The Versatile Blogger Award

My far more versatile and infinitely more bloggy better half was recently given a Versatile Blogger Award. It's a way for blog writers to acknowledge their admiration for each other's work (and it functions a bit like a chain letter as well).

Anyway, she passed it on to me, amongst others. The difference between her and I is that she deserves it (seriously, check out her blog...it is awesome AND CONSISTENTLY UPDATED) while I am merely a pretender.

The award has three parts:

Thank the person who gave you the award: Thanks Scientist Gone Wordy!

Share 7 things about yourself:
1. I have a PhD, and not in video games.
2. I'm a huge baseball fan...getting my heart broken by the Cubs is a yearly rite of passage for me.
3. I've met President Obama. Nice guy. There were even pictures of us talking together in his campaign literature.
4. Unlike my significant other, I love food (though wouldn't say I'm sufficiently discriminating to be labeled a "foodie"). One of my favorite aspects of travel is trying the cuisine in different areas.
5. Despite loving almost all foods, I HATE watermelon. Everybody I know has these wonderful childhood memories of eating icy cold watermelon on a hot summer day, spitting seeds and making a mess. The very thought of it grosses me out completely.
6. I stayed at a research base in Antarctica (the South Pole) for over two months. Everyone who finds this out asks me if I saw penguins and/or polar bears while I was there, to which I respond (1) yes and (2) there are no bears, polar or otherwise, on the Antarctic continent.
7. I have an obsession with Xbox 360 Achievements that borders on lunacy. This little corner of the blogosphere is like a journal documenting my descent into madness.

Pass the award along to blah, blah, blah:

Yeah, I'm not going to do that. Not because I don't read some great blogs, but because I prefer to be the anonymous guy who observes quietly. However, I implore anyone reading this to check out Scientist Gone Wordy as well as the other blogs she recognizes. They are all excellent and far more worthy of recognition than my insane ramblings!

College Hoops 2K7

I sent College Hoops 2K7 back to Gamefly on Saturday. It's not really worth a full review but here are a few notes:

- While playing NBA Live 07 recently, I came to the conclusion that I don't care for a vertical camera angle for the game (i.e. looking from basket to basket). That point was driven home with this game, which uses a standard sideline camera. It's just a lot easier to see how the players space out on the court.
- The players aren't as aggressive to the basket as they should be. If they have a wide open lane to the basket and you hit the shoot button, they'll pull up for a jumper rather than go for a lay-up or a dunk most of the time.
- I wasn't really impressed with differences between teams. NBA teams play pretty much the same, but college teams should seem pretty different. Some press more often and shoot a few more threes, but for the most part they all seemed to play the same (crappy) strategy, especially on offense.
- This game has some of the most ridiculous Achievements I've ever seen. Some are glitched, like the individual and season records (they can't all be broken, rendering the Achievements impossible). And an Achievement for beating every team in the game? There's over 350 teams, and the fastest you could play games is about 5 minutes each (1 minute halves, plus loading times, clock stoppages, etc.). So if you just started playing teams one after another, it would take over 21 hours just to finish that one 25 point Achievement. Gross.
- Oh, and Sega took down the online servers, so the online Achievements can't be earned either. And that's about half of the Achievements in the game. Needless to say, this one isn't for Gamerscore whores...