sports

NHL 2K11 for iPhone Review

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NHL 94 is one of my all-time favourite sports video games. I have fond memories of playing this game for dozens of hours with friends. Many years later, when I got a Super Nintendo again, I made sure to pick up a copy of NHL 94, which to me, still holds up as a fun game to play. I understand that video game hockey has progressed greatly in the last 15 years, but as a non-hockey fan (and as someone who hasn’t played a hockey game since then…yet), that game is still good enough for me.

I was sold on NHL 2K11 on the iPhone when I played the lite version. Almost instantly, I realized that it played a lot like NHL 94. After a few minutes with the demo, I shelled out the $0.99 for it and have been playing it since.

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Pick Up Post: NHL 11

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When my girlfriend bought her PlayStation 3, she got it in a bundle that included inFamous and NHL 11. She may give inFamous a shot someday, but there’s no way you’d ever get her to play NHL 11. Hockey simulations just aren’t her thing. Instead of selling it, I offered to take it off of her hands, which I did eventually in a trade. I got NHL 11, and I bought her a copy of the Saw video game in exchange, which she’s wanted to play for a long time now.

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Street Fighter Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 4: Exploiting Weaknesses

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This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing, Part 2: Punishing Mistakes, Part 3: Resource Management

Exploitation of Weaknesses

When I play the computer in Street Fighter IV as Akuma, regardless of difficulty, I can almost always land a Raging Demon. I don’t know what the guys at Capcom did about the AI, but 99% of the time when I input that command, the computer just stands there and eats it. Human opponents in general are tougher to fool, but virtually everyone has weaknesses of some sort. When I play an opponent, one of the very first things I check is my opponent’s ability to block a cross-up. It’s a tactic that most casual players don’t understand and won’t figure out how to counteract it within the span of one match. When I notice that my opponent doesn’t have an answer for that, or any other tactic that I throw at them, I will repeatedly use that tactic until I win or until my opponent finds an answer.

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Street Fighter Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 3: Resource Management

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This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing, Part 2: Punishing Mistakes

Resource Management

The goal of Street Fighter is to completely drain your opponent’s health meter before they can do the same to you. You achieve this by attacking your opponent. How you attack your opponent or defend yourself can vary wildly depending on what the health situation is. The easiest health situation to discuss resource management I can think of is when your opponent has a major life lead over you. When your opponent can finish you with one or two hits, you need to play much more conservatively in order to stand a chance of winning. Conversely, if you have a major life lead on your opponent, you may be able to win by “chipping them out” on wake-up with a projectile attack to avoid the risk of eating a last-ditch super move that could turn the tide.

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Street Fight Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 2: Punishing Mistakes

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This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing

PUNISHING MISTAKES

One of the most common mistakes in Street Fighter is a poorly-timed projectile attack. For instance, if I’m Ryu, and you properly react to my fireball, you can jump over the fireball and kick me in the face before I can do anything to defend myself. In Street Fighter, when your opponent makes a mistake, you want to punish them for their mistakes by hitting them with the most powerful attacks as possible.

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NFL 2010 HD Review: An NFL Game Not Made By EA? What?

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A number of years ago, EA locked up exclusive rights to make NFL video games. Because of that, I was very confused as to how Gameloft could release their own NFL football game on the iPad. Apparently, EA didn’t lock up mobile games, which allowed for this release to happen.

I haven’t played a football video game since 1996 with Madden 64. However, the release of Backbreaker has whet my interest in something meatier and there aren’t any other NFL licensed football games on the iPad on sale for $0.99. With all of that going for it, I decided to give NFL 2010 HD a shot.
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Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll

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Although I haven’t stepped on an actual skateboard since I was 10 years old, I’ve had some good times with skateboarding video games. I started with the genre oddly enough on Tony Hawk 2 on the Gameboy Advance, which I thought was great. I then bought Tony Hawk 3 on the Gamecube and it was the pinnacle of video game skateboarding fun for me at the time. The last serious foray into skateboarding games for me was Tony Hawk: American Wasteland on the DS, which was alright, but I never played it for more than 30 minutes.