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Sports

Shot-Online, Season 2

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I may be going out on a limb saying this, but I would imagine the majority of you readers are not playing Shot-Online, the greatest Golf MMORPG EVAR. That being said, if by some chance you are playing (or have played in the past) Shot-Online, then you’ll be pleased to know that “Season 2” has launched. The website has been redesigned and there’s a whole new client to download. I downloaded and played a round of golf but I didn’t notice too many changes.

The game is still free, but you can always throw PayPal money (it’s fake, like Monopoly money, right?) at them and buy in-game items from the store. I’m all for them trying to make their money this way, but I’d rather earn my items the old-fashioned way — grinding through hundreds of rounds of golf. Call me a glutton for cyber-punishment, but if I can’t grind, I ain’t playing.

So far I haven’t played a round of golf with other players yet. I’m still a lowly level 6 golfer with no game to speak of. It’s depressing to have my all-time longest drive be 207 yards. And that’s when it was sunny and a 10 MPH wind at my back. I figure once I get up around level 10 or so I’m going to give the whole multiplayer thing a try. But for now, I still think Shot-Online is a pretty fun game, especially the free part.

Electronic Arts, ESPN hook up in exclusive 15-year deal – News at GameSpot

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Electronic Arts, ESPN hook up in exclusive 15-year deal – News at GameSpot: First and foremost: Electronic Arts is a company in the business of making money. Having exclusive rights to things like the NFL and ESPN will give them the only game in town. Having said that, they are playing quite dirty with Sega/Take Two. From Kotaku comes this story on Gamesport. From the post:

“Electronic Arts broke the calm of a national holiday today by announcing a licensing deal of epic proportions. For the next fifteen years, EA will be the sole licensee of the ESPN brand in the area of sports games, which will include console, handheld, PC, and wireless games.”

Right now, ESPN is on an extended time-out with me with the way they’ve treated Ohio State, so they are only a couple notches below EA on the “Eveel, like the Deveel” ladder with me.

I see like this: Sega gets hooked up with Fox Sports (who currently has the rights to the Super Bowl and World Series). I’m not a big fan of The Best Damn Sports Show, but they do have Max now in their lineup and they could roll some of their personalities into Video Game personas.

This does suck for most NFL video game fans, who have had their right to choose swept from under their feet, but as I said at the beginning, this is a business (currently a big business) so I don’t fault EA for the moves they’ve made, but this certainly doesn’t bode well for the little guy.

Top Five Football Games

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This isn’t so much a Top Five Football Games list as it is more of a progression of my football gaming experience. I mentioned earlier that football games have evolved over the years. So I’ve listed five games that have had an impact on my football gaming experience.

#5 Mattel Handheld Football 2 – The first in the list is the game I played at night before I had a Game Boy. Not much to see here. I never was able to reconcile the total unfairness of the first iterations of video football games – there was always one more offensive player than defensive. In the case of the Mattel Handheld game, it was three red dashes versus four other red dashes. I don’t remember much about the game play here but I don’t remember anything about spin moves or stiff arms. Just those red dashes.

#4 Super Challenge Football (Atari 2600) – Ahh, my first console football game – Super Challenge Football. Anyone who’s played this game knows exactly why I loved it – if you missed a tackle, no big deal! Just run to the left, you’ll pop out on the right side, perfectly positioned to make a play. As you can see from the screen shots, about twenty yards fit on the screen at the time. So when you made it to one end of the screen, you popped out on the other side. No side scrolling here. Again, I don’t remember too much about the game play, but I do remember being a sweet safety. Nobody got through more than one screen against me!

#3 Tecmo Bowl (NES) – Many will say Tecmo Super Bowl was the best NES football game, possibly the best football game of the 20th century, but Tecmo Bowl is my choice for #3. Of course, it had its quirks, like unstoppable players including Lawrence Taylor, but it was a great game. It still didn’t have a full team of eleven players, but it was getting close. I had a friend who actually keep track of stats between games (Super Tecmo Bowl did this) and he even chose an MVP for each of his seasons. I didn’t get that into it, but we sure played the heck out of that game.

#2 John Madden Football (PC) – I couldn’t make a list with out paying homage to the game that brought football video games to the life. I had John Madden Football for the PC almost fifteen years ago. The thing I remember most about this version was being able to draw up plays on a chalk board, with X’s and O’s. You could then simulate the plays and watch them real-time. I remember drawing up plays that had the whole offensive line pulling to block on a sweep. As I remember, that play didn’t work too well.

#1 NCAA 2004/5 (Gamecube) – Of course, this game is number one on my list. I am a HUGE college football fan, and NCAA 2004/5 is my number one game. Madden 2005 or ESPN NFL 2K5 might have better graphics, more recognizable stars and more all around polish, but for my money, it doesn’t get any better than Dynasty Mode in NCAA. The graphics are great, but the dynasty mode is so much more than the game play. It’s about running a high impact college program. It’s training players, recruiting them and getting them to stay out of trouble (discipline was added to 2005). I was a bit disappointed with 2005’s enhancements but it is still a fabulous game with a great replay upside.

Weekend gaming and Video Game Football

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This weekend didn’t involve as much video gaming as we had anticipated. Other things happened, like going outdoors and actually breathing fresh air! We rode the four-wheelers a bunch, watched some college football (my Buckeyes are reeling, but I’m not dismayed) and played some NCAA 2005 on the Gamecube.

Watching a few football games this weekend made me realize how far football games have come but also how much farther they can still go. While it is unrealistic to think a gamer would want to spend 3 hours playing a game of football (3 hours being the average length of a college or pro football game) I think there can still be more realistic additions to both the graphics and AI. For one, collision detection still has a while before it’s perfect. Body parts still go through other bodies as if they were ghosts, collisions occur and bodies contort in unrealistic (in a Newtonian Physics sense) manners, I could go on. There also should be in place ways to play other positions. My brother-in-law doesn’t really like to play offense, so when we play co op, he plays one of the down linemen. He thinks holding ‘X’ keeps his guy engaged, but I’m not sure about that. If there was a way to make a sort of “mini game” to determine the amount of success one has, would be an improvement. I really like the 1st person mode in ESPN 2k5 (even though I’m not good at it) but that would only work for one person.

With respect to the AI, it is getting better but the play calling can be very predictable and sometimes blatantly wrong. I’ve had the computer driving on me at the end of the first half (in NCAA 2005) and it lets the clock roll until there is less than five seconds on the play clock before it hikes the ball. In the process, it loses precious seconds to set up the next play or get ready to kick a field goal.

But as I said, football games have come a long way. I’ll be going over my top 5 football video games on Friday. Hopefully this will start a trend of posting top 5 lists every once and a while.

NCAA 2005 is only 11 days away!

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I posted that earlier link from work, I don’t think I’ll be doing that much anymore. Probably wouldn’t be the most appropriate activity, even though I was at lunch. Either way, I probably won’t post much from work.

NCAA 2005 is going to be sweet! Some say the pump-up-the-crowd angle will be done poorly but I have been to the Horsehoe during an OSU/Michigan game and after a Buckeye defender lights up a Wolverine, that place explodes. It might not be the loudest stadium out there but it is still a spiritual experience. And then the band blares the fight song and it’s surreal. The world around fades and nothing else matters. And this is just from a lifetime fan’s perspective. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be down on the field. Ahhh, that’s where NCAA 2005 comes in. College football season starts July 12th!

I’m still not sure if I’ll pick it up the first week. I may, I dunno yet. To me it just doesn’t seem right to start the football season until August. But I’m sure my brother-in-law will pick it up and tell me how awesome it is and then I’ll go and pick it up, too. Man I can’t wait! And with the new Memory Card, it’s like heaven has open its gates and rained a little love on us all.