Tabe

Hey, a new Mirror's Edge game! Last game was an incredibly concept that ultimately didn't quite work. The preview footage seems to have a really shaky camera - yeah, no thanks.

And now they're talking about Dawngate, their new MOBA title. I don't play MOBA games so can't really judge if this looks good or not. It at least SOUNDS intriguing.

35 minutes in and EA has underwhelmed, to say the least.

Madden is up next. Great graphics, and they're bringing in camera angles that show the game from the defensive perspective. Some innovations in tackling too. BUT BY GOD WE ADDED LOTS MORE PLAYER CELEBRATIONS AND THAT'S WHAT REALLY MATTERS.

Another EA sports title up next: PGA Tour. No load times between holes, super-detailed courses, and...last-gen golfers. Not much shown, to be honest.

Criterion is doing some kind of multi-vehicle racing game or something. ATVs, jet skis, helicopters, and boats. Maybe a next-gen Pilotwings kind of thing. Super, super-early footage and, well, yeah. Too early to be blown away.

And now a "gameplay" trailer of NHL 15. Typical EA nonsense with a trailer full of instant replay footage instead of actual gameplay.

EA Sports UFC gameplay demo with Bruce Lee. Look, more rock 'em sock 'em MMA! Yippee.

Good god, this Sims demo is terrible. Oh yeah, EA - if you're going to do hyper-realistic graphics in Dragon Age, you might wanna not give people PLASTIC skin like the queen in your trailer.

So a little bit of teaser stuff on Mass Effect 4 and some other new IP from Bioware. Underwhelming. ME4 is obviously a big deal but next to nothing was shown. And, hey, a NEW SIMS GAME.

Man, the Star Wars Battlefront crap at the beginning of EA's presser looked awesome.

Another Netflix documentary: Barbershop Punk - Documentary on net neutrality focusing on the story of Robb Topolski, a software quality engineer who conclusively busted Comcast's practice of throttling and degrading the performance of P2P applications. They do an excellent job of covering the downsides of net neutrality while also giving voice to the pro-ISP side of things. Lots of folks heard from and this is generally well-done. However, the movie is hurt when it kind of goes off the rails and starts talking about police squads turning into the military. That's a worthy topic, one with a LOT of merit, but has no place in this movie. Movie is also hurt by its release date since the topic is still evolving really quickly and stuff has changed since the movie was finished. 8/10. And then: Killing Mrs. Tingle - Saw the name Katie Holmes somewhere and thought "Hey, what movies does she have on Netflix" and this one came up. Decided to watch it for some reason. 20 minutes in, I was in awe of its suckiness, complete with the entire gamut of Katie Holmes mannerisms that can be really annoying. Anyway, didn't bother finishing it. No rating...but this movie sucks.

IGN.com has the pressers.

Poison Entry on Street Fighter Wiki

This week's update for the US: Free - Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time - Never played a Sly Cooper game myself but have heard this is good. I'll try it at least Discounts - YEAH BABY, discounts on Foosball 2012!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOO! And an endless runner game or something. Possibly the worst week of discounts ever excluding weeks with no actual discounts.

Yeah, it's really depressing. Tigers fans on Facebook are raving over how "great" Phil Coke was last night - no joke. He gave up a single and hit a guy in 1-1/3 innings. 2 runners in 1-1/3 innings and people raved about him. That shows how low the bar has been set. Is it a coincidence that the last time the Tigers had a truly elite closer was 1984? I suppose 1988 when Henneman was crazy good could maybe count, too, but that doesn't fit my narrative near as well To show you how different things are now: in 1984, Willie Hernandez finished 68 games - and got just 32 saves. Contrast that with Mariano Rivera, who's never had a season as a closer where he had saves in less than half his GFs.

No promises on Tabe doing live blogging of the press conferences this year. I might actually have to work and stuff. Plus I won't be online for the Sony one.

The Tigers still haven't learned - closers need to throw hard. Joba throwing slider after slider to Ortiz, after Ortiz showed he couldn't hit Joba's fastball is just unreal. The Tigers have an ERA of something like 7.50 in the ninth inning this year. That's really, really, REALLY hard to do.

Saw Edge of Tomorrow . Good movie with some nice laughs and you get to see Emily Blunt do a really hot body bend. Over and over and over. The ending, however, didn't seem to make sense. Otherwise, good stuff. 7.5/10.

No NCAA school puts player names on jerseys for current players. That's against the rules. What they do, and have always done, is seller jerseys with current player numbers but no names. This announcement by 3 schools means they will stop that practice - and just use unissued numbers (like 12 for A&M).

Leaked, possibly legit, photo of Nintendo's E3 booth shows a little something called Mario Maker:

Well, speaking of Jordan: first of all, he actually had food poisoning, not the flu. I have long believed that he wasn't anywhere near as sick as he acted or was portrayed.

That's not true. Nationally, maybe. But at the schools themselves, fans want the star player. And every school has one. At Michigan, they wanted Denard. At Texas, they wanted Colt. And so on. When I went to the Michigan/Alabama game, there were Denard Robinson jerseys EVERYWHERE.

All I can say is IGN liked it - a lot.

Bix sent me this clip, which is too good to not share: