Sorry. Had to get that out.

If he wants to complain that they changed up something in a port, fine. It just makes me glad I have more important things to worry about in life than a game. I just don't see the point of getting that worked up (and culminating with topping the leaderboard on XBLA) over something that really doesn't have any meaning in the grand scheme of things. The change didn't take any food off his table or dollars out of his pocket and the game isn't broken. I don't get the complaint. At all.

You're doing better than 98% of the general populous, who simply haven't heard of anyone on that list except Mayweather.

Let's rephrase. If I asked a casual sports fan to name 10 MLB players, they probably could. Same for NFL, NBA, and they could probably name 5 NHL/NASCAR guys. Boxers? Simply not part of the American sports culture as it once was. No good TV matches outside of ESPN Classic, the heavyweight division might as well be dead compared to how it used to be, and its really hard to get into something that is completely splintered, has a worse TV deal than the NHL and has all of the personality of a horse race.

It sucks, I enjoy watching and going to the occasional fight, but the sport is in shambles.

Why?

Quick, name 10 active boxers. You can't. Nobody can. Boxing as a relevant sport is dead and will remain dead until they actually create one federation/league/ladder/whatever and unify the titles and make it accessable to normal cable TV and stop putting the marquee fights on PPV.

Video Game boxing has a better future with things like facebreaker than hyper-realistic boxing sims IMO.

An hour to patch a console game? What game is that? I don't think I've had a 360 game that took longer than a minute to patch, and most DLC is d/led and installed in under 5.

The reason people were against the original Xbox patching had more to do with the lack of broadband penetration than anything else.

@Everyone else:

Nintendo's online is about 10 years behind everyone. Deal with it.

The difference between Wii shovelware and PS2 shovelware is that the PS2 had dozens of top quality games and hundreds of mid-to-high quality games. The Wii has about 5, if that.

If someone wants to sell their Wii, fine. Their decision.

And the thing that I think many people don't get is that there are a bunch of people that don't have the option to do local multiplayer with their friends. Like people that are a few years removed from school that had all their friends move to different parts of the state/country. It may not matter to some 8th grade kid that Brawl's online is basically dead on arrival, but it matters to everyone else.

The Halo series is great because they took a whole slew of elements and packaged them neatly. It's an example of the refinement of many of the previous games (Especially Tribes).

Goldeneye isn't anything special at all. I realize it was baby's-first-shooter for people that never heard of a PC game or Quake/Doom, but it didn't bring anything new to the table. Fun? Sure. Influential? Not in the least.

It isn't so much that, but more of ease of access and ease of identification. If I play a game regularly, I'd like to have a simple way of joining (or more likely avoiding) certain individuals. When I'm dealing with a group of IRL friends that moved across the country, I find it much easier to have a unified friends list to see when everyone is on. Yeah, we could pop a dozen emails back and forth with friend codes and schedules, but sometimes it's a hell of a lot easier to turn on the console and see who's on at the spur of the moment.

There are some things that can be defended. Friend Codes simply aren't one of them.

Seriously. Friend Codes were enough for me to know that online gaming on the Wii was simply not going to be an option.

Ironically, this involves both a crappy band and a crappy delivery system.

I'll admit I fall into the "hardcore gaming demographic," but I actually play an enjoy sports games (come on, they don't only appeal to "casual gamers"). There's a few reasons. First, I could go outside and play a game of baseball.....if I can find 17 other people and a field. Sometimes it isn't an option, and sometimes I just want to play something that''s a good changeup from a FPS or something like that.

But where he misses it is that people like myself primarily play sports titles for the "god" complexes. Sports games give sports fans the opportunity to play GM (or in the case of NCAA titles: AD) and run things their way. They allow a fan to run the team their way and basically play a form of fantasy baseball/football. They have strict statistical sports sims out there to appeal to hardcore sabermetric nerds, but that's way out of the world of the average sports fan that would like nothing more than to establish a new NFL dynasty in, say, Cleveland or run the A's like the Yankees, or turn the Memphis Grizzlies into perenial title contenders.

His complaints with the ESPN-ization of sports games is pretty unfounded. You can turn off all of the commentary (granted, Madden's recent stretch of not having Madden and piss-poor presentation is really a step backwards in that respect) and switch to better camera angles in many cases.

I really miss his complaints on how games have shifted from actually playing it (Links) to simulating watching a golf match. The features he's criticizing are the natural evolution of the genre. If they could have added commentary into the original Links, they certainly would have. More damaging to games like Links is the increasing prevelance of exclusive licenses among sports games (PGA, MLB, NFL, NCAA). You don't have something like Links anymore because EA snagged the exclusive rights to numerous courses and PGA golfers (not that I see any merit to that claim...sure Links was pretty complex, but it still simulated watching a golf event with you controlling the player).

I'm just really kind of annoyed in general with the article because I feel he's making a non-existant point. It isn't that Sports titles are really invulnerable from criticism, but that his particular criticisms fall so far off the mark that they float somewhere between uninformed and absurd.

I guess making the ASG from 1983-2001 was just a coincidence, right?

Or those two MVPs? Or those two MLB Player of the Year Awards

Or the RotY?

Or the Silver Sluggers?

Or that he was one of the first SS to redefine the position offensively?

Or the simple fact that he managed to play every day in a sport where nobody does in arguably one of the most physically demanding positions in the sport?

His perfect attendance lasted for 16 years. He did not miss a game to injury or position battles for 16 years. Did you or anyone in the history of education manage to go from K-12 and then through 4 years of undergrad without missing a day or class? Hell no. Does anyone even go a year without missing work from getting sick? Let alone getting fired or replaced. You fucking fail on every level. Not only was he more than qualified for the HoF, he managed to do so at a top-level of performance for the bulk of his career. The only SS from his era that can even be compared is Ozzie Smith, who had better fielding but nowhere near the offensive output as Ripken did (compare CR's career .276, 431 HRs, 1696 RBIs to OS's career .262, 28 HRs, and 793 RBIs).

You sir, do not know your asshole from a hole in the ground.

Sucks because I was there looking for the McFarlane MLB Cooperstown figures. Trying to find a Ty Cobb and Ryne Sandberg to no avail.

The Cure and sports? WTF.

Granted, I usually mute sports games in the menus and have an mp3 playlist blasting from my PC or iPod-->speakers and only turn the TV off of mute during the game (except for the current-gen Madden, which has the absolute worst in-game commentary and presentation since they put the features in)

@Jesus Christ: It's annoying to go to the bank and have Dracula deposit my checks. Halloween is a kid's holiday. Adults dressing up in costume for work is creepy as hell as well as lame.

People wonder why April 1 is the only day I don't watch TV, turn off the RSS feeds, and don't really check anything. It's freaking stupid, and adults trying to pull this crap are up there with the rejects that go to work dressed up in Halloween costumes.

Complaining about the lack of a compelling story in a FPS is like complaining about the lack of twitch-action in a straight-traditional JRPG. It just makes you look like a pretentious tool.

Gears 1 was far more polished in terms of gamplay mechanics than any shooter on the system WHILE implementing a cover system successfully (because like, I just can't get into CoD4 as much when I look at my AI squadmates in my NO COOP CAMPAIGN taking cover on a wall while I stand out in an alleyway with my dick in the wind because I can't put my back to a wall, or it just seems silly running human waves in Halo 3 team-objective games without using cover).