I know, I’ve been neglecting my posting duties again, but with it being finals week, I haven’t been in the computer lab very often. Still, I should get myself back into the habit of posting at home, cuz now that break has started, I won’t be in the lab again till January, and that’s a long time to go without you hearing from me. Not that you care. I mean, it’s not like you’re actually reading this, but whatever. As for the issues I addressed in my last post, I’ve been watching some videos online of both Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, and I generally like what I see. As a result, I’ve warmed to the idea a bit, although I probably won’t be completely sold on it until I see results. Now all that remains is to see if Brandon Inge does indeed get traded. And like I said, I still feel bad for Brandon, but now I’ve seen the alternative, and I don’t like the alternative. Speaking of which, the klaxons and warning lights in my mind have died down, but for the foreseeable future, things’ll remain at yellow alert, so to speak.
I’ve been having fun with my new toy (the Playstation 2), and even though I suck at video games regardless of genre, you know I had to try out some of the baseball games. Granted, my prior baseball video game experience was limited to an overnight I went to at my church about ten years ago (I remember that Laura went with me and she spent most of the night wandering around the church singing the song from Titanic while I played video games on a Sega Saturn with some really weird kid whose name I can’t remember). I don’t know which specific game we were playing, but it was from the time Travis Fryman played with the Tigers (I don’t know why I remember that, but I do). Our big problem was that it was a 2-player game (either that, or it was stuck in 2-player mode), the instruction manual was nowhere to be found, and we couldn’t figure out how to get the hitter to swing the bat. Obviously, the game got boring real quickly (since pretty much all you could do was walk the guy, strike him out looking, or hit him), so we gave up on it and played some car racing game the rest of the night.
Anyways, even though I haven’t touched a baseball video game since, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ve gotten even more complicated. At any rate, there are three that I know of: MLB ’07: The Show, Major League Baseball 2K7, and The Bigs. I decided to start off with The Show cuz it got the best reviews online (I have since purchased 2K7 as well, but I haven’t done much with it yet cuz in that game, partly because I’m not quite ready to have my ineptitude narrated for me by Jon Miller and Joe Morgan). I started out by just setting up some CPU vs. CPU games, and more recently I’ve started a season with the Tigers in Manager Only mode (i.e. I tell the players when to hit and run, steal bases, pitch around the guy, bring in new pitchers, and that type of stuff, but I don’t do the pitching and hitting myself). For the time being, I’m keeping the original planned “Opening Day” 2007 roster, with one exception: I took out Jose Mesa and put Bobby Seay in (partly because I wanted two lefties in the bullpen, and partly because of the real Mesa’s performance in 2007). What I find kind of weird is that while the video game Derek Jeter does look like the actual Derek Jeter, most of the Tigers do not bear a whole lot of resemblance to their real-life counterparts. Maybe it’s cuz I’ve got the PS2 version and not the PS3 version. I don’t know. One thing that’s kinda cool and creepy at the same time is that the game mimics the batting stances/pitching styles of the real players, or at least those of the starters (For example, Gary Sheffield does the bat waggling when he’s in the batter’s box, Pudge crosses himself after every pitch, etc). As far as “non-resemblance” goes, some ended up better than others. Sheffield is okay, as is Brandon Inge. Justin Verlander is actually pretty close. They totally messed up on Magglio, though. The batting stance is wrong, the face is wrong, and the hair is wrong (though, I guess to be fair, since Magglio and Manny Ramirez are pretty much the only guys in baseball with long hair, the developers probably didn’t want to spend all that time creating a “long hair” mesh for just two players). They also kinda messed up Sean Casey, but at least his batting stance is correct (albeit somewhat faster than the real one). Pudge turned out decent enough, I suppose (and, by the way, the sportscasters DO call him “Pudge” in the game, which I like). As I said before, they got his batting stance right (which actually surprised me a bit), but his catcher’s mask is the wrong color (yeah, I know I’m being picky). I’m not sure about his face, cuz the closest thing you get to a close-up is when they’re stepping into the batter’s box, and he’s looking down when he steps in, so you can’t see his face real well (though from the little bit I’ve seen, it’s better than Magglio, but there’s not a spectacular resemblance). However, his body is spot on, and I mean spot on. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he did the motion capture himself. There was another weird thing involving him, though. In one of the CPU vs CPU games I played, he got a base hit, then stole second. Once he did that, the commentator said something about him “turning back the clock” which confused me, but then there was a shot of Pudge standing at second base, and he had probably the most bizarre expression on his face that I’ve ever seen. I can’t really describe it, but suffice it to say that I have never seen him with that expression in real life. Another funny thing is that if Pudge actually walks in the game, the announcers will mention how rare that is. One other note: They use real pictures of the players for name keys and other stuff like that, and I have no clue where they got the one of Pudge, but it’s not a very good one. However, it’s not half as bad as Nate Robertson’s. Also, one minor detail that I thought was neat was that as the game goes on, the players’ uniforms actually get dirtier.
As with most sports games, you can create your own players, but what I find kind of interesting is the amount of stuff you can customize. You can choose what color bat they use, the color of their batting gloves (or no batting gloves), whether or not they wear a shin guard, how they wear their pants, and (if they’re a catcher), the type of mask they use. You can also edit the “real” players, which is a good thing cuz for some reason, the game seems to think that Vance Wilson, in addition to being the backup catcher, also plays first base on a regular basis. Polanco also seems to strike out WAY more often than he does in real life, but I don’t know what to adjust to fix that. At any rate, I think I’m doing okay trying to manage a season (though I’m no Jim Leyland), but there’s a lot of stuff I’m still trying to figure out, cuz for whatever reason, the manufacturers just assumed you had already played previous versions of the game. The instruction manual has a couple pages of long, complicated lists of pitching/hitting/baserunning commands, and a couple pages about menus, and a long section about online play, but there’s nothing about some of the aspects I’m interested in. I did all the Spring Training games (probably not the way I was supposed to, but I’ve never seen a Spring Training game so I don’t know how they work), and now I’m onto the first game in Toronto in the regular season, and it’s going all right so far (granted, I’m playing it on the easiest level, but that’s to be expected). One thing that I can’t figure out is that sometimes my guys’ll decide to run/bunt/squeeze/whatever without my telling them to. Sometimes it works out (they executed a great squeeze play with the bases loaded that gave the Tigers the lead in one game), sometimes not. I suppose it’s just as well, cuz I tend to be kinda tentative on that sort of thing, but I wish it’d be more player-specific. I mean, I don’t mind Sheffield or Granderson running, but for some reason, Magglio keeps taking off as well. He’s actually not as unsuccessful as you’d think he’d be, but there’s still something wrong about that. Also, there was one game in which Sean Casey put down a sacrifice bunt. Sean Casey doesn’t sacrifice (Incidentally, in the game in which he bunted, the Tigers were down by a run with a runner on, and whoever fielded the bunt threw it away, which allowed Craig Monroe to drive in the winning run). Another weird thing is that in this game, most of Gary Sheffield’s home runs seem to go to right center field, which is totally the opposite of how it really is. But oh well.
I’d just like to add that it’s INCREDIBLY windy outside right now…
Well, since this’ll likely be my last post before Christmas, I’ll take the opportunity to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, etc now.
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