Month: June 2004

NFL Street Is Evil

I have a love/hate relationship with my PS2. On the one hand, as with most platforms, 90 percent of the games I see/play/buy (even the good games) are just crap. I try to follow reviews and online forums, but still I end up putting down $50 for a game that I play awhile and then think to myself, “This is really someone’s idea of fun?”

But, of course, I keep doing it in the hopes of finding that game that just gets under your skin and completely sucks all willpower to stop playing (think Civilization II or Diablo). The latest game I simply can’t stop playing is NFL Street.

I’ve always preferred arcade-style no-holds barred football games like NFL Blitz over hyper-detailed (and boring IMO) games like Madden 2004. NFL Street takes up where Blitz left off and then adds a ton of improvements — including a Diablo like character progression system.

Like Blitz, this is basically a simplified, rules-lite football where rules like pass interference are non-existent. Thankfully, Street goes Blitz one-step further in this respect by eliminating the kicking game entirely. No boring punts, kickoffs or field goals.

Unlike Blitz, the fields vary as well, from playing on beaches with beach balls littering the field to playing in a New York field with garbage cans blocking the way and wooden planks and metal grates dotting the field.

Along with vicious hits, NFL Street also rewards players for something that many people hate about the NFL — showboating. During a game, players earn Style points for mocking their opponents by throwing no-look passes or for runners passing the ball through their legs while running toward the end zone. Earn enough Style points and you earn a gamebreaker which puts your already souped up players into almost (but not quite) unstoppable mode.

If this was all NFL Street had, it would be a great game, but nothing that would have me up until 3 a.m. playing. What seals the deal, though, are the role-playing progression elements that feel like their stolen straight from Diablo. Along with playing against NFL teams in a standard tiered ladder format, there are also dozens and dozens of Challenges that the player can take on. Stop the Rams from scoring on a goal line stand or beat the Lions to 30 only calling running plays. Successfully completing a challenge earns either experience points (development points) or new gear to improve the ability of your 7-man team.

So rather than trying to kill one more monster so I can level up and finally equip that cool-assed sword, I’m spending my evenings trying to beat the Vikings while only calling pass plays so I can boost my wide receiver’s agility. Each player has 10 attribute, along with height and weight which can all be modified by development points or special gear earned through challenges.

It’s completely addictive. I’d add more here about the online play or the awesome animation going on in the background during games but I’ve got to go try to get my DB that +2 wrist band of coverage.

Robert Mugabe: Desmond Tutu Is Evil

Robert Mugabe was at it again in May focusing his rage on foreigners who dare criticize his dictatorial regime. This time around the target of Mugabe’s ire was Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Mugabe was apparently angry at an old comment of Tutu’s in which the archbishop noted that Mugabe was almost a caricature of an African dictator. Mugabe fired back that,

He [Mugabe] is an angry, evil and embittered little bishop.

Hmmm…let’s see — one man has a Nobel Peace Prize, the other has taken an African country that should be an economic powerhouse and driven it into the ground while shredding any sort of rule of law. It’s fascinating to see just how small most tyrants really are.

Meanwhile the BBC also reports that Zimbabwe is going to go the route usually taken by Stalinist societies — despite warnings of more food shortages and possible famine conditions, Zimbabwe told Sky News TV that his country will not accept any international food aid because it simply doesn’t need it. According to Mugabe,

Why foist this food [aid] upon us? We don’t want to be choked, we have enough.

Of course many Zimbabweans are probably thinking, “Why foist this fool upon us?”

Source:

Mugabe says Tutu is evil. BBC News, May 25, 2004.

Weird Winer-isms of the Week

Dave Winer has previously said that 9/11 was a gift because it created a shared memory (assuming you weren’t one of the people who was murdered that day) and recently posted about how he’d like to burn George W. Bush in effigy, so it wasn’t surprising to see him complain about Spirit of America that what Americans really need to do is,

I think we need to get over ourselves in America, our time is just about over, unless we stop guzzling so much gas and start electing leaders with brains, morals and courage.

Hey, Dave, the site’s a gift!

And this was drop-dead funny,

I see other bloggers singing glowing praises for it, but sheez, how could they know? I don’t think bloggerdom should be used like TV talk shows.

Yeah, the last thing bloggers should do is point out sites they like, link to them, and suggest that people might want to support such sites. Oh the horrors.

But what was genuinely bizarre was this comment about 60 Minutes which recently ran photographs of all the American soldiers killed in Iraq,

When people say it’s just Americans in Iraq they’re missing something, America is so diverse, we have people of European, African, Asian, Latin descent.

Huh?

Clueless Libertarian Party Nominee

The Libertarian Party this weekend nominated Michael Badnarik for president, and he promptly gave me a very good reason not to bother voting. Badnarik told the 800 assembled Libertarian Party delegates,

If I can win the nomination, there’s no reason I can’t win this election.

Sure, because the first thing voters want to see is the Libertarian Party candidate openly sharing his ridiculous delusions. If he’d just said, “Hey, we’re not going to win, but we’re going to go after the tax and spend Republicans at every opportunity” I’d have considered voting for him, but the fact that he thinks he has a shot at winning is prima facie evidence that he is unfit for office.

(While I’m at it, if I can receive hundreds of thousands of page views, certainly I can garner hundreds of thousands of votes in my bid for U.S. Senate!)

I Thought I Was Getting McAfee Anti-Virus

When people sign up as members to any of my sites, the server automatically sends an e-mail to whatever e-mail address just giving a heads up that somebody signed up under that e-mail address, giving them the password so they don’t bug me for it later, and some basic information and ground rules about the site.

A small but fascinating percentage send back often very rude or clueless replies. The rude ones I can have some sympathy with, especially when the person who has the e-mail account wasn’t the person who signed up.

But some of the clueless ones really leave me stunned. One I received a couple of days ago really takes the cake. This person sent me an e-mail asking to have his account deleted as he thought he was signing up for McAfee Antivirus. Considering that the word “McAfee” doesn’t appear anywhere on the site or any of the thousands of posts, that was a bit odd.