Thoughts for Tuesday 080310

I know I haven't been posting much recently, but all I've been playing recently is Hydro Thunder Hurricane and Halo Wars. The former isn't particularly deep and I've said about all I need about the latter. Anyway, the Madden NFL '11 demo came out, and I have to say that I do like the new feel of the game. However, apparently online franchise was the least used feature in last year's edition, so word on the street is that they haven't updated it much. Since online franchise was literally the only thing I cared about last year, it may not be worth it for me to pick it up this season.


On a random side note, remember this commercial? I liked it.

For those of you who love Instant Queue-ing on your 'box, I've got three new shows to recommend. Two of them ran only one season and the other never made it through the second season, so it should be pretty easy to get through each of these shows' entire runs. They are, in order of recommendation, Better Off Ted, Stella, and The Unusuals. The first is an ABC critical darling that just never found an audience, the second is an extremely quirky comedy from Comedy Central starring that dude who loves the 80s and some other The State vets, and the last was one of the many shows to fail at following LOST's time slot during its 6 year run. Speaking of the The State, I believe that's on Instant Queue these days as well. I've never seen it, but it's apparently where all the Stella and Reno 911 guys got their starts, so that's probably next on my docket.

If you have Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the PC and want to try making your own levels, the tools to do so are available for free on the internets. They're actually quite easy to get into (especially compared to Unreal Tournament 2004, in my opinion), and there are a good number of helpful videos on YouTube. CoD4 runs about $30 wherever you look these days, which isn't exactly cheap for a 3 year old game with two sequels on the market.

Lastly, no I don't have Starcraft II yet and yes, I wish I did. I played the beta, and that made it painfully obvious that my laptop was not capable of running such a glorious program.

--Chilly P

Halo Wars, the Big XII, and Strasburg, D.C.

I'll start off with the quote of the week:

"There might come a day where I don't feel like a twat using an iPad in a public place, but that day isn't here yet. It's a little too ostentatious, like toting around a scepter. I don't like it. The only thing it can do that my iPhone can't is be more expensive."
--Tycho Brahe

A friend of mine gave me access to one of his two Starcraft II beta keys, but my laptop can't run the game particularly well. So in order to quench my recent RTS thirst, I've picked Halo Wars back up, and it's been sublime. I absolutely love Halo Wars. I've never been particularly adept at playing games with a mouse and keyboard, and games like Red Alert and Starcraft demand a kind of multitasking that I've yet to adapt. Halo Wars, on the other hand, works extremely well with a controller, and they've done a good job of shrinking the decision space so that RTS novices like myself can stay competitive. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the Call of Duty of RTS games where any asshat can come in and wreck your day; you still have to be a thinking man, but it's on a scale that I can cope with. Its Rock-Paper-Scissors framework is very thinly masked (intentionally), so I can usually stay competitive with a handful of strategies that I've gotten pretty decent with. The unit cap also keeps battles on a manageable scale, and each army can only get so powerful. The side effect of this is that 3v3 games, which I usually play, typically devolve into a race to max out your army before attacking. It just so happens that that's my favorite flavor of battle. It's a great game for people who love RTSes and would like to be competitive at one, but can't commit the time it takes to get good at a game as hardcore as Starcraft.

College football's cannibalizing of the Big XII has been very interesting to watch unfold. I'm an SEC man myself, but my family is from Texas and I come from a long line of Big XII guys. The Texas, Texas A&M, and Okie St. grads in my family all refuse to acknowledge that the SEC is simply the best conference in college football, so the fact that the Big XII is so close to extinction is like sweet redemption. For those not following the events, the basics are that the Big 10 might acquire some combination of Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Missouri. They also want Texas, but everyone wants Texas. This includes the Pac 10, which is rumored to be looking at acquiring Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., and Colorado. The caveat here is that wherever Texas goes, the Aggies are sure to follow, as well as some other schools who depend on their rivalry with Texas for relevance. While I'd find it hilarious if the Big XII dissolved, I in no way want the Pac 16 becoming the new power conference in the country. A conference with USC, Texas, and OU will probably get a title contender every year. However, if the Pac 10 and the Big 10 both expand to 16 teams and the SEC follows suit by gobbling up Florida St., Clemson, and two other schools, it's going to be really hard to not have at least a 4 game playoff for the National Championship. That being said, the Pac 16 could inevitably become the powerhouse conference that usurps the SEC in national coverage, especially if the SEC expands with lame-duck schools like Clemson and Florida St. that aren't especially noteworthy athletically or even academically. Should that happen and we don't move to a playoff system, the SEC won't get essentially automatic bids into the National Championship game anymore. After that, it's going to be a whole lot harder for SEC schools to recruit against Pac 16 teams in Mississippi Delta area.

One of the most interesting things about all of this, and Colin Cowherd pointed this out, is that nobody is going after Kansas, Duke, or North Carolina. These conferences are looking at expansion so they can make more money, and the money is in football. Colorado, which isn't particularly good at anything but still sells out their football games, is more coveted than storied basketball powerhouse Kansas. Maybe the Jayhawks should've held on to Mangino.

Finally, who watched Stephen Strasburg dazzle the Pirates last night? I don't watch a lot of baseball games that don't feature the Astros, but I might watch this kid every chance I get. Watching him pitch is more exciting than the World Series (unless my Astros are in it...which won't happen again for a long time). How is it fair that one guy can throw a 99 mph fastball in the 7th inning and follow it up with a Barry Zito-esque curveball? He was making hitters look stupid, and outside of a fluky homerun ball, he was almost perfect. Let's hope the MLB knows they have a LeBron on their hands and promote the hell out of him. It's a crying shame that only people with Direct TV and/or the MLB Network got to see him last night. Wake up, Selig, here's your white knight.

--Chilly P