Tuesday, November 29, 2005

 

Killing Time

The World Series ended a month ago. That's a whole month without baseball to watch. Make that two months without Giants baseball.

Some things cannot be borne!

In my desperation over the lack of televised baseball, I have turned to video games to get my baseball fix. On Friday, I signed up for GameFly, a video game rental service like NetFlix. Click the link if you want all the details.

We got our first two games yesterday--MLB for the PSP and Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube. The latter was really for Dawn. The baseball game was for me.

I have a mixed relationship with sports video games. I like playing them. I just never do. Play them, that is. Going back to my first Playstation nearly ten years ago, I have bought half a dozen sports titles, at least. Each one cost about $50. Each one I played maybe four or five times before putting it away and never touching it again. A few years ago I finally learned my lesson and stopped buying the damn things. I think the last one I bought was the first Rugby title for Playstation2. I loved that game because of the hilarious British announcers, but I didn't play it much either.

When I bought Dawn a PSP for her birthday this year, my interest in sports games rose again. I liked the idea of not being tied to the TV to play baseball; the PSP is portable, so you can play anywhere comfortable. I decided I would have to get myself a baseball game.

That was eight months ago. I still haven't bought that game. I'm still afraid of spending $40 and either hating the game or getting bored with it quickly. (I have a long history of that, especially with baseball games; more on that tomorrow.) GameFly solves this problem. If MLB sucks, or if I get bored with it, I can just send it back and try MVP Baseball (starring Kruk and Kuip!). If I love it, I can just buy it from GameFly and we'll all be happy.

So how is MLB, you ask? Who knows? I've only played once, which isn't enough. I can say this: the animations and graphics are very good. The stadiums are rendered accurately, and look great. The announcers are accurate and not repetitive. Wow. I'm not used to baseball games looking and sounding that good.

All things considered, I am not happy. The Dodgers beat my Giants 8-3, mainly because it took me five innings to figure out how not to groove every pitch. I'll try again tomorrow; maybe Schmidt will be ready to go again on no rest...

Jefferson 7:57 PM

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