falcons, Braves, UGA, and U.S. Soccer will also remain a staple.

Like it or not, adult airguns coverage will remain; I will keep anything over the top as opt-in have-to-click-to-see-it. However I am considering moving airguns coverage to a sub-domain. Maybe. For me airguns are another great stress relief, so once the weather is nice, look for more airgun coverage.

Stuffs (yes the ‘s’ is intentional) will remain a staple because there is always a place for off topic coverage. You just are not going to see as much of it as you have in the past. I am still going to write about beer, because I have to be me.

Some Categories will go away. For example, Birdwatching (WTF was I thinking) is now a tag; if I happen to write about birding, it will be designated as Stuffs, and as I just said, much less Stuffs than in the past. Same for Chronicles; at one point in time, under the old format, these types of articles made sense, but not anymore.

I haven’t decided yet what to do with D&D coverage. My intentions were sound; just not sure if it distracts too much from the main focus of Calvert Games – videogames and sports coverage.

Popular and Random Posts
I have added a new popular posts widget on the side-nav. Unfortunately it does not grandfather in any of the past history, so going forward articles showing up in this section are either really popular (linked from other sites) or search engines have decided to prominently display Calvert Games articles in their search results.

I am also looking at adding a “random post of the day” – after all, there are 2000+ articles on the site. While I may be biased, some of them are pretty damn good.

Ads and Other Nonsense
The Google Ad space (aka Sell Out) has not made a triumphant return. I think it will at some point. Maybe next weekend. Or a paypal solicitation space for beer money; have to pay the rent somehow.

Happy Saturday!

PS3 – Studios Push the Envelope

Pretty good article from GamesThirst (via N4G) on how the various Sony in-house studios are pushing each other for graphical and gameplay supremacy.

It all started in earnest with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. No one paid attention back then, the game did not receive the praise to so badly needed but deserved. It was, and still is one of the best looking games on any console. After it, the flood gates were opened, and while lazy devs complained about the PS3’s built, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Kojima Productions, Guerrilla Games, Quantic Dream and Zipper Interactive were all working their hearts off to drop bombshells on the gaming industry. Guess what? It’s exactly what they did.

Technical Quantic Dream may not be a first party studio, PS3 fans have to assume Sony will do everything they can to lock up future IP from the developers of Heavy Rain. Sony may not have the numbers yet, but I like their strategy of getting out original IP experiences.

The Rain Does Not Stop Today

I am only a few chapters into the Heavy Rain experience, but I wanted to offer a quick comment or two. The opening stages/chapters are slow going, but they are necessary to introduce you to the backdrop story and of course the awkward controls. Yes, I still find the controls cumbersome, and they take away from the immersion factor. The quick time events are interesting, and add to the intensity; I just hate holding down the R2 button to walk. Seems so 1996 Resident Evil-ish.

IGN (UK) recently posted an article a couple of days ago offering various opinions from their contributors; spoiler free and worth a read. I thought this opinion summed up my experiences so far in the early stages of the game.

Heavy Rain is so well-put-together and finely produced that it’s guaranteed to suck in even the most skeptical PS3 owners right off the bat. It’s an adventure game at heart — there’s no doubt about that — but don’t let that turn you off. While the adventure genre has been effectively dead on consoles for a very, very long time, Heavy Rain puts a new spin on things. This is no point-and-click, read-read-read bore-fest. Heavy Rain exemplifies what adventure gaming should be in 2010.

It is worth noting that the Heavy Rain metacritic user scores (6.6 based on 566 votes) are significantly lower than the critic ratings (88 reviews). Heavy Rain is definitely not for everyone. A rental may be in order for some; so for this jaded gamer is enjoying the experience.

Heavy Rain Alternate Cover

For those of you that like this sort of thing, Sony made an alternate Heavy Rain cover available for your downloading and printing pleasure. I think this is based off of the UK release.

I am not sure what it says about me that I am posting this link; I can say that I have never been “hard core” enough to replace a game cover with something I could print off the internet. These days I am thankful for small blessings!

PS3 Gets More RAM

It looks like the kids at Sony have figured a way to eke more ram out of the PS3. According joystiq, PS3 developers now have access to 70MB more RAM.

While 70MB of additional memory is not insignificant, don’t expect drastic changes to future PS3 games. A PS3 developer told us that “any bit of RAM helps. Generally it probably won’t change design, but might allow extra effects resolution or dynamic lights or something. Probably more beneficial from the systems and art side then from design/gameplay.” In tandem with increasingly efficient code, the added RAM will undoubtedly make for even better looking games.

Better looking graphics should scare the piss out of ESRB reviewers near and far.

Heavy Rain Initial Impressions (Spoiler Free)

Last night I put the Heavy Rain Blu-ray into the PS3 and was immediately greeted with a “must install 1.01 version” message. So of course I did the needful.

When I was playing the game I noticed that the character dialog was choppy (call it audio skipping), which brings me to this article by the examiner; apparently the patch causes some gamers some serious issues.

Among the complaints, many are complaining about game crashes, audio skipping, save/loading problems, and some characters getting caught in furniture. Not all are complaining about the game, though. For many, the game is running fine after the patch and they are enjoying the experience the game offers. Whether the problems are widespread or just a minor problem for some can’t be determined, yet. Since the game isn’t an online title, you don’t need to get the patch to play the game, but you will have to deny the patch every time you play the game.

I guess we will see a 1.02 patch fairly quickly; hopefully. If the audio skipping continues tonight, I guess I can play with closed caption turned on, but I may as well wait to progress the game. For a game that is story driven, this type of glitz is a hell of note, exemplifying poor quality control.

I only played the initial opening chapters, which to be honest, were really just not my cup of tea. I understand that farting around in the house for a little while introduces you to the characters, background story, and gaming mechanics. My initial impressions were certainly not favorable; I would have rather spent my time playing something else.

To be fair, I only played an hour or so; when I progress into the meat and potatoes of the game things may be a lot more interesting. At this point I just cannot bring myself to accept that I am going to spend the next 8-12 hours with Heavy Rain holding down the R2 button to move around. To me it just breaks every aspect of being immersed into the game.

It is really difficult to post comments about Heavy Rain without talking about the story, which in effect would be to give out spoilers. As I move on with future Heavy Rain posts, I will attempt to avoid spoiling surprises for those of you that have not played the game yet, of I will make sure there are “spoiler alerts” to warn you before continuing on with the article.

Heavy Rain Ships

It sucks being up at four o’clock in the morning, but I did get some cheerful news – Amazon has shipped Heavy Rain. It should be landing on my doorsteps later day. I hope to get a crack at it later tonight, but it will be like my WKC:I experience – gaming one hour at a time.

Bo Doesn’t Know Tecmo Anymore?

Another day (technically from Sunday), gives us another silly ESRB story. This time joystiq references Tecmo Bowl Throwback for the PSN and XBLive.

This is a top-down arcade-style football game in which players compete against teams around the country to become the “Tecmo Bowl Champion.” Some of the football highlights are depicted in animated cutscenes (with better graphics); a few non-football highlights depict cheerleaders wearing low-cut tops while dancing. And a jumbotron screen displays a 2D swimsuit model with some exposed cleavage.

It may be too soon to be 100% certain, but it looks like the game will not feature any NFL players – thanks for that exclusive license NFL & EA.

Sony’s New Slims?

I noticed this article earlier this morning via N4G. Apparently Sony is up to something, but what?

Sand Dollar’s filing today is for the CECH-2101A ‘Computer Entertainment System.’ Label pics for the device (above) confirm that this is indeed the Sony PS3, while label placement pics (below, left) show a device that is the same size and shape as the PS3 Slim. Another device, called the CECH-2101B is also identified in Sand Dollar’s filing. The only difference between these two devices is the hard drive size.

We’re not sure why Sony is passing two new PS3 Slims through the FCC. The wireless specs on the new PS3 Slims include 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth – nothing new there. We’re guessing that maybe Sony found a new manufacturer for some of its wireless components, and was forced to pass the PS3 Slim through the FCC again.

This could be as simple as Sony offering new bundles, or maybe Sony is offering a yummier Slim – bringing back some of the previously removed features such as backwards capability and additional USB slots. My guess is either cheaper internals or game bundles; however it seems too soon to already be changing the innards, so let’s go with new bundles for this fall (or whenever the motion controller thing is due for release). I’ll speculate that one of the Slims will include the new motion controller and the other one will have a motion controller plus a game.

OOTP 11 – Preorder Special

I decided to preorder Out of the Park Baseball 11 (OOTP 11) while it was $15 off. Getting OOTP 11 for $24.99 is actually $5 cheaper than I paid for OOTP 10 back in November!

It has been my experience that OOTP typically goes on sale for $10 off throughout the year, and maybe drops to $15 off at some point towards the end of the year (or at some point before the next version is released). I am not sure if I have seen the upcoming version this cheap. While I am really just getting into OOTP 10, having recently joined an online league for the first time in ages, I just decided that I could not leave well enough alone. I guess the addiction is back in earnest!

There were several items in the preorder announcement that caught my attention.

A Player Comparison screen, in which you can compare two players side-by-side

I know this is not much of a “feature” however it is about gosh darn time this is included. I guess by this point in the franchise the developers should concentrate on refinements.

More customizable news subscriptions, so you can get just the news you want in your inbox

Another one in the category of small nuances; I hate having to shift thorough all those messages and news items.

A handy comparison tab, where you can compare your simulated results with the actual real-world results from that season

This should be a fun way to see how bad I muck up Braves seasons!

Truth be told, I could have been perfectly content with OOTP 10, but OOTP 11 should be worth the money, especially considering I am getting it at a near bargain basement price.