Circling the Bases: MLB 2k8 Baseball (Wii) Review
Posted on
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Since the demise of the High Heat Baseball franchise and my adoption of the console as my platform of choice for yearly baseball video games fix, the MLB 2k series of games has been outstanding. Though not always the prettiest or most bug-free, the series has generally been the best action-oriented baseball simulation on the market. But after the abysmal failure that was The Bigs for the Nintendo Wii by the same development studio, I had my doubts about the Wii version of MLB 2k8. If the game had adapted the execrable interface and sloppy controls of the arcadey The Bigs, it would have been a dramatic failure. I'm delighted to report that is not the case, as the 2k8 version of the series holds its own with any of its predecessors.
Those interested in an action-oriented sim with licensed player names and stats will not be disappointed with this game. Those looking for a solid, fun baseball experience will also not be disappointed. The stats are all there, the graphics are decent though not incredible, which is par for the course with this series. It contains season and franchise modes as well as home run derby minigames. It unfortunately lacks online play for those who want that sort of thing. But like any Wii game, the first question to answer is about the motion controls.
2k8's motion controls are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the pitching interface is slick and intuitive, and unlike The Bigs, doesn't make the player feel the need to strain his shoulder throwing as hard as possible. Someone with any knowledge of pitching at all should handle the pitching controls easily. The catcher will place his glove where he wants the ball pitched, and the pitcher should try to match that, as his advice is sound.
But where the game stumbles a bit is in the batting interface. This is completely puzzling to me, because it would seem that batting would be the no-brainer for this system. Wii Sports' baseball had the batting swing interface down, and this game doesn't really capture the same feel. Rather than feeling the need to stand in a batter's stance and swing for the fences, the game's controls inspire only small flicking motions. There is a disconnect between the swing and the screen that is hard to pinpoint but it creates a noticeable distance from the game that shouldn't be there. I want to make clear that the batting controls aren't bad at all. They just lack the oomph I expected out of a title with a motion-sensing stick as its main form of input. The fielding, throwing, and baserunning are all solid, and the management options in exhibition and franchise modes are as strong as the last version I played, MLB 2k6 for the XBox.
The game also stumbles on a part of the design that I'm finding is difficult for all Wii titles, the menu system. The 2k8 menus all use the shiny glass button art style that is so prevalent in Wii titles, probably because it mimics the look of the systems main console, the Wii Menu. Unfortunately, this art style is carried through all of the menus, including the screens that display stats. Baseball is a stat-heavy game, and just making up a lineup can require looking through multiple stat categories for the entire bench team. All of it is rendered with entirely too much graphical polish. Too much effort is expended on making the menus look shiny, while the information contained within is often cramped and requires side-scrolling to read properly. Baseball stats are usually presented horizontally and so much screen real estate is needlessly wasted, making menus take longer to read than necessary. Unfortunately, this is a problem in multiple Wii titles, especially sports titles like all of the EA Sports titles I've reviewed, including NBA Live '08, FIFA '08 and Madden NFL '08. I can't say whether this is a Nintendo mandate or just bad UI design, but it's becoming quite irritating.
Despite these flaws, MLB 2k8 is a damn fine game of baseball, the first good serious sports sim on the system. I would recommend it for anyone who wants a good baseball game for their Wii. The game deserves an 8.5 out of 10 for its depth of play, quality of presentation and fun mechanics. Perhaps next year's version will include online play and even online leagues. Until then, MLB 2k8 is a fine addition to any Wii sports fan's library.
Those interested in an action-oriented sim with licensed player names and stats will not be disappointed with this game. Those looking for a solid, fun baseball experience will also not be disappointed. The stats are all there, the graphics are decent though not incredible, which is par for the course with this series. It contains season and franchise modes as well as home run derby minigames. It unfortunately lacks online play for those who want that sort of thing. But like any Wii game, the first question to answer is about the motion controls.
2k8's motion controls are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the pitching interface is slick and intuitive, and unlike The Bigs, doesn't make the player feel the need to strain his shoulder throwing as hard as possible. Someone with any knowledge of pitching at all should handle the pitching controls easily. The catcher will place his glove where he wants the ball pitched, and the pitcher should try to match that, as his advice is sound.
But where the game stumbles a bit is in the batting interface. This is completely puzzling to me, because it would seem that batting would be the no-brainer for this system. Wii Sports' baseball had the batting swing interface down, and this game doesn't really capture the same feel. Rather than feeling the need to stand in a batter's stance and swing for the fences, the game's controls inspire only small flicking motions. There is a disconnect between the swing and the screen that is hard to pinpoint but it creates a noticeable distance from the game that shouldn't be there. I want to make clear that the batting controls aren't bad at all. They just lack the oomph I expected out of a title with a motion-sensing stick as its main form of input. The fielding, throwing, and baserunning are all solid, and the management options in exhibition and franchise modes are as strong as the last version I played, MLB 2k6 for the XBox.
The game also stumbles on a part of the design that I'm finding is difficult for all Wii titles, the menu system. The 2k8 menus all use the shiny glass button art style that is so prevalent in Wii titles, probably because it mimics the look of the systems main console, the Wii Menu. Unfortunately, this art style is carried through all of the menus, including the screens that display stats. Baseball is a stat-heavy game, and just making up a lineup can require looking through multiple stat categories for the entire bench team. All of it is rendered with entirely too much graphical polish. Too much effort is expended on making the menus look shiny, while the information contained within is often cramped and requires side-scrolling to read properly. Baseball stats are usually presented horizontally and so much screen real estate is needlessly wasted, making menus take longer to read than necessary. Unfortunately, this is a problem in multiple Wii titles, especially sports titles like all of the EA Sports titles I've reviewed, including NBA Live '08, FIFA '08 and Madden NFL '08. I can't say whether this is a Nintendo mandate or just bad UI design, but it's becoming quite irritating.
Despite these flaws, MLB 2k8 is a damn fine game of baseball, the first good serious sports sim on the system. I would recommend it for anyone who wants a good baseball game for their Wii. The game deserves an 8.5 out of 10 for its depth of play, quality of presentation and fun mechanics. Perhaps next year's version will include online play and even online leagues. Until then, MLB 2k8 is a fine addition to any Wii sports fan's library.
Labels: Baseball, MLB, Nintendo, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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Dribbling for Dullards: NBA Live 08 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, February 15, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
I am not a fan of the current incarnation of the NBA and am not a fan of basketball in general. My first exposure to the game in over a decade came during last year's NBA Finals, and only because my favorite player LeBron James had made it to the championship series. As a result, a "casual-focused" NBA action simulation game should be right up my alley. The Wii version of NBA Live 08 from EA Sports should be that game. The fact that it isn't highlights the defects of the EA Sports' overall design philosophy for Wii games. In short, they are designing dumbed down, barely-interactive imitations of their popular series from other platforms, and doing it quite badly.
This review will be similar to the review I gave of FIFA 08 last year, because that game shares so many similarities with this one, as well as with Madden 08. Though NBA Live 08 does not share the bugs of Madden, all three games use the exact same menu system, a menu system that blows like Orca. While the menus are pretty, they are horribly slow, and often deliberately short of necessary information. For instance, during season mode, trading a player or signing a free agent is an exercise in frustration. The player cannot sort the columns of information, so that searching for a Point Guard with an overall rating of 70 or higher means sifting through every single player until that point guard is found. For the free agent list, that is over 50 players to sort through, with a painfully slow scroll feature. Once a player is selected, there is no additional information about that player beyond his name, position and overall rating. No biographical information, no age, no breakdown of his skills, just an overall rating. The information is there, as it shows up on team roster screens, so why isn't it available when scouting the player?
Like FIFA, the game is incredibly light on the typical game modes expected of an EA Sports title, or any "serious" sports title for that matter. There are exhibition games, the casual "Party" mini-games, season, playoffs and tournament modes, as well as online games. Unlike the other versions of the title, there is no dynasty mode, which is what most fans of this type of game will want to play. What's so galling about the exclusion of Dynasty mode is that there really is no design needed on such a mode, since it's been in previous versions of the title for years as well as current versions on other platforms. It's an infuriating design decision. Just as with FIFA 08, the target audience for this type of game is going to be fans of the previous games in the series and people who are NBA fans. Dynasty mode is exactly what those fans will come to expect, and any game that does not contain it will be considered inferior. It's almost as if the designers at EA don't want people to purchase the game for the Wii, which is ludicrous and bordering on tinfoil hat territory.
But beyond all the extra modes expected of a franchise such as this, how does the on-court action perform? That's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the game is fun, more so than FIFA 08 and with fewer bugs than Madden 08. Here to, the game fails at the fundamental design level. Like the other EA Sports titles, NBA Live includes a "Family Play" option, something EA Sports has touted as a means of balancing the game among different skill levels. Younger kids or less accomplished gamers can use the Family Play controls, which only use the Wiimote to pass, shoot and play some defense, while more skilled gamers use the advanced controls which adds the nunchuk and the ability to control the players' movements. I applaud the concept. However, the actual design and execution falls well short of the stated goal. Rather than evening the balance, it hamstrings the more accomplished player by removing options. The advanced player feels disconnected from the actions on the screen, mainly because there are so few actions the player can perform when compared to other games of this type on other platforms.
Motion-sensitive controls are supposed to be about immersing the player deeper into the game by mimicing real-life motions. Mapping the game's controls to the restrictive nature of the Family Play set of controls actually makes the player feel less immersed, because of how little freedom with shot selection, shot skill and juke moves the controls allow. Once the basic controls are mastered, there don't seem to be anywhere else for the player to improve, and his actions feel divorced from the actions the players are peforming onscreen. FIFA 08 suffered from the same problem, and it is a fundamental flaw of the Family Play design. If EA wishes to target sports games to a younger, less savvy audience, it would seem to make more sense not to use the existing "hardcore" NBA Live franchise to do so. For myself, it leads me to prefer to purchase the game on the PS2, which is disappointing in the extreme. Motion controls are supposed to make the Wii version preferable, because of how much more immersive they can make the game, and EA Sports has failed miserably time and time again.
It's high time that the EA Sports Wii division be replaced from the top-down with those who understand that existing franchises come with expectations that are not being met. I shudder to think of how badly this design philosophy would diminish the NHL franchise. Sports gamers who want serious sports games on the Wii are being criminially underserved. I would rate NBA Live 08 a 6 out of 10, only worth purchasing in the bargain bin by people who care nothing about NBA seasons and just want a midly fun, 30-minute basketball-flavored diversion.
This review will be similar to the review I gave of FIFA 08 last year, because that game shares so many similarities with this one, as well as with Madden 08. Though NBA Live 08 does not share the bugs of Madden, all three games use the exact same menu system, a menu system that blows like Orca. While the menus are pretty, they are horribly slow, and often deliberately short of necessary information. For instance, during season mode, trading a player or signing a free agent is an exercise in frustration. The player cannot sort the columns of information, so that searching for a Point Guard with an overall rating of 70 or higher means sifting through every single player until that point guard is found. For the free agent list, that is over 50 players to sort through, with a painfully slow scroll feature. Once a player is selected, there is no additional information about that player beyond his name, position and overall rating. No biographical information, no age, no breakdown of his skills, just an overall rating. The information is there, as it shows up on team roster screens, so why isn't it available when scouting the player?
Like FIFA, the game is incredibly light on the typical game modes expected of an EA Sports title, or any "serious" sports title for that matter. There are exhibition games, the casual "Party" mini-games, season, playoffs and tournament modes, as well as online games. Unlike the other versions of the title, there is no dynasty mode, which is what most fans of this type of game will want to play. What's so galling about the exclusion of Dynasty mode is that there really is no design needed on such a mode, since it's been in previous versions of the title for years as well as current versions on other platforms. It's an infuriating design decision. Just as with FIFA 08, the target audience for this type of game is going to be fans of the previous games in the series and people who are NBA fans. Dynasty mode is exactly what those fans will come to expect, and any game that does not contain it will be considered inferior. It's almost as if the designers at EA don't want people to purchase the game for the Wii, which is ludicrous and bordering on tinfoil hat territory.
But beyond all the extra modes expected of a franchise such as this, how does the on-court action perform? That's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the game is fun, more so than FIFA 08 and with fewer bugs than Madden 08. Here to, the game fails at the fundamental design level. Like the other EA Sports titles, NBA Live includes a "Family Play" option, something EA Sports has touted as a means of balancing the game among different skill levels. Younger kids or less accomplished gamers can use the Family Play controls, which only use the Wiimote to pass, shoot and play some defense, while more skilled gamers use the advanced controls which adds the nunchuk and the ability to control the players' movements. I applaud the concept. However, the actual design and execution falls well short of the stated goal. Rather than evening the balance, it hamstrings the more accomplished player by removing options. The advanced player feels disconnected from the actions on the screen, mainly because there are so few actions the player can perform when compared to other games of this type on other platforms.
Motion-sensitive controls are supposed to be about immersing the player deeper into the game by mimicing real-life motions. Mapping the game's controls to the restrictive nature of the Family Play set of controls actually makes the player feel less immersed, because of how little freedom with shot selection, shot skill and juke moves the controls allow. Once the basic controls are mastered, there don't seem to be anywhere else for the player to improve, and his actions feel divorced from the actions the players are peforming onscreen. FIFA 08 suffered from the same problem, and it is a fundamental flaw of the Family Play design. If EA wishes to target sports games to a younger, less savvy audience, it would seem to make more sense not to use the existing "hardcore" NBA Live franchise to do so. For myself, it leads me to prefer to purchase the game on the PS2, which is disappointing in the extreme. Motion controls are supposed to make the Wii version preferable, because of how much more immersive they can make the game, and EA Sports has failed miserably time and time again.
It's high time that the EA Sports Wii division be replaced from the top-down with those who understand that existing franchises come with expectations that are not being met. I shudder to think of how badly this design philosophy would diminish the NHL franchise. Sports gamers who want serious sports games on the Wii are being criminially underserved. I would rate NBA Live 08 a 6 out of 10, only worth purchasing in the bargain bin by people who care nothing about NBA seasons and just want a midly fun, 30-minute basketball-flavored diversion.
Labels: Basketball, EA Sports, NBA, Nintendo, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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A Kick in the Balls: Fifa Soccer 08 (Wii) Review Turns into a Rant
Posted on
Monday, October 15, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Fifa Soccer 07 for the X-Box, while flawed, was the game I played the most over the last year. The game was not perfect, nor was it a completely realistic simulation of football, and yet its outstanding action play, its deep managerial simulation and plethora of club and international teams and leagues was overwhelming. Most sports video games wear out their welcome by the second or third month of play, often before I've even finished an entire season, but not Fifa 07. When my X-Box finally died, I spent a few weeks missing the game, and eventually ended up purchasing a copy of the Gamecube version to play on my Wii to tide me over until the 08 version showed up for the Wii. It was with a great deal of breathless anticipation that I looked forward to seeing an updated, motion-controlled version of one of my favorite sports video games of all time. In the weeks before its release, however, I began to get worried. My fears were justified. EA Sports has kicked me in the balls.
My first pangs of worry came from the release of Madden NFL 08 for the Wii. My review was not as harsh as it should have been. Madden's flaws were evident when writing the review, but the flaws became so much more obvious and galling after I wrote the review. It was the kind of piss-poor execution of an existing franchise that familiarity bred the ultimate contempt. I would actually downgrade my assessment of the game to the point that I would consider it unworthy of a purchase. It is incredibly buggy, its online play is atrocious, its controls less precise than the previous year's version, which is ridiculous considering the 07 version was a Wii launch title. The game might at first appear to be worth a 7 out of 10, but eventually it wears one's patience down to a 5. The lack of any patching options on the Wii, as well as EA Sports' decision to ignore the Wii audience's demands for a roster update leads me to label Madden as shovelware.
But Fifa Soccer 08 for the Wii is worse. Initial reports suggested that many of the game modes available in other versions of the game would not make it to the Wii, including my personal robot jesus mode, Manager mode. While this worried me, I was determined to purchase the game. It still had season and tournament modes, I would tell myself, so perhaps those modes would be acceptable. They weren't. The extra play modes for the Wii version are so thin, the game feels like it was released in 2003. While all the teams and leagues make it on the disc, they are mostly just window dressing without the manager mode. It might have been acceptable in the '90's to play a season without any way to transfer players between teams, but in 2007, that's a feature that cannot be dropped. And what was it dropped for? Footi Party, a series of three shallow multiplayer mini-games hosted by a horse-toothed Mii version of Ronaldhino. While I applaud the addition of these type of party games, they are in no way deep enough to warrant a purchase by casual players who weren't already interested in a new Fifa game. The Table Football (Foosball) is a fun diversion, while the other games are somewhat weak, and none make up for the loss of manager mode.
But how does the real game, the game on the field play out? It drowns in mediocrity. While the graphics are updated from the GameCube version (though not as realistic as the X-Box version) with appropriate shininess, the controls are weak. Player movement feels entirely too sloppy, especially on defense. The AI on Semi-Pro difficulty was rarely a challenge. The most important aspect of gameplay, the motion controls, were spotty and imprecise. Although one can use a Wiimote waggle to pass, it isn't necessary and thus feels tacked on. Crossing and shooting was a mixed bag of up or down Wiimote thrusts. It appeared that instead of the granularity of normal power bars, motion controls only offered four different strengths of shot or cross. Tricks are accomplished with button presses and waggles, but the motions were sloppily implemented and difficult to choose. While the gameplay wasn't bad, it wasn't great either. The motion controls were useless tack-ons, imparting no immersion whatsoever. Like all too many shovelware games from the big publishers for the Wii, the waggle seemed to be used for no other reason than to tout waggle.
This is the thing that gets me most ranty. Not only is the game lacking in critical features, not only is the motion control poorly implemented, but the developers couldn't even get the basics down. The menus are incredibly laggy, especially in the roster view. Each player's stamina, which must be viewed during a game to help determine substitutions, is only shown by selecting the player, which is in itself a slow, tedious task because the screen hitches for a second before updating with the selected player. In other versions, the stamina is shown in the roster list. Perhaps the developers felt that Wii players wouldn't substitute, but even in season management menus, game mode menus, really every menu in the game is a laggy mess. If one were to wear a tinfoil hat, one would think EA Sports WANTS the Wii to fail to sell games. Given EA Sports' obvious choice of the 360 as its promotional tool, that idea is not too far-fetched.
This game is a failure in every sense of the word. It is a gimped, shovelware version of a fantastic franchise and the developers should be ashamed of how little effort is exhibited. The game's very design is fundamentally flawed. I've been a champion of the Wii's ability to draw in non-gamers and casual gamers with its intuitive motion controls. Adding casual games such as the Footi Party to Fifa 08 is a good idea, unless of course, it means removing features that fans of the series have come to expect. Fifa 08 is not a new game, it's an upgrade to an existing popular franchise, and as such, the developers have an obligation to target the design for the franchise's past audience first. Not only have they not done that, they've designed the game so badly, even casual players will have no reason to pick the game up. The addition of waggles controls without any real good reason to add them further compounds the problem. And finally, the game doesn't even allow the player to set up their own control scheme, which means the customer can't customise their experience to their own level of comfort. Rather than make the game more accessible to those outside the core audience, they've made it less accessible to those customers most likely to purchase the game in the first place.
Someone in the Wii division of EA Games needs to de-assify their head. Adding casual gamers to the development target audience does not mean purposefully forgetting everything that made their games successful in the first place. It means expanding the genres for development, and expanding the intuitive nature of the game's controls. I hope that someone in managment reads this review and dickslaps every person involved in the development of the EA Sports games for the Wii, because I'm not sure anything but genitalia across the chops is going to sink in.
The final indignity is my own reaction to the failure of this game. Like a true addict, instead of putting the game away and never speaking of it again, I traded it and Madden in for credit, which allowed me to buy a PS2 and the PS2 version of Fifa 08. Yes, I am a complete fucking tool, but I must have my Fifa. And now EA and Sony both win, despite doing nothing to deserve it. But at least the PS2 version has manager mode and plays well. I think I'll need to watch an Uwe Boll movie. I've already taken two kicks to the balls, I might as well complete the trifecta.
My first pangs of worry came from the release of Madden NFL 08 for the Wii. My review was not as harsh as it should have been. Madden's flaws were evident when writing the review, but the flaws became so much more obvious and galling after I wrote the review. It was the kind of piss-poor execution of an existing franchise that familiarity bred the ultimate contempt. I would actually downgrade my assessment of the game to the point that I would consider it unworthy of a purchase. It is incredibly buggy, its online play is atrocious, its controls less precise than the previous year's version, which is ridiculous considering the 07 version was a Wii launch title. The game might at first appear to be worth a 7 out of 10, but eventually it wears one's patience down to a 5. The lack of any patching options on the Wii, as well as EA Sports' decision to ignore the Wii audience's demands for a roster update leads me to label Madden as shovelware.
But Fifa Soccer 08 for the Wii is worse. Initial reports suggested that many of the game modes available in other versions of the game would not make it to the Wii, including my personal robot jesus mode, Manager mode. While this worried me, I was determined to purchase the game. It still had season and tournament modes, I would tell myself, so perhaps those modes would be acceptable. They weren't. The extra play modes for the Wii version are so thin, the game feels like it was released in 2003. While all the teams and leagues make it on the disc, they are mostly just window dressing without the manager mode. It might have been acceptable in the '90's to play a season without any way to transfer players between teams, but in 2007, that's a feature that cannot be dropped. And what was it dropped for? Footi Party, a series of three shallow multiplayer mini-games hosted by a horse-toothed Mii version of Ronaldhino. While I applaud the addition of these type of party games, they are in no way deep enough to warrant a purchase by casual players who weren't already interested in a new Fifa game. The Table Football (Foosball) is a fun diversion, while the other games are somewhat weak, and none make up for the loss of manager mode.
But how does the real game, the game on the field play out? It drowns in mediocrity. While the graphics are updated from the GameCube version (though not as realistic as the X-Box version) with appropriate shininess, the controls are weak. Player movement feels entirely too sloppy, especially on defense. The AI on Semi-Pro difficulty was rarely a challenge. The most important aspect of gameplay, the motion controls, were spotty and imprecise. Although one can use a Wiimote waggle to pass, it isn't necessary and thus feels tacked on. Crossing and shooting was a mixed bag of up or down Wiimote thrusts. It appeared that instead of the granularity of normal power bars, motion controls only offered four different strengths of shot or cross. Tricks are accomplished with button presses and waggles, but the motions were sloppily implemented and difficult to choose. While the gameplay wasn't bad, it wasn't great either. The motion controls were useless tack-ons, imparting no immersion whatsoever. Like all too many shovelware games from the big publishers for the Wii, the waggle seemed to be used for no other reason than to tout waggle.
This is the thing that gets me most ranty. Not only is the game lacking in critical features, not only is the motion control poorly implemented, but the developers couldn't even get the basics down. The menus are incredibly laggy, especially in the roster view. Each player's stamina, which must be viewed during a game to help determine substitutions, is only shown by selecting the player, which is in itself a slow, tedious task because the screen hitches for a second before updating with the selected player. In other versions, the stamina is shown in the roster list. Perhaps the developers felt that Wii players wouldn't substitute, but even in season management menus, game mode menus, really every menu in the game is a laggy mess. If one were to wear a tinfoil hat, one would think EA Sports WANTS the Wii to fail to sell games. Given EA Sports' obvious choice of the 360 as its promotional tool, that idea is not too far-fetched.
This game is a failure in every sense of the word. It is a gimped, shovelware version of a fantastic franchise and the developers should be ashamed of how little effort is exhibited. The game's very design is fundamentally flawed. I've been a champion of the Wii's ability to draw in non-gamers and casual gamers with its intuitive motion controls. Adding casual games such as the Footi Party to Fifa 08 is a good idea, unless of course, it means removing features that fans of the series have come to expect. Fifa 08 is not a new game, it's an upgrade to an existing popular franchise, and as such, the developers have an obligation to target the design for the franchise's past audience first. Not only have they not done that, they've designed the game so badly, even casual players will have no reason to pick the game up. The addition of waggles controls without any real good reason to add them further compounds the problem. And finally, the game doesn't even allow the player to set up their own control scheme, which means the customer can't customise their experience to their own level of comfort. Rather than make the game more accessible to those outside the core audience, they've made it less accessible to those customers most likely to purchase the game in the first place.
Someone in the Wii division of EA Games needs to de-assify their head. Adding casual gamers to the development target audience does not mean purposefully forgetting everything that made their games successful in the first place. It means expanding the genres for development, and expanding the intuitive nature of the game's controls. I hope that someone in managment reads this review and dickslaps every person involved in the development of the EA Sports games for the Wii, because I'm not sure anything but genitalia across the chops is going to sink in.
The final indignity is my own reaction to the failure of this game. Like a true addict, instead of putting the game away and never speaking of it again, I traded it and Madden in for credit, which allowed me to buy a PS2 and the PS2 version of Fifa 08. Yes, I am a complete fucking tool, but I must have my Fifa. And now EA and Sony both win, despite doing nothing to deserve it. But at least the PS2 version has manager mode and plays well. I think I'll need to watch an Uwe Boll movie. I've already taken two kicks to the balls, I might as well complete the trifecta.
Labels: Football, Nintendo, Soccer, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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Tackling the Inevitable: Madden NFL 08 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Thursday, September 13, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Unless you've been under a rock for the last two decades, you should know exactly what you are going to get when you purchase the current year's iteration of the Madden NFL series. In year's past, this has meant the addition of one or two highly touted (and quickly forgotten) new features, a barely current roster update and perhaps a graphical tweak or two. The only real surprises in the series come with the shift from past-gen consoles to the next-gen. Those first versions often come with a plethora of bugs or missing features as EA's development teams get up to speed on their new console. Madden NFL 08 for the Wii, featuring the surely-doomed Vince Young as the cover athlete, is the inevitable result of the typical Madden development cycle, but with a new set of unexpected problems.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
Labels: Football, Madden, NFL, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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The Bark and the Bite: The NFL on Michael Vick
Posted on
Thursday, July 19, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
For those who have not yet heard, NFL Star Quarterback Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons has been indicted on charges of competitive dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls for fighting and conducting an illegal dogfighting business across state lines. The charges are a disgusting menu of inhumane acts against dogs that should make every pet owner want to pick up a pitchfork and storm the castle. Dogfighting in itself is a disgusting barbarity, but the particulars of this case are even more savage. Dogs were killed by electrocution, hanging, brutal beatings or shootings. As the owner of three fantastic dogs, I can think of plenty of Gitmo-style punishments too good for anyone convicted of these crimes. But what is truly disgusting is the NFL's hypocritical response to this whole mess.
For the past year, the NFL has taken copious amounts of flak for the rampant, serial misbehaviour of some of its stars. Players like Pacman Jones, with his 11 arrests, Chris Henry with his four arrests, Tank Johnson's arrests for parole violations and the multiple offenders on the Cincinnati Bengals that were arrested on multiple occasions over the season have all given the NFL a reputation as a thug league. To combat that perception, Commissioner Roger Goddell instituted a crackdown, throwing out some harsh suspensions to these players. Henry and Johnson both received eight-game suspensions and Pacman Jones is out for the entire year, with his future beyond that in doubt as well. Of these three particular cases, Jones was the standout not only for the length of suspension, but for the fact that he hadn't even been indicted in any of the cases when the suspension was served. I applauded the suspensions. Yes, Jones is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but even if he turns out to be exonerated on all the charges, he has still proven that he cannot avoid trouble. He has caused shame on the game and the league, and the league should punish him for that, whether he's convicted or not. If it's his "posse" that's getting him in trouble, he has chosen to remain with that posse and that action alone is enough for me to justify the league's actions.
But now that Vick, one of the league's poster boy stars for his electrifying performances on the field, has been indicted on these heinous charges, no action has been taken. Goddell and Falcons' owner Arthur Blank are content to let the law take its course. They are hiding behind the legal fact that Vick is innocent until proven guilty.
Here's the simple facts. Vick has claimed that his family members and friends used the property in question for dogfighting, an activity of which he was unaware. If that is true, it still happened on his property. He let his "posse" run wild at the house, and that "posse" killed dogs for sport and ran a criminal enterprise at Vick's house. That alone is enough in my mind for Goddell or the team to suspend him for four games. The player didn't keep his house in order, the activities at the house made the NFL look bad because they were connected to the player and thus the NFL is justified in punishing Vick. They are justified in punishing Vick even if he had nothing to do with the dogfighting. If an NFL player throws a party in his hotel room and some underage girls get caught drinking at that party, the NFL player is responsible for that crime and should be punished by the NFL. That's exactly what happened to Chris Henry, and he served jail time and has an NFL suspension to show for it.
Pacman Jones has been indicted but not tried or convicted and he's out for a year. So why hasn't Michael Vick been punished yet? Is it because he's a marquee player, a huge draw at the box office and a ratings bonanza? Is it because Arthur Blank has invested millions in Vick's contract, as well as marketing the Falcons' team using Vick's image? Do star players get preferential treatment in the NFL?
If Mr. Goddell does not hand down some kind of punishment on Michael Vick within the week, then I'd say the answer to all those questions is a very sad "Yes." Goddell's get tough policy is instead a blowhard PR campaign that is applied with determined inconsistency and naked hypocrisy. It's time to match your bite to your bark, Mr. Goddell. There are a ton of dead dogs who deserved better treatment than they got, and the fans of the NFL deserve better than you are giving them here.
For the past year, the NFL has taken copious amounts of flak for the rampant, serial misbehaviour of some of its stars. Players like Pacman Jones, with his 11 arrests, Chris Henry with his four arrests, Tank Johnson's arrests for parole violations and the multiple offenders on the Cincinnati Bengals that were arrested on multiple occasions over the season have all given the NFL a reputation as a thug league. To combat that perception, Commissioner Roger Goddell instituted a crackdown, throwing out some harsh suspensions to these players. Henry and Johnson both received eight-game suspensions and Pacman Jones is out for the entire year, with his future beyond that in doubt as well. Of these three particular cases, Jones was the standout not only for the length of suspension, but for the fact that he hadn't even been indicted in any of the cases when the suspension was served. I applauded the suspensions. Yes, Jones is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but even if he turns out to be exonerated on all the charges, he has still proven that he cannot avoid trouble. He has caused shame on the game and the league, and the league should punish him for that, whether he's convicted or not. If it's his "posse" that's getting him in trouble, he has chosen to remain with that posse and that action alone is enough for me to justify the league's actions.
But now that Vick, one of the league's poster boy stars for his electrifying performances on the field, has been indicted on these heinous charges, no action has been taken. Goddell and Falcons' owner Arthur Blank are content to let the law take its course. They are hiding behind the legal fact that Vick is innocent until proven guilty.
Here's the simple facts. Vick has claimed that his family members and friends used the property in question for dogfighting, an activity of which he was unaware. If that is true, it still happened on his property. He let his "posse" run wild at the house, and that "posse" killed dogs for sport and ran a criminal enterprise at Vick's house. That alone is enough in my mind for Goddell or the team to suspend him for four games. The player didn't keep his house in order, the activities at the house made the NFL look bad because they were connected to the player and thus the NFL is justified in punishing Vick. They are justified in punishing Vick even if he had nothing to do with the dogfighting. If an NFL player throws a party in his hotel room and some underage girls get caught drinking at that party, the NFL player is responsible for that crime and should be punished by the NFL. That's exactly what happened to Chris Henry, and he served jail time and has an NFL suspension to show for it.
Pacman Jones has been indicted but not tried or convicted and he's out for a year. So why hasn't Michael Vick been punished yet? Is it because he's a marquee player, a huge draw at the box office and a ratings bonanza? Is it because Arthur Blank has invested millions in Vick's contract, as well as marketing the Falcons' team using Vick's image? Do star players get preferential treatment in the NFL?
If Mr. Goddell does not hand down some kind of punishment on Michael Vick within the week, then I'd say the answer to all those questions is a very sad "Yes." Goddell's get tough policy is instead a blowhard PR campaign that is applied with determined inconsistency and naked hypocrisy. It's time to match your bite to your bark, Mr. Goddell. There are a ton of dead dogs who deserved better treatment than they got, and the fans of the NFL deserve better than you are giving them here.
Labels: Corporate Corruption, Michael Vick, NFL, Sports
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If You Ask Me, Vol. 3: MLS Edition
Posted on
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
It's time again for another installment of "If You Ask Me," my semi-regular column in which I expound on a subject no one asked me about, but they really really should have. In today's edition, I talk about Major League Soccer, the US Soccer Federation's attempt at putting soccer (what the rest of the world knows as football) on the sports entertainment map in America. I've only been following football since the 2006 World Cup, having previously taken the pigheaded American notion that real football is played with shoulder pads. Don't get me wrong, I still love American football (GO PACK!) but I have also grown to love the sport everyone else in the world plays with a feverish passion. It's only this season I've begun paying attention to the MLS, because I believe that soccer in this country should be supported at every level possible, if only to provide a credible team to the World Cup every four years. But if you ask me, the MLS needs to tweak a few things if they really want to present the best product.
I'm not naive enough to think that the MLS could ever overtake the NFL, NBA or even Major League Baseball in the hearts and minds of American sports fans. At best, they could hope to be on a level playing field with the NHL, who seems dead set on shooting themselves in the foot every few years. They could even manage to achieve the level of NASCAR or the PGA's success, which while smaller than the above mentioned sports, still makes a decent profit for all participants. The fact that youth soccer has reached such a critical mass of popularity that the term "soccer mom" is part of the cultural lexicon means that a generation of kids has been raised to be interested in the game, maybe even passionate about it, instead of derisive and dismissive like my generation. MLS needs to bide its time, continue to support the youth leagues and colleges, and most importantly, work the kinks out of the current presentation of the on-field product. That's why If You Ask Me, the MLS needs to make a few changes.
If You Ask Me #1: ESPN's 30 at 30
The first piece of a successful major sport is the television contract. Getting weekly broadcasts on ESPN, even if it is ESPN2, is a huge win for the league. But, it's of vital importance that the broadcasts be top-notch. While Thursday night's games are good, there are a few problems with the broadcasts. The first problem is ESPN's insistence on the 30 at 30 update. These are interruptions in the game every 30 minutes, giving news from around the world of sports. And therein lies the problem. Of the games I've watched this season, I've seen interruptions with baseball scores, NASCAR, NBA news, but precious little about soccer. If I wanted to know about other sports besides soccer, I wouldn't be watching soccer. If I really must know the latest news, I can always flip over one channel to ESPNNews. You might as well just have a commercial break where these things show up, because the presentation is atrocious. Using a split screen effect, the game is shrunk to about 1/3 of the screen, while the rest of the real estate is taken up with the update, which mostly consists of a talking head sportscaster blathering on about things that are not soccer. It's distracting, making the game unwatchable for those 30 seconds. Perhaps this was a mandate of the contract, but I would hope the MLS would renegotiate that mandate when the renewal talks begin.
If You Ask Me #2: Onscreen Graphics
Screen real estate is a pet peeve of mine. I've bitched about it before. And yet broadcasters still feel the need to trash up my screen with things I don't give a fuck about. ESPN's MLS broadcasts are as guilty of this as Fox. The bottom tenth of the screen is full of flashing, changing, animated scoreboards, news tickers and other distractions. If I'm going to be subjected to a 30 at 30 Update, why the fuck do I need this eyesore at the bottom of the screen? At the top of the screen is the current game's scoreboard, taking up another tenth. Yes, the score needs to be displayed, but it takes up the entire width of the screen, half of which is just color bars with nothing on them. Shrink it. Look to the English broadcasts, which are generally minimalist, with only the score, clock and maybe a small network logo. No lens flares, no whooshes, just the bare minimum. Also, the rest of the world displays the home team's name and score first, then the visitors, but ESPN follows the American way which reverses that. It's fine for other sports, but not soccer. In this case, the rest of the world knows what it's doing.
If You Ask Me #3: Camera Positions
The ESPN broadcasts suffer from one other annoying trend, that of poor camera positioning. I'm not sure if the problem lies in the stadiums being visited, or in a lack of proper experience broadcasting soccer, but most of the angles used are ill-suited to the game. Again, I compare the EPSN broadcasts to the European ones, but the Euros have it right. Instead of trying to encapsulate the entire width of the pitch in every shot, the Euro broadcasts tend to focus on the ball, zooming in on the action so that only about half the width of the pitch is shown most of the time. While a 60" HDTV screen might make ESPN's focus on the action easy to follow, regular people on regular-sized TV's like myself have to squint to follow the flow of the game. Don't be afraid to zoom in on the ball, especially in the final third and on corners. ESPN's camera angles on corners are just awful. Lest it seem I'm completely negative about ESPN's broadcasts, I will pause to say that the collegial relationships of the three broadcasters in the booth is entertaining. Unlike ESPN's NFL broadcasts, there is no one in the booth whose teeth I feel the urge to kick in. There is no Kornhole to hate.
If You Ask Me #4: Diversity of Matchups
While it is early in the season, I have to caution both ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel's teams. The scheduling of televised matches may be out of their control, but if they have any say in the decision, this is a vital task. Make damn sure that "big market" teams are not overly represented on the schedule. One of the biggest failings of the NHL's television contracts both before and after their disastrous strike was that certain teams were ALWAYS shown. Tuning into an NHL broadcast on ESPN or Versus or NBC will usually mean you have to watch Colorado, Detroit, the New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers or Boston Bruins. The MLS has not been quite as bad as that this season, but they must put more teams like Columbus, Kansas City or Real Salt Lake on the schedule early in the season. I've seen New England, Colorado, DC United, New York and Houston more than twice in the first month of the season, while the three teams above have only been televised once. Later in the season, when teams have been eliminated from the playoff races, the league should focus their attention on the best teams, but early on there needs to be TV dollars for all.
If You Ask Me #5: Formations
While this isn't really something to be handled at the league level, it is something which twists my nipples. There are 13 teams in the league, and at least 3 teams insist on playing that disastrous 3-5-2 formation, with 3 backs and two "defensive" midfielders, including my team, the Chicago Fire. I hate this formation. I've only seen one team play this formation for a full game and play it well, and that was Barcelona. They can pull it off because there aren't really many weak links in that entire starting 11, but even when they've played it, they've suffered for it. It's a formation which requires your defensive backs to be top-class, as well as your wingers to be great players on both sides of the ball. But the MLS, while a good league, does not yet have the caliber of defensive backs who can consistently defend in this formation. They just don't. I've seen good teams like New England and DC United get decimated by pacy wingers who just blow through and around their midfield, overwhelming their defensive backfields time and time again. It's the soccer version of the old run and shoot offense, relying on outscoring opponents rather than playing solid, fundamental football. Yes, the MLS needs an exciting offensive product, but this is not the way to do it.
With the arrival this summer of David Beckham, the MLS has a ready-made star to promote the league. They have decent television contracts providing good exposure. If you ask me, the league is poised for a good run, with just a few tweaks.
I'm not naive enough to think that the MLS could ever overtake the NFL, NBA or even Major League Baseball in the hearts and minds of American sports fans. At best, they could hope to be on a level playing field with the NHL, who seems dead set on shooting themselves in the foot every few years. They could even manage to achieve the level of NASCAR or the PGA's success, which while smaller than the above mentioned sports, still makes a decent profit for all participants. The fact that youth soccer has reached such a critical mass of popularity that the term "soccer mom" is part of the cultural lexicon means that a generation of kids has been raised to be interested in the game, maybe even passionate about it, instead of derisive and dismissive like my generation. MLS needs to bide its time, continue to support the youth leagues and colleges, and most importantly, work the kinks out of the current presentation of the on-field product. That's why If You Ask Me, the MLS needs to make a few changes.
The first piece of a successful major sport is the television contract. Getting weekly broadcasts on ESPN, even if it is ESPN2, is a huge win for the league. But, it's of vital importance that the broadcasts be top-notch. While Thursday night's games are good, there are a few problems with the broadcasts. The first problem is ESPN's insistence on the 30 at 30 update. These are interruptions in the game every 30 minutes, giving news from around the world of sports. And therein lies the problem. Of the games I've watched this season, I've seen interruptions with baseball scores, NASCAR, NBA news, but precious little about soccer. If I wanted to know about other sports besides soccer, I wouldn't be watching soccer. If I really must know the latest news, I can always flip over one channel to ESPNNews. You might as well just have a commercial break where these things show up, because the presentation is atrocious. Using a split screen effect, the game is shrunk to about 1/3 of the screen, while the rest of the real estate is taken up with the update, which mostly consists of a talking head sportscaster blathering on about things that are not soccer. It's distracting, making the game unwatchable for those 30 seconds. Perhaps this was a mandate of the contract, but I would hope the MLS would renegotiate that mandate when the renewal talks begin.
If You Ask Me #2: Onscreen Graphics
Screen real estate is a pet peeve of mine. I've bitched about it before. And yet broadcasters still feel the need to trash up my screen with things I don't give a fuck about. ESPN's MLS broadcasts are as guilty of this as Fox. The bottom tenth of the screen is full of flashing, changing, animated scoreboards, news tickers and other distractions. If I'm going to be subjected to a 30 at 30 Update, why the fuck do I need this eyesore at the bottom of the screen? At the top of the screen is the current game's scoreboard, taking up another tenth. Yes, the score needs to be displayed, but it takes up the entire width of the screen, half of which is just color bars with nothing on them. Shrink it. Look to the English broadcasts, which are generally minimalist, with only the score, clock and maybe a small network logo. No lens flares, no whooshes, just the bare minimum. Also, the rest of the world displays the home team's name and score first, then the visitors, but ESPN follows the American way which reverses that. It's fine for other sports, but not soccer. In this case, the rest of the world knows what it's doing.
The ESPN broadcasts suffer from one other annoying trend, that of poor camera positioning. I'm not sure if the problem lies in the stadiums being visited, or in a lack of proper experience broadcasting soccer, but most of the angles used are ill-suited to the game. Again, I compare the EPSN broadcasts to the European ones, but the Euros have it right. Instead of trying to encapsulate the entire width of the pitch in every shot, the Euro broadcasts tend to focus on the ball, zooming in on the action so that only about half the width of the pitch is shown most of the time. While a 60" HDTV screen might make ESPN's focus on the action easy to follow, regular people on regular-sized TV's like myself have to squint to follow the flow of the game. Don't be afraid to zoom in on the ball, especially in the final third and on corners. ESPN's camera angles on corners are just awful. Lest it seem I'm completely negative about ESPN's broadcasts, I will pause to say that the collegial relationships of the three broadcasters in the booth is entertaining. Unlike ESPN's NFL broadcasts, there is no one in the booth whose teeth I feel the urge to kick in. There is no Kornhole to hate.
If You Ask Me #4: Diversity of Matchups
While it is early in the season, I have to caution both ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel's teams. The scheduling of televised matches may be out of their control, but if they have any say in the decision, this is a vital task. Make damn sure that "big market" teams are not overly represented on the schedule. One of the biggest failings of the NHL's television contracts both before and after their disastrous strike was that certain teams were ALWAYS shown. Tuning into an NHL broadcast on ESPN or Versus or NBC will usually mean you have to watch Colorado, Detroit, the New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers or Boston Bruins. The MLS has not been quite as bad as that this season, but they must put more teams like Columbus, Kansas City or Real Salt Lake on the schedule early in the season. I've seen New England, Colorado, DC United, New York and Houston more than twice in the first month of the season, while the three teams above have only been televised once. Later in the season, when teams have been eliminated from the playoff races, the league should focus their attention on the best teams, but early on there needs to be TV dollars for all.
If You Ask Me #5: Formations
While this isn't really something to be handled at the league level, it is something which twists my nipples. There are 13 teams in the league, and at least 3 teams insist on playing that disastrous 3-5-2 formation, with 3 backs and two "defensive" midfielders, including my team, the Chicago Fire. I hate this formation. I've only seen one team play this formation for a full game and play it well, and that was Barcelona. They can pull it off because there aren't really many weak links in that entire starting 11, but even when they've played it, they've suffered for it. It's a formation which requires your defensive backs to be top-class, as well as your wingers to be great players on both sides of the ball. But the MLS, while a good league, does not yet have the caliber of defensive backs who can consistently defend in this formation. They just don't. I've seen good teams like New England and DC United get decimated by pacy wingers who just blow through and around their midfield, overwhelming their defensive backfields time and time again. It's the soccer version of the old run and shoot offense, relying on outscoring opponents rather than playing solid, fundamental football. Yes, the MLS needs an exciting offensive product, but this is not the way to do it.
With the arrival this summer of David Beckham, the MLS has a ready-made star to promote the league. They have decent television contracts providing good exposure. If you ask me, the league is poised for a good run, with just a few tweaks.
Labels: If You Ask Me, MLS, Soccer, Sports
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LIVERPOOL!!!!!!!
Posted on
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Liverpool beat Chelsea at Anfield last night, 1-1 on aggregate, 4-1 on penalties. It was fucking fantastic, a real nail-biter of a game.
Onward to Athens!
When you walk through a storm,
Hold your head up high,
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm,
There's a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown..
Walk on, walk on,
with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.......
You'll never walk alone.
Onward to Athens!
Labels: Liverpool, Soccer, Sports
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:07 AM
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Hey NHL... Are You F'ing Kidding Me?
Posted on
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The NHL playoffs begin tomorrow night, and my excitement pump is getting primed. My Minnesota Wild are in the playoffs as the #7 seed, getting ready to enter a series with the #2 seed Anaheim Ducks, a rematch of the last time the Wild made the playoffs. I remember 2003 well, as a scrappy Wild team ground out two series wins against Colorado and Vancouver, only to run into the brick wall that was Finals MVP Jean Sebastien-Giguere. Imagine my surprise then, when I read the TV schedules for the playoffs on Versus and NBC, the only hockey outlets I have without paying for a special satellite package. You guessed it.
Not only do I not get to see Game 1, unless someone gets handily swept, I don't get to see ANY of the Wild/Ducks matchups. None. Nada. The Nil Set. Fuckall.
While I've resigned myself to the constant scheduling bias in the regular season of the bigger franchises like Detroit, the Rangers, Colorado and the smaller franchises with the marquee names like Crosby and Ovechkin, the playoffs are another matter entirely from the regular season. At the very least, the networks who should be forced by the NHL to show some pittance of balance in their playoff schedules. I'd settle for a Game 3. And if it comes down to an important Game 4, you bet I'll want to see that game.
The truth is that the NHL and its broadcast affiliates have largely ignored those south of the Mason-Dixon line with their TV packages. While I agree that Mississippi is no hotbed of hockey hysteria, it deserves better than the awful coverage both Versus and NBC have inflicted on the entire United States. The commentators are atrocious, the schedule is abysmal for fans of non-marquee teams, and this playoff broadcast is further insult. Does the NHL really not give a flying fuck if I watch the playoffs at all? My playoff beard is burgeoning, and it deserves a little bit of fan service.
ESPN did the coverage right, and instead of bowing to their pressure after your wasteful strike almost killed the sport completely, you acted obstinate. Now you are stuck on the redneck fishery channel and the fans are suffering for it. You need to look to Canada, Mr. Bettman, look to their outstanding coverage of what is not only a national religion, but a broadcast bonanza. No, the NHL will never get baseball or football numbers. But it can at least get respectable numbers with respectable broadcasts. Respect your product better than you have, it's all you've got. Read more!
Not only do I not get to see Game 1, unless someone gets handily swept, I don't get to see ANY of the Wild/Ducks matchups. None. Nada. The Nil Set. Fuckall.
While I've resigned myself to the constant scheduling bias in the regular season of the bigger franchises like Detroit, the Rangers, Colorado and the smaller franchises with the marquee names like Crosby and Ovechkin, the playoffs are another matter entirely from the regular season. At the very least, the networks who should be forced by the NHL to show some pittance of balance in their playoff schedules. I'd settle for a Game 3. And if it comes down to an important Game 4, you bet I'll want to see that game.
The truth is that the NHL and its broadcast affiliates have largely ignored those south of the Mason-Dixon line with their TV packages. While I agree that Mississippi is no hotbed of hockey hysteria, it deserves better than the awful coverage both Versus and NBC have inflicted on the entire United States. The commentators are atrocious, the schedule is abysmal for fans of non-marquee teams, and this playoff broadcast is further insult. Does the NHL really not give a flying fuck if I watch the playoffs at all? My playoff beard is burgeoning, and it deserves a little bit of fan service.
ESPN did the coverage right, and instead of bowing to their pressure after your wasteful strike almost killed the sport completely, you acted obstinate. Now you are stuck on the redneck fishery channel and the fans are suffering for it. You need to look to Canada, Mr. Bettman, look to their outstanding coverage of what is not only a national religion, but a broadcast bonanza. No, the NHL will never get baseball or football numbers. But it can at least get respectable numbers with respectable broadcasts. Respect your product better than you have, it's all you've got. Read more!
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:35 AM
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LIVERPOOL! LIVERPOOL!
Posted on
Saturday, January 20, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Liverpool 2 - Chelsea 0
You'll Never Walk Alone. That is all.
You'll Never Walk Alone. That is all.
Labels: Liverpool, Soccer, Sports
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 4:37 PM
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If You Ask Me, Vol. 1: NFL Edition
Posted on
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This article marks the start of what I hope to be a regular feature here on the Game of Angst, called If You Ask Me. Its title comes from something my mother always used to say about just about anything. "If you ask me," she'd begin, before going off on some diatribe about how whoever was doing whatever wrong. Whether it was the placement of a pond in someone's front yard, the arrangement of colors on some stranger's house or the way I lived my life, my mother has always had an opinion and no reluctance to share said opinion whether others want to hear it or not. I have inherited this genetic defect, this inability to just keep my yap shut about things that I have precious little to do with. As such, a blog is the perfect spot from which to unload my almost informed opinions about anything. With that in mind, I bring you the first ever installment of If You Ask Me®, the NFL edition.
I'm an American football fan with a Tivo. For the last two seasons, I've Tivoed at least 2 NFL games each Sunday if not 3 or 4 as well as the Monday Night games, any good Saturday or Thursday games, and every game of the playoffs. As such, I'm fairly well-versed with the game as it is presented on television and have strong opinions about the game. If you ask me, the game is great, but needs some changes to take it to another level.
If You Ask Me #1: Penalties on Kickoffs and Punts
The kicking game of any team, as important as it is, is one boring piece of work. Out of every game I watch over the course of a season, I'd say maybe 5 or 6 kickoffs and punts combined are worth watching. The rest are fast-forward fodder. I don't want to see them, because they are boring as dirt. They net few extra yards, and outside of a muffed catch or a spectacular hit, nothing interesting happens. They tend to interrupt the flow of the game a great deal but I can accept that.
But what really kills the flow of the game is when one of these somnambulistic ballets gets called back on a penalty. And the penalty most often used to interrupt and irritate me is the illegal block in the back penalty. When I played football in junior high, the only penalty ever called on a punt return or kickoff was holding or clipping. Clipping was a man's penalty. Clipping was the act of blocking someone below the belt when their back was turned and by God it was a serious penalty, netting 15 yards. It needed to be serious, because that kind of block could end someone's career.
The illegal block in the back, however, is a penalty for pansies. It's a 10-yard penalty for merely touching a player in the back, above or below the waist. Now, I'm sure it's meant to be for actually blocking a player hard in the back where the blocked player is supposed to be defenseless and unable to brace for the impact. But I have literally seen the penalty be given for putting your hands on a guy's jersey when their back is to you. And unlike clipping, it isn't given at most once a game, it's given on almost every single goddamn punt in the game. It's given so much the refs should just tack on an extra 10-yards to every single goddamn punt on general principle.
If you ask me, that rule needs to get tossed on its ear, or it needs to be called only when the block could be considered dangerous. These are guys wearing modern, cutting-edge armor, they can take a swipe at the back of their jersey.
If You Ask Me #2: Commercial Timeouts
Now, I realize the networks who broadcast the NFL games want to get paid. It's an expensive proposition to take a traveling road show of camera man, producers, broadcasters and stats guys to 32 different cities each week. John Madden's trailer alone must cost them millions in refrigerator restocks. I want the networks to make their investment back and a little profit besides, because they entertain me for months.
But can we all agree that there are too many commercials breaking up the flow of the game? Do we really need to enter a commercial break both before a kickoff AND after? Did I not just see that annoying fucker say "Can you hear me now?" 30 seconds ago, you have to show him to me again? The Geico cavemen are not THAT funny. I understand it takes a little time to move the offense onto the field after a change in possession, but not two minutes of commercial time. If you ask me, there needs to be one commercial break after changes in possession and that's it.
And what's more, we really do not need The VISA HALFTIME SHOW. It's just the goddamn halftime show. I don't care who paid for it. If the NFL must make that much money on commercial endorsements, just do it like the English football clubs do. Make the uniforms one big fucking billboard for the team's sponsor, plaster a metric fuckton of corporate logos all over every empty surface in the stadiums and get on with your lives. The Green Bay Packers brought to you with a gigantic Johnsonville Brats logo on their chests bothers me much less than the Michelin Scoreboard.
If You Ask Me #3: Halftime Shows for Speed Freaks
As a kid watching football, I loved the halftime studio shows. They were informative, updating all the scores around the league, dousing me with highlights and maybe the studio talking heads would wax poetic about some of the action for thirty seconds before sending the feed back out to the games. Somewhere, that all changed. Somehow, the halftime show became a blipvert for speed freaks, the barely-slowed down dolphin speech of functional illiterates trying to cram as much actual information into the space of thirty seconds, before assaulting me with 8 minutes of commercials. Didn't I just talk about too many commercials in the above paragraphs? It's back.
I want highlights, people, not seizure-inducing images flashed in a meth-fueled slideshow with a voiceover by hyped-up gorilla unable to keep up with the feed. Whether it's Terry Bradshaw or Shannon Sharpe, these guys' mouths are not physically able to keep up with all the action being shown and yet they try to stumble through. Hearing Bradshaw choke on T.J. Houshmandzadeh's name before the video switches to the next game is painful. It's just impossible to mouth the syllables before two other games have flashed by. What's worse is how hard it makes to follow the other games while watching, almost forcing one to the Internet for real information. Yet somehow, the studios have enough time for commercials, as well as 2 or 3 minutes of the studio talking heads to smack-talk each other in some dick-waving contest that offers no real insight into the strategies the teams are using.
If you ask me, the networks should either just play highlights and scores with no voiceovers, or just play commercials and let me fast-forward them. I've better things to do with my time, like artificially inseminating beavers.
If You Ask Me #4: Graphics for the Blind
Every network clothes their broadcasts in different graphic treatments, showing off the scoreboard, clock, down indicator and some stats with varying degrees of usefulness. But somewhere along the way, those graphics got way out of hand. Not only do some of the networks use graphics with horribly ugly, unreadable fonts (Fox), most of them take up so much screen real estate they turn a 27" inch TV into a 14" squintbox. And what do they do with all that screen real estate besides piss me off?
Nothing. FoxSports, the NFL Network and NBC's Monday Night Football broadcasts all use horizontal bars at the top or bottom of the screen, covering the entire width of the display. Even when parts of the display have no information whatsoever, they still sit there, obscuring my view of the field. And these areas are empty a good deal of the time. ESPN's display is better, but still entirely too large for what it displays. Of all the networks, only CBS does an admirable job with their graphics. The fonts are crisp, clean and readable even on non-HD displays, the scoreboard is minimal with no honking big team logos taking up unneeded space. Between plays, they flash fantasy stats on the player who was just involved in the last play. Their ticker for other games in progress does take up the entire width of the bottom of the screen, but is tinier than the bars on Fox, NFL or NBC.
If you ask me, the graphics teams for these networks need to be sent back to school. All they do is piss me off.
If You Ask Me #5: Celebrities, Personalities and the Jackass Factor
I'm looking at you, ESPN's Monday Night Football. Is there really any good goddamn reason Sly Stallone was sitting in the booth hawking his new movie during an Eagles game? Did I really need to hear him being interviewed by Theismann and Kornhole? This is a fucking football game, not a trip through the stands at a Lakers game by Pat Fucking O'Brien. I tuned in to see a good football game and you give me Entertainment Tonight as hosted by Brickhead and the Twat. Stop it.
As for the broadcasters, Mike Tirico does a game job of the booth duties on the game, but if it were me, I'd be ready to go postal on the rest of the booth by the mid-point of the season. Joe Theismann was a good quarterback, but he's abrasive as an announcer and always has been. But at least he knows football. Tony Kornheiser, on the other hand, cannot possibly have as much football knowledge. If Theismann is abrasive, Kornhole is steel wool on genitals irritating. He comes off as arrogant and combative. There are times when I expect Theismann to stand up, pull off his dangling broken leg off of his body and beat Kornhole to death with it. I know I'd watch that. Theismann has always had a somewhat contentious tone with other members of the booth team, but he and Kornheiser seem to clash like Thunder and Lightning. It makes me want to watch the game on mute.
If you ask me, the ESPN crew needs to focus less on the showbiz and more on the football. I'm sure the ratings were good for them this year, but the show needs help to be a must-watch again. As it is, I can stomach Madden-Michaels more and Madden has really started to irritate me over the years. Bring back Pat Summerall, bitches!
Life would be a whole lot brighter if these people would just ask me.
I'm an American football fan with a Tivo. For the last two seasons, I've Tivoed at least 2 NFL games each Sunday if not 3 or 4 as well as the Monday Night games, any good Saturday or Thursday games, and every game of the playoffs. As such, I'm fairly well-versed with the game as it is presented on television and have strong opinions about the game. If you ask me, the game is great, but needs some changes to take it to another level.
If You Ask Me #1: Penalties on Kickoffs and Punts
The kicking game of any team, as important as it is, is one boring piece of work. Out of every game I watch over the course of a season, I'd say maybe 5 or 6 kickoffs and punts combined are worth watching. The rest are fast-forward fodder. I don't want to see them, because they are boring as dirt. They net few extra yards, and outside of a muffed catch or a spectacular hit, nothing interesting happens. They tend to interrupt the flow of the game a great deal but I can accept that.
But what really kills the flow of the game is when one of these somnambulistic ballets gets called back on a penalty. And the penalty most often used to interrupt and irritate me is the illegal block in the back penalty. When I played football in junior high, the only penalty ever called on a punt return or kickoff was holding or clipping. Clipping was a man's penalty. Clipping was the act of blocking someone below the belt when their back was turned and by God it was a serious penalty, netting 15 yards. It needed to be serious, because that kind of block could end someone's career.
The illegal block in the back, however, is a penalty for pansies. It's a 10-yard penalty for merely touching a player in the back, above or below the waist. Now, I'm sure it's meant to be for actually blocking a player hard in the back where the blocked player is supposed to be defenseless and unable to brace for the impact. But I have literally seen the penalty be given for putting your hands on a guy's jersey when their back is to you. And unlike clipping, it isn't given at most once a game, it's given on almost every single goddamn punt in the game. It's given so much the refs should just tack on an extra 10-yards to every single goddamn punt on general principle.
If you ask me, that rule needs to get tossed on its ear, or it needs to be called only when the block could be considered dangerous. These are guys wearing modern, cutting-edge armor, they can take a swipe at the back of their jersey.
If You Ask Me #2: Commercial Timeouts
Now, I realize the networks who broadcast the NFL games want to get paid. It's an expensive proposition to take a traveling road show of camera man, producers, broadcasters and stats guys to 32 different cities each week. John Madden's trailer alone must cost them millions in refrigerator restocks. I want the networks to make their investment back and a little profit besides, because they entertain me for months.
But can we all agree that there are too many commercials breaking up the flow of the game? Do we really need to enter a commercial break both before a kickoff AND after? Did I not just see that annoying fucker say "Can you hear me now?" 30 seconds ago, you have to show him to me again? The Geico cavemen are not THAT funny. I understand it takes a little time to move the offense onto the field after a change in possession, but not two minutes of commercial time. If you ask me, there needs to be one commercial break after changes in possession and that's it.
And what's more, we really do not need The VISA HALFTIME SHOW. It's just the goddamn halftime show. I don't care who paid for it. If the NFL must make that much money on commercial endorsements, just do it like the English football clubs do. Make the uniforms one big fucking billboard for the team's sponsor, plaster a metric fuckton of corporate logos all over every empty surface in the stadiums and get on with your lives. The Green Bay Packers brought to you with a gigantic Johnsonville Brats logo on their chests bothers me much less than the Michelin Scoreboard.
If You Ask Me #3: Halftime Shows for Speed Freaks
As a kid watching football, I loved the halftime studio shows. They were informative, updating all the scores around the league, dousing me with highlights and maybe the studio talking heads would wax poetic about some of the action for thirty seconds before sending the feed back out to the games. Somewhere, that all changed. Somehow, the halftime show became a blipvert for speed freaks, the barely-slowed down dolphin speech of functional illiterates trying to cram as much actual information into the space of thirty seconds, before assaulting me with 8 minutes of commercials. Didn't I just talk about too many commercials in the above paragraphs? It's back.
I want highlights, people, not seizure-inducing images flashed in a meth-fueled slideshow with a voiceover by hyped-up gorilla unable to keep up with the feed. Whether it's Terry Bradshaw or Shannon Sharpe, these guys' mouths are not physically able to keep up with all the action being shown and yet they try to stumble through. Hearing Bradshaw choke on T.J. Houshmandzadeh's name before the video switches to the next game is painful. It's just impossible to mouth the syllables before two other games have flashed by. What's worse is how hard it makes to follow the other games while watching, almost forcing one to the Internet for real information. Yet somehow, the studios have enough time for commercials, as well as 2 or 3 minutes of the studio talking heads to smack-talk each other in some dick-waving contest that offers no real insight into the strategies the teams are using.
If you ask me, the networks should either just play highlights and scores with no voiceovers, or just play commercials and let me fast-forward them. I've better things to do with my time, like artificially inseminating beavers.
If You Ask Me #4: Graphics for the Blind
Every network clothes their broadcasts in different graphic treatments, showing off the scoreboard, clock, down indicator and some stats with varying degrees of usefulness. But somewhere along the way, those graphics got way out of hand. Not only do some of the networks use graphics with horribly ugly, unreadable fonts (Fox), most of them take up so much screen real estate they turn a 27" inch TV into a 14" squintbox. And what do they do with all that screen real estate besides piss me off?
Nothing. FoxSports, the NFL Network and NBC's Monday Night Football broadcasts all use horizontal bars at the top or bottom of the screen, covering the entire width of the display. Even when parts of the display have no information whatsoever, they still sit there, obscuring my view of the field. And these areas are empty a good deal of the time. ESPN's display is better, but still entirely too large for what it displays. Of all the networks, only CBS does an admirable job with their graphics. The fonts are crisp, clean and readable even on non-HD displays, the scoreboard is minimal with no honking big team logos taking up unneeded space. Between plays, they flash fantasy stats on the player who was just involved in the last play. Their ticker for other games in progress does take up the entire width of the bottom of the screen, but is tinier than the bars on Fox, NFL or NBC.
If you ask me, the graphics teams for these networks need to be sent back to school. All they do is piss me off.
If You Ask Me #5: Celebrities, Personalities and the Jackass Factor
I'm looking at you, ESPN's Monday Night Football. Is there really any good goddamn reason Sly Stallone was sitting in the booth hawking his new movie during an Eagles game? Did I really need to hear him being interviewed by Theismann and Kornhole? This is a fucking football game, not a trip through the stands at a Lakers game by Pat Fucking O'Brien. I tuned in to see a good football game and you give me Entertainment Tonight as hosted by Brickhead and the Twat. Stop it.
As for the broadcasters, Mike Tirico does a game job of the booth duties on the game, but if it were me, I'd be ready to go postal on the rest of the booth by the mid-point of the season. Joe Theismann was a good quarterback, but he's abrasive as an announcer and always has been. But at least he knows football. Tony Kornheiser, on the other hand, cannot possibly have as much football knowledge. If Theismann is abrasive, Kornhole is steel wool on genitals irritating. He comes off as arrogant and combative. There are times when I expect Theismann to stand up, pull off his dangling broken leg off of his body and beat Kornhole to death with it. I know I'd watch that. Theismann has always had a somewhat contentious tone with other members of the booth team, but he and Kornheiser seem to clash like Thunder and Lightning. It makes me want to watch the game on mute.
If you ask me, the ESPN crew needs to focus less on the showbiz and more on the football. I'm sure the ratings were good for them this year, but the show needs help to be a must-watch again. As it is, I can stomach Madden-Michaels more and Madden has really started to irritate me over the years. Bring back Pat Summerall, bitches!
Life would be a whole lot brighter if these people would just ask me.
Labels: Football, If You Ask Me, NFL, Sports
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:42 AM
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Playaction Controls: Madden NFL 07 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, January 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
It's been five years since I was what one might call a fan of the John Madden series of console football games. After buying 2001 and 2002 for the PC, there seemed to be glacial change from year to year in core gameplay mechanics. Having heard that the 2k series of football games were better, I tried them and said goodbye to Madden for what I thought was forever. The NFL 2k series of games were simply vastly superior to Madden where it counted, on the virtual field. Not only did the game look better, lacking Madden's signature Fatty McFattenstein out-of-proportion player models, it played better as well. When EA decided to shut down what had become sturdy competition in the football video game market by signing an exclusive licensing deal with the NFL, I vowed to boycott Madden for as long as I could hold out.
One year and an E3 video of Madden for the Wii later, my resolve failed me. Rather than being disappointed, I'm pleasantly surprised and satisfied with my purchase.
Madden NFL 07 for the Wii is first and foremost a Madden game. Anyone who has played previous versions of the game will recognize just about all of its trademark features, including the pork pie models mentioned above. The nuts and bolts of the Madden series really hasn't changed a great deal since 2002. Defenses both CPU and player still give up big pass plays, though run defense has improved. The soundtrack still contains way too much rap and alternapop from bands I've never heard of and never wanted to hear of. And just like EA's other football franchise game, Head Coach, the menu interface is still badly designed, with too much screen real estate engulfed by useless buttons while important things like play diagrams are shrunk to mouse anus size.
But if you are able to stomach the Madden formula of design, you'll find a pleasant football game. More importantly, you'll find a new control scheme thanks to the Wiimote/Nunchuk setup that elevates this game above its clones on other platforms. I've played this game on the X-Box and found it lackluster, much as I expected to. The Wii version is a cut above thanks to the motion-sensing control scheme.
Passing is more involving when your arm movement controls the power behind your delivery. Jukes and stiff arms are more satisfying with a flick of the nunchuk or Wiimote. The kicking game, a source of frustration and disappointment for me on traditional console controllers, is smooth on the Wii. Hold the Wiimote down and then bring it up in a motion pantomiming the leg's kicking motion, with the amount of power in the swing echoed in the kick and the deviations from a straight upward line providing hook or slice to the ball. The hardest part about the kicking game is getting the power right when not trying to put everything into a kick. Tackling requires you to push both controllers away from your body with various buttons used to add power, and additional pulls of the controllers towards your body makes your player attempt to strip the ball from the ball carrier. In pass coverage, raising your arms will attempt an interception while pushing your arms away swats the ball down.
The controls work. Not perfectly, mind you, but they give the game a measure of immersiveness that isn't there in the X-Box version. Defense is still a weak point, as moving a player with a thumbstick to the correct tackling position is imprecise; this isn't a measure of the Wii's controllers since I have the same problem on the X-Box. The Wiimote can be used as a pointing device on menus but I found this option to get in the way more than be helpful. Calling audibles, shifting linemen, sending players in motion or setting hot routes takes a bit of getting used to. In order to do any of these, you must first select the player with the Wiimote pointer, hit the A button and then perform a thumbstick or digital control pad movement to set it off. It's complicated at first, but as you learn the correct control pad movements, it gets easier.
Graphics and sound are both good without being spectacular, and each has its flaws. The stadium background graphics are very low-resolution, and it stands out in a big way during certain plays. The sound piped through the Wiimote is meant to add immersion, with calls of "HUT HUT!" being tossed out of it in the pre-snap. However, the game's normal sound channels also scream "HUT!" in the pre-snap and sometimes the two do not match, either in timing or even in verbiage. With a control scheme built on immersion, it breaks that immersion. The manual is atrocious even by console standards. It consists of about 6 pages of control diagrams or instructions on play, a few pages of credits, and a cover. It could certainly make the strategy guide useful, which is sold separately of course. EA has to pay back that ginormous license fee somehow.
One other complaint I have about the game, which applies equally to every single football game I've ever played, is the camera angles. While there are a number of camera angles to choose from, most of them aren't very good. All of the angles are shot from the offense's side of the ball, which puts the player on defense at an immediate disadvantage. I would like to see an option to set the camera for when the player is both on offense and defense. Let me set the camera in a defensive position when I'm defending, and then have it switch back to an offensive one when I have the ball. I've yet to figure out why no one has done this. NFL 2k4 and 2k5 allowed you to see from the defense's perspective but only in first-person mode, a gameplay mode I miss dearly.
This year's version has no online play or online stats updates, something I hope is added in next year's inevitable version. The game is a good start and with some interface changes, defensive changes and slight change to the art style, next year's version could be great. As it stands, 07 for the Wii is a worthy purchase for football fans that have no other option anyway. It beats the other versions in everything but graphical prowess and sound design.
One year and an E3 video of Madden for the Wii later, my resolve failed me. Rather than being disappointed, I'm pleasantly surprised and satisfied with my purchase.
Madden NFL 07 for the Wii is first and foremost a Madden game. Anyone who has played previous versions of the game will recognize just about all of its trademark features, including the pork pie models mentioned above. The nuts and bolts of the Madden series really hasn't changed a great deal since 2002. Defenses both CPU and player still give up big pass plays, though run defense has improved. The soundtrack still contains way too much rap and alternapop from bands I've never heard of and never wanted to hear of. And just like EA's other football franchise game, Head Coach, the menu interface is still badly designed, with too much screen real estate engulfed by useless buttons while important things like play diagrams are shrunk to mouse anus size.
But if you are able to stomach the Madden formula of design, you'll find a pleasant football game. More importantly, you'll find a new control scheme thanks to the Wiimote/Nunchuk setup that elevates this game above its clones on other platforms. I've played this game on the X-Box and found it lackluster, much as I expected to. The Wii version is a cut above thanks to the motion-sensing control scheme.
Passing is more involving when your arm movement controls the power behind your delivery. Jukes and stiff arms are more satisfying with a flick of the nunchuk or Wiimote. The kicking game, a source of frustration and disappointment for me on traditional console controllers, is smooth on the Wii. Hold the Wiimote down and then bring it up in a motion pantomiming the leg's kicking motion, with the amount of power in the swing echoed in the kick and the deviations from a straight upward line providing hook or slice to the ball. The hardest part about the kicking game is getting the power right when not trying to put everything into a kick. Tackling requires you to push both controllers away from your body with various buttons used to add power, and additional pulls of the controllers towards your body makes your player attempt to strip the ball from the ball carrier. In pass coverage, raising your arms will attempt an interception while pushing your arms away swats the ball down.
The controls work. Not perfectly, mind you, but they give the game a measure of immersiveness that isn't there in the X-Box version. Defense is still a weak point, as moving a player with a thumbstick to the correct tackling position is imprecise; this isn't a measure of the Wii's controllers since I have the same problem on the X-Box. The Wiimote can be used as a pointing device on menus but I found this option to get in the way more than be helpful. Calling audibles, shifting linemen, sending players in motion or setting hot routes takes a bit of getting used to. In order to do any of these, you must first select the player with the Wiimote pointer, hit the A button and then perform a thumbstick or digital control pad movement to set it off. It's complicated at first, but as you learn the correct control pad movements, it gets easier.
Graphics and sound are both good without being spectacular, and each has its flaws. The stadium background graphics are very low-resolution, and it stands out in a big way during certain plays. The sound piped through the Wiimote is meant to add immersion, with calls of "HUT HUT!" being tossed out of it in the pre-snap. However, the game's normal sound channels also scream "HUT!" in the pre-snap and sometimes the two do not match, either in timing or even in verbiage. With a control scheme built on immersion, it breaks that immersion. The manual is atrocious even by console standards. It consists of about 6 pages of control diagrams or instructions on play, a few pages of credits, and a cover. It could certainly make the strategy guide useful, which is sold separately of course. EA has to pay back that ginormous license fee somehow.
One other complaint I have about the game, which applies equally to every single football game I've ever played, is the camera angles. While there are a number of camera angles to choose from, most of them aren't very good. All of the angles are shot from the offense's side of the ball, which puts the player on defense at an immediate disadvantage. I would like to see an option to set the camera for when the player is both on offense and defense. Let me set the camera in a defensive position when I'm defending, and then have it switch back to an offensive one when I have the ball. I've yet to figure out why no one has done this. NFL 2k4 and 2k5 allowed you to see from the defense's perspective but only in first-person mode, a gameplay mode I miss dearly.
This year's version has no online play or online stats updates, something I hope is added in next year's inevitable version. The game is a good start and with some interface changes, defensive changes and slight change to the art style, next year's version could be great. As it stands, 07 for the Wii is a worthy purchase for football fans that have no other option anyway. It beats the other versions in everything but graphical prowess and sound design.
Labels: NFL, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:38 AM
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Bonds SMASH! My Outrage is complete
Posted on
Friday, December 08, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
Some news stories greet you with a smack in the face, the smack of a towel drenched in sweat and disdain. Such a news story greeted me this morning when I learned of Barry Bonds future with the San Francisco Giants. I, for one, was hoping that no Major League Baseball team would be contemptuous enough of the game of baseball to continue to pay this man to piss on the history of great players like Hank Aaron or Roberto Clemente. Unfortunately, that's the way the sidewalk walks, to quote Chuck D.
Bonds is legendary. He's a legendary home run hitter. He's a legendary hitter in general, not just for mashing the holy hell out of pitcher's mistakes, but also for not hitting bad pitches and taking huge, record-breaking numbers in bases on balls. He's also legendary for being the most obvious steroid-user in baseball since Jose Canseco. He's legendary for being a complete and utter douchebag, a waste of human flesh so full of his own self-importance, he laughs in the face of MLB executives and grand juries who can't quite prove that he's taken steroids despite the pretty damning mountain of evidence which clearly says that he did. And he's laughed at you and me, the fans of baseball. He's laughed all the way to the bank.
But forlorn though it was, I did have a hope that he'd finally done enough to prove that he did not deserve to be in the game of baseball any longer. He's finally gone beyond the pale, and the sport could dump him as unceremoniously as they did Pete Rose once his shame was revealed. By all rights, no one should sign this fucker for even league minimum salary. Not only does his presence in the clubhouse bring the veritable Ringling Bros. of media circuses to the locker room every day, he is living under the shadow of potential grand jury indictments daily, not to mention the small chance that he'll actually test positive for one of those performance-enhancing drugs he shoves into his ass on a regular basis. But in pure baseball terms, when you check the numbers, the numbers don't add up. Last year, he played in only 130 games, didn't even reach 500 plate appearances and had more walks than home runs and RBI's combined. On many teams, he'd be hitting fifth or sixth. He only started in the field 115 times, meaning he's not even an everyday player anymore due to the nagging injuries.
Were it ANYONE else, anyone but fucking Barry Bonds, no team would give him a one-year contract for $3 million. But the Giants, displaying the kind of wisdom that has led to two straight losing years and will likely lead to a third straight last-place finish, have signed him to a one-year deal. And not for $3 million, or $4 million, or even $10 million. No, the Giants have elected to give him $16 MILLION DOLLARS to be a clubhouse distraction, a hotheaded belligerent asshole and hit 26 home runs. That's $615,384 per home run if you're counting, and likely 28 cents per aggravated temper tantrum. There are even incentives in the contract to up the total to $20 million if certain goals are reached.
What the fuck are you thinking? Seriously, what are you thinking? I realize the market for decent sluggers is bad, and that San Francisco fans like him for some unknowable reason, and that he will break Aaron's record this year, which the Giants hope will be done in San Fran. But for every single problem he causes, for the locker room cancers he lets fester, for every game you lose either because you couldn't sign anyone to hit around him or because he couldn't play or because he couldn't hit the homers like he used to, the Giants organization will be getting paid back for all their years of aiding and abetting his criminal lifestyle and disrespect he has shown for the game. I hope for two things: 1) that the contract is guaranteed money and 2) that he breaks his leg on opening day and never plays again.
I don't often wish actual harm on players, but in his case, it would be a karmic lesson to both Bonds and Brian Sabean. Some things come with too high a price. And unless Bonds does break his leg, the people paying that price are baseball fans and the San Francisco fans in particular. I hope they like losing, because signing Bonds all but guarantees it.
Bonds is legendary. He's a legendary home run hitter. He's a legendary hitter in general, not just for mashing the holy hell out of pitcher's mistakes, but also for not hitting bad pitches and taking huge, record-breaking numbers in bases on balls. He's also legendary for being the most obvious steroid-user in baseball since Jose Canseco. He's legendary for being a complete and utter douchebag, a waste of human flesh so full of his own self-importance, he laughs in the face of MLB executives and grand juries who can't quite prove that he's taken steroids despite the pretty damning mountain of evidence which clearly says that he did. And he's laughed at you and me, the fans of baseball. He's laughed all the way to the bank.
But forlorn though it was, I did have a hope that he'd finally done enough to prove that he did not deserve to be in the game of baseball any longer. He's finally gone beyond the pale, and the sport could dump him as unceremoniously as they did Pete Rose once his shame was revealed. By all rights, no one should sign this fucker for even league minimum salary. Not only does his presence in the clubhouse bring the veritable Ringling Bros. of media circuses to the locker room every day, he is living under the shadow of potential grand jury indictments daily, not to mention the small chance that he'll actually test positive for one of those performance-enhancing drugs he shoves into his ass on a regular basis. But in pure baseball terms, when you check the numbers, the numbers don't add up. Last year, he played in only 130 games, didn't even reach 500 plate appearances and had more walks than home runs and RBI's combined. On many teams, he'd be hitting fifth or sixth. He only started in the field 115 times, meaning he's not even an everyday player anymore due to the nagging injuries.
Were it ANYONE else, anyone but fucking Barry Bonds, no team would give him a one-year contract for $3 million. But the Giants, displaying the kind of wisdom that has led to two straight losing years and will likely lead to a third straight last-place finish, have signed him to a one-year deal. And not for $3 million, or $4 million, or even $10 million. No, the Giants have elected to give him $16 MILLION DOLLARS to be a clubhouse distraction, a hotheaded belligerent asshole and hit 26 home runs. That's $615,384 per home run if you're counting, and likely 28 cents per aggravated temper tantrum. There are even incentives in the contract to up the total to $20 million if certain goals are reached.
What the fuck are you thinking? Seriously, what are you thinking? I realize the market for decent sluggers is bad, and that San Francisco fans like him for some unknowable reason, and that he will break Aaron's record this year, which the Giants hope will be done in San Fran. But for every single problem he causes, for the locker room cancers he lets fester, for every game you lose either because you couldn't sign anyone to hit around him or because he couldn't play or because he couldn't hit the homers like he used to, the Giants organization will be getting paid back for all their years of aiding and abetting his criminal lifestyle and disrespect he has shown for the game. I hope for two things: 1) that the contract is guaranteed money and 2) that he breaks his leg on opening day and never plays again.
I don't often wish actual harm on players, but in his case, it would be a karmic lesson to both Bonds and Brian Sabean. Some things come with too high a price. And unless Bonds does break his leg, the people paying that price are baseball fans and the San Francisco fans in particular. I hope they like losing, because signing Bonds all but guarantees it.
Labels: Baseball, Bonds, MLB, Sports, Steroids
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:04 AM
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BALLS! FIFA 07 (X-Box) Review
Posted on
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
By popular request, I'll give my thoughts about FIFA 07 for the X-Box. Ok, semi-popular request. Ok, it was one guy, but he really wanted to know. And just for that guy, all five of you who read this blog will be treated to my review of FIFA 07 by EA.
Yes, I bought an EA game and for mostly full price, minus about $15 worth of trade-ins. After EA's almost criminal purchase of the exclusive NFL video game license which ushered in the death of the greatest football video game series ever made (NFL 2k from 2k Sports), I was miffed. Perturbed. In a downright tizzy. I gave EA a number of helpful suggestions about where they could stick their Madden franchise, most of them anatomically impossible but cathartic nonetheless. So why would I buy an EA Sports game?
There's no other choice.
While that's not quite true, as Winning Eleven 9 exists, I found I didn't like WE9. In addition WE10 (or Pro Evolution Soccer or whatever they are calling the US release) is not due in the States until January. Having also played the 2006 World Cup game from EA, I found that I preferred the EA style of play, even though WC2006 had some serious framerate issues. When I found that WE9 had player licenses but not clubs (referring to Liverpool as Merseyside Red), my choice was clear. I use the word choice in the loosest way possible, of course.
FIFA 07 is soccer for the uninitiated and football everywhere in the world except the US. The X-Box version contains more teams and leagues than I'll ever play, from the English Premier League to Spain's La Liga, Turkish, Italian, American (North and South), Dutch, Polish and German leagues, as well as multiple levels of said leagues, all with real club names, player names and in many cases authentic stadiums. If you want to play socceer with a real life team, chances are this game has that team included. The X-Box 360 version inexplicably has about 1/4 of the number of leagues and stadiums as this versions, so vive la next-gen. The game has a plethora of modes, from friendly one-off matches to tournaments, situational scenarios, challenges and the main attraction, league seasons. It even includes a game mode (online only) called Interactive Leagues, which I'll get to later.
Like all EA Sports games, it's full of flash, pomp and pop music, with a soundtrack chock full of bands I've never heard of. Most of the songs are decent, in that they aren't overly annoying. What does become annoying, however, is the podcast audio that's played during menus in between songs. From what I can gather, it's discussions between a DJ and a few of the developers of the game, giving hints and being generally jovial. At first, these interludes are interesting, as they do give out some hints on gameplay. After the 20th time hearing them, they get real, real old. What makes it worse is that while the user can customize the playlist of songs, the game doesn't allow custom playlists of songs on your X-Box's hard drive. You are stuck with the songs they pack on the disc and that's it. It's a shame I'll never get to hear Rush's Tom Sawyer play to celebrate a Steven Gerrard goal for Liverpool.
Beyond the fluff, the game is deep, especially in Manager Mode. The goal of Manager Mode is to create a coach's profile and have that coach lead your club through a career of seasons, attempting to satisfy the club board's expectations, win games and generally not get fired. The manager controls all player transfers, including those of the club's youth academy. Each player gains experience when played in a match, and as that experience accrues, the player's attritubes can increase based on that growth. One of the keys to Manager's Mode is to plan not just for the next game, but the next few seasons, nurturing your players' growth to keep the club at a successful level. The growth aspect of roster management is another welcome addition to the strategy of filling out a game roster beyond the normal injury and fatigue issues of other sports simulations. Do I rest John Arne Riise to play that young left back with potential I signed, or do I go for the win and play the veteran? Managers even get to set the ticket prices of home games, choose staff and stadium upgrades, and send out scouts. After every game, the board will send email with concerns, comments or suggestions.
Once the roster is chosen and the game begins, the product really shines. All that managerial stuff is a waste if the on-field action suffers. Thankfully, FIFA 07 is a cracking good game of football. As I mentioned above, the framerate stuttering that afflicted World Cup 2006 are gone, even though the graphics engine looks like an improvement. The controls are similar to the Cup version, but with a good deal more intricacy. Ball control is more challenging, and with the use of the right thumbstick, the game gives the players a greater range of options for dribbling, passing and shooting. Players seem to have weight on the pitch now, and jostling other players is a necessary tactic, especially when fielding headers. The game's manual is dreadfully short, unfortunately. While it does illustrate the button functions, it doesn't even begin to explain some of the combination moves that become important to success. In addition, the in-game help is sparse, though much better than the manual. Poor manuals are par for the course these days, so EA is not alone in shorting the customer. Regardless of the manual's quality, the gameplay is exemplary, causing a callus to appear on my left thumbstick thumb.
The overall presentation in-game is top-notch, with the same announcers as WC2006 returning to add more commentary. Stadium sounds are rich, the commentary is mostly spot-on or at least relevant, and each team's players and kit are represented well. The only complaint I have about the on-field presentation is the replay's clumsy yet serviceable interface.
FIFA 07 is linked into X-Box Live as one would expect. Rosters can be downloaded, and players can play matches against other opponents online. There is certainly some lag creeping up in the system, but overall my online experiences have been satisfactory. The real killer online feature this year is interactaive leagues, a new way to play league football.
Interactive leagues are open to anyone on X-Box Live with the game. In fact, all the players in interactive leagues make up the teams. Each player picks their favorite team, in my case Liverpool. During the week leading up to the real world team's next fixture, club fans can join interactive league matches against their real life club's next opponent or if no players for that club are available, other rival clubs can be played against. During the match, the player earns points based on performance, wins, losses and goals scored, with the winner getting more points. Each player that plays for my team will contribute points to that team's weekly total. If my team's weekly total is better than their real-life match opponent's by the end of the week, my team is considered to have won that match. A table of interactive league standings is changed just like a real season. It's an innovative way to handle online leagues, almost like a fantasy football game within a football game. Having played and lost two of these games, it's something I'd continue in the future, though not as seriously as single-player seasons.
Though not perfect, if you like soccer and can't wait until WE10 comes to America, or just want a damn good soccer game, FIFA 07 certainly deserves a look. If you're still unsure about buying it, rent it first; the gameplay may offend WE9 fans, or just may not be up your alley. If you do decide to buy the game and just want to pound on an American invalid, I'm listed as HaemishM on X-Box Live. Chances are I won't even make you break a sweat.
Yes, I bought an EA game and for mostly full price, minus about $15 worth of trade-ins. After EA's almost criminal purchase of the exclusive NFL video game license which ushered in the death of the greatest football video game series ever made (NFL 2k from 2k Sports), I was miffed. Perturbed. In a downright tizzy. I gave EA a number of helpful suggestions about where they could stick their Madden franchise, most of them anatomically impossible but cathartic nonetheless. So why would I buy an EA Sports game?
There's no other choice.
While that's not quite true, as Winning Eleven 9 exists, I found I didn't like WE9. In addition WE10 (or Pro Evolution Soccer or whatever they are calling the US release) is not due in the States until January. Having also played the 2006 World Cup game from EA, I found that I preferred the EA style of play, even though WC2006 had some serious framerate issues. When I found that WE9 had player licenses but not clubs (referring to Liverpool as Merseyside Red), my choice was clear. I use the word choice in the loosest way possible, of course.
FIFA 07 is soccer for the uninitiated and football everywhere in the world except the US. The X-Box version contains more teams and leagues than I'll ever play, from the English Premier League to Spain's La Liga, Turkish, Italian, American (North and South), Dutch, Polish and German leagues, as well as multiple levels of said leagues, all with real club names, player names and in many cases authentic stadiums. If you want to play socceer with a real life team, chances are this game has that team included. The X-Box 360 version inexplicably has about 1/4 of the number of leagues and stadiums as this versions, so vive la next-gen. The game has a plethora of modes, from friendly one-off matches to tournaments, situational scenarios, challenges and the main attraction, league seasons. It even includes a game mode (online only) called Interactive Leagues, which I'll get to later.
Like all EA Sports games, it's full of flash, pomp and pop music, with a soundtrack chock full of bands I've never heard of. Most of the songs are decent, in that they aren't overly annoying. What does become annoying, however, is the podcast audio that's played during menus in between songs. From what I can gather, it's discussions between a DJ and a few of the developers of the game, giving hints and being generally jovial. At first, these interludes are interesting, as they do give out some hints on gameplay. After the 20th time hearing them, they get real, real old. What makes it worse is that while the user can customize the playlist of songs, the game doesn't allow custom playlists of songs on your X-Box's hard drive. You are stuck with the songs they pack on the disc and that's it. It's a shame I'll never get to hear Rush's Tom Sawyer play to celebrate a Steven Gerrard goal for Liverpool.
Beyond the fluff, the game is deep, especially in Manager Mode. The goal of Manager Mode is to create a coach's profile and have that coach lead your club through a career of seasons, attempting to satisfy the club board's expectations, win games and generally not get fired. The manager controls all player transfers, including those of the club's youth academy. Each player gains experience when played in a match, and as that experience accrues, the player's attritubes can increase based on that growth. One of the keys to Manager's Mode is to plan not just for the next game, but the next few seasons, nurturing your players' growth to keep the club at a successful level. The growth aspect of roster management is another welcome addition to the strategy of filling out a game roster beyond the normal injury and fatigue issues of other sports simulations. Do I rest John Arne Riise to play that young left back with potential I signed, or do I go for the win and play the veteran? Managers even get to set the ticket prices of home games, choose staff and stadium upgrades, and send out scouts. After every game, the board will send email with concerns, comments or suggestions.
Once the roster is chosen and the game begins, the product really shines. All that managerial stuff is a waste if the on-field action suffers. Thankfully, FIFA 07 is a cracking good game of football. As I mentioned above, the framerate stuttering that afflicted World Cup 2006 are gone, even though the graphics engine looks like an improvement. The controls are similar to the Cup version, but with a good deal more intricacy. Ball control is more challenging, and with the use of the right thumbstick, the game gives the players a greater range of options for dribbling, passing and shooting. Players seem to have weight on the pitch now, and jostling other players is a necessary tactic, especially when fielding headers. The game's manual is dreadfully short, unfortunately. While it does illustrate the button functions, it doesn't even begin to explain some of the combination moves that become important to success. In addition, the in-game help is sparse, though much better than the manual. Poor manuals are par for the course these days, so EA is not alone in shorting the customer. Regardless of the manual's quality, the gameplay is exemplary, causing a callus to appear on my left thumbstick thumb.
The overall presentation in-game is top-notch, with the same announcers as WC2006 returning to add more commentary. Stadium sounds are rich, the commentary is mostly spot-on or at least relevant, and each team's players and kit are represented well. The only complaint I have about the on-field presentation is the replay's clumsy yet serviceable interface.
FIFA 07 is linked into X-Box Live as one would expect. Rosters can be downloaded, and players can play matches against other opponents online. There is certainly some lag creeping up in the system, but overall my online experiences have been satisfactory. The real killer online feature this year is interactaive leagues, a new way to play league football.
Interactive leagues are open to anyone on X-Box Live with the game. In fact, all the players in interactive leagues make up the teams. Each player picks their favorite team, in my case Liverpool. During the week leading up to the real world team's next fixture, club fans can join interactive league matches against their real life club's next opponent or if no players for that club are available, other rival clubs can be played against. During the match, the player earns points based on performance, wins, losses and goals scored, with the winner getting more points. Each player that plays for my team will contribute points to that team's weekly total. If my team's weekly total is better than their real-life match opponent's by the end of the week, my team is considered to have won that match. A table of interactive league standings is changed just like a real season. It's an innovative way to handle online leagues, almost like a fantasy football game within a football game. Having played and lost two of these games, it's something I'd continue in the future, though not as seriously as single-player seasons.
Though not perfect, if you like soccer and can't wait until WE10 comes to America, or just want a damn good soccer game, FIFA 07 certainly deserves a look. If you're still unsure about buying it, rent it first; the gameplay may offend WE9 fans, or just may not be up your alley. If you do decide to buy the game and just want to pound on an American invalid, I'm listed as HaemishM on X-Box Live. Chances are I won't even make you break a sweat.
Labels: Soccer, Sports, Video Games, X-Box
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:26 PM
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