2013 NFL Week 8 Predictions

Another week has come and gone, and yet the NFL keeps on ticking. So do I, apparently. Here are my picks for this week in the NFL.

Thursday Night Game
Carolina @ Tampa Bay

Sunday Early Games
Dallas @ Detroit
Cleveland @ Kansas City
Miami @ New England
Buffalo @ New Orleans
NY Giants @ Philadelphia
San Francisco @ Jacksonville

Sunday Afternoon Games
Washington @ Denver
NY Jets @ Cincinnati
Pittsburgh @ Oakland
Atlanta @ Arizona

Sunday Night Game
Green Bay @ Minnesota

Monday Night Football
Seattle @ St. Louis

2013 NFL Week 7 Predictions

Another week, another set of predictions made early. This week has 1 great game, a few okay games, but the rest are games I wouldn't want to watch if I were blind, and since I'm obviously typing this, I'm not. It's not a pretty week for the NFL, and it's not a good season in general so far.

Thursday Night Game
Seattle @ Arizona

Sunday Early Games
Tampa Bay @ Atlanta
Chicago @ Washington
Dallas @ Philadelphia
New England @ NY Jets
Buffalo @ Miami
San Diego @ Jacksonville
St. Louis @ Carolina
Cincinnati @ Detroit

Sunday Afternoon Games
San Francisco @ Tennessee
Houston @ Kansas City
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh
Cleveland @ Green Bay

Sunday Night Game
Denver @ Indianapolis

Monday Night Game
Minnesota @ NY Giants

2013 NFL Week 6 Predictions

Hello again. Due to me being busy, I've decided to make my predictions earlier in the week so I can provide a more consistent schedule. While I may dislike making predictions on Tuesday and Wednesday, I feel it must be done going forward to maintain updates. With that in mind, here we go.

Thursday Game
NY Giants @ Chicago

Sunday Early Games
Carolina @ Minnesota
Green Bay @ Baltimore
Cincinnati @ Buffalo
Detroit @ Cleveland
Oakland @ Kansas City
Pittsburgh @ NY Jets
Philadelphia @ Tampa Bay
St. Louis @ Houston

Sunday Late Games
Jacksonville @ Denver
Tennessee @ Seattle
Arizona @ San Francisco
New Orleans @ New England

Sunday Night Game
Washington @ Dallas

Monday Night Game
Indianapolis @ San Diego

2013 NFL Week 4 Predictions

After a 2 week hiatus, I'm back with my weekly NFL picks. I'm sorry about missing the last two weeks, but I've been fighting medical issues as well as some personal issues. But nothing is stopping me this week, so here are my picks. I hope that I can return to my regular prediction schedule this time. And don't worry about last night's game, I'm writing this a couple of hours beforehand.

Thursday Game
San Francisco at St. Louis

Sunday Early Games
Baltimore at Buffalo
Arizona at Tampa Bay
Pittsburgh at Minnesota
NY Giants at Kansas City
Indianapolis at Jacksonville
Seattle at Houston
Cincinnati at Cleveland
Chicago at Detroit

Sunday Late Games
NY Jets at Tennessee
Washington at Oakland
Philadelphia at Denver
Dallas at San Diego

Sunday Night Game
New England at Atlanta

Monday Night Football
Miami at New Orleans

2013 NFL Season Week 1 Predictions

Welcome back everyone! I know it's been a while, but it was a bad summer for me. Some people, while I didn't know them, that have had an effect on my life, passed away this summer. It's hard to forget someone you remember so fondly. I hope we all try to interact with many people as we can before all of us pass on, so no one will ever truly be forgotten, and live on in peoples' hearts. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here for one reason, FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS!

The NFL returns tomorrow (okay, it technically returned Thursday, but no one counts that as the true opening of the season now, do they?), so it'd be a good time for me to make my NFL predictions this week for every game on the calendar. While I did miss Thursday's game, I will take it as a loss for sportsmanship purposes. Now, let's get to it.

*- Winners Denoted in BOLD
*- From Week 2 onward, I will only refer to teams by their City name with the exception of the Jets and Giants

Thursday, September 5
Baltimore Ravens @ Denver Broncos - No Pick

Sunday, September 8 - Early Games
New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills
Seattle Seahawks @ Carolina Panthers
Cincinnati Bengals @ Chicago Bears
Miami Dolphins @ Cleveland Browns
Minnesota Vikings @ Detroit Lions
Oakland Raiders @ Indianapolis Colts
Kansas City Chiefs @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Atlanta Falcons @ New Orleans Saints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New York Jets
Tennessee Titans @ Pittsburgh Steelers

Sunday, September 8 - Afternoon Games
Green Bay Packers @ San Francisco 49ers
Arizona Cardinals @ St. Louis Rams

Sunday, September 8 - Sunday Night Football
New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys

Monday, September 9 - Monday Night Football
Philadelphia Eagles @ Washington Redskins
Houston Texans @ San Diego Chargers

Enjoy the return of Football everyone!

Animal Crossing New Leaf Review

The newest title in Nintendo’s daily village simulation series is here in the form of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS. The game, while similar to its predecessors introduces a lot of new features to give the series a much needed shot in the arm, even though its’ not quite as strong a dose as it needs to be to completely modernize the franchise. But through and through, New Leaf offers something old and new players alike to enjoy.

The main difference between this and previous entries is that the first player to start a game in a town is the new mayor for your town. This allows you to customize your town with various projects such as where bridges are built, what to build/upgrade, and giving Mr. Resetti his job back. You’re also allowed to change how you play the game, like if your town is up late at night, wealthy or beautiful. It’s a much welcome change of pace, especially to those of us who would like to play Animal Crossing after a long day of work, but can’t do anything because shops are closed and neighbors are asleep. Giving the player control of what to build livens up the pace of the game to make it feel more alive. While it can get frustrating sometimes to wait for new projects to arise, when they do, it’s exciting to have something new to look forward to in the game, and makes you want to earn bells faster to accommodate those new arrivals.

Speaking of bells, you’ll need a lot of them to complete these projects in a timely manner, but the game accommodates this by providing you even more ways to earn bells. The famous money rock now produces an extra bag for you to earn, a second shop allows you to sell various items to your neighbors more easily, you can earn 5,000 bells a day by updating your town through the dream suite, and last but not least, is the return of the island, which can earn you upwards of 100,000 bells per visit. Keep in mind that you will have to unlock this privilege however. In addition to spending bells on projects for your town, in tradition you can upgrade your house beyond what is necessary. You can build up to a total of six rooms and expand each room three times. This will be very time consuming since you can only do a single house upgrade per day and the maximum upgrades will cost nearly 600,000 bells a piece. Another new feature here is being able to upgrade the outside of your house, including your fence, mailbox, door, roof, siding, etc. These also count as house upgrades so they do get in the way of your standard upgrades on a day to day basis, but cost significantly less to do.

Another significant change here is special visitors, whereas in games prior you could have up to two special visitors per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. This has changed to a meager one per day, but in addition to that, they no longer appear in a set order with the exception of Joan, who still appears only on Sunday mornings. This gives players more time to talk to a special visitor, but it does slow the game down a bit, which is a theme for this game. A problem that arises from this is that while a visitor may only appear once per week as always, they are less likely to appear since only one of them can appear per day. In order to remedy most of these situations is the ability to visit other players’ towns, either locally or via the internet. This can help you get a fortune read from Katrina or a piece of artwork from Redd’s Gallery, or help you sell turnips at Re-Tail, a new shop, for ridiculous profit. While you don’t have an in-game friend code like previous iterations, you can register a few best friends via your in-game menu to see when they come online, which helps you coordinate playing with friends.

You can also play with random players online on the Island, which features several island tours for you to play. They take no more than 10 minutes each, in which you earn medals, which you can trade in for various goods at the island shop. This is a good way to play with people on the island so your personal island isn’t messed with by people you don’t know. Unfortunately, that’s where the changes to online end. The process is still painstakingly slow, taking up to a minute to enter and leave a town once it tells you that you’re connected. It’s frustrating that Nintendo can’t speed up this process after three iterations having online connectivity.

There is a more passive way to visit peoples’ towns this time in the form of the Dream Suite, an unlockable shop that allows players to enter the dream versions of towns. Unfortunately you can’t bring back any items with you, nor does anything you do affect the town you visit. It’s ultimately a nice way to get ideas about your own town and potentially get new designs, if the town owner allows it. By uploading your own town, you get bells daily as well. Along your every day chores is your inventory system, which, while being slightly revamped, is still the weakest part of the game and the most damaging. While you can now stack fruit, it doesn’t do so automatically. This goes the same for money, which isn’t automatically put into your Bells pocket. In addition to this, the game has more equipment items in the form of a megaphone, which allows you to call out for villagers walking around, and a wetsuit, which allows you to swim in the ocean and dive for sea creatures. While these are nice features, they complicate the problem with item management. Each piece of equipment takes up an inventory slot, and you will constantly have to juggle your inventory to make space for the items you want or need to carry. It’s tedious and honestly shocking that this hasn’t been remedied in some way over the course of the series’ history.

Animal Crossing New Leaf feels like the first true sequel in the series’ history. While previous entries have added new elements, they never really felt engaging enough to say ‘this is brand new’ to anyone. It’s definitely a lot more enjoyable than previous games, and at the time of this review being written, there’s still a handful of things I haven’t gotten to try out, including the game’s Street Pass functionality, as well a couple of the game’s stores, which will surely add more time to any players’ 3DS. While it may not be the end all be all the series needed, it’s definitely a much needed shot in the arm to get people excited about it again.

Score: 9/10
+ Lots of new things to do this time around
+ There are a lot more ways to earn money
+ A lot of nice, notable little touches that give this a bit of extra charm
- Inventory Management is an even bigger problem this time around
- Getting Project Recommendations is random and a chore
- Visiting/Inviting people is still a tedious process

New Super Luigi U Review

New Super Luigi U is a downloadable content expansion for New Super Mario Bros. U, where all of the original levels have been remixed into harder versions of themselves. While New Super Luigi U retains most of the original’s charms, like the story and 4-player cooperative play, it deviates itself by having less control over your player, which is what Luigi is notable for, to provide a more challenging experience. While difficulty has always been called lackluster in Mario, it mostly makes up for it in terms of its charm and level design. The challenge presented here, while greater, does not necessarily mean its’ for the better overall.

All levels in New Super Luigi sport 100 second time limit, in addition to the changed mechanics do provide a higher level of difficulty than in previous New Super Mario Bros. games. It makes most of the levels feel like they’re designed around a certain flow premise, where you’re focused to constantly move forward. They feel like levels from Donkey Kong Country Returns if you tried to speed run them and get all of the Star Coins in a single run. It’s very rewarding to accomplish everything in one go, especially when you master them. There are unfortunately a handful of levels that go against this premise, and are uniformly terrible. These levels generally feel mashed together in four or five different ways that cause frustration and anxiety beyond the point that they should. In one level, a simple Star Coin can become the bane of your existence while in another level it’s simply not designed for you to be doing what you’re doing, making it seemingly impossible to reach a stage’s end without being hit. It makes all of the good the rest of the game does feel worthless as some of the game’s toughest levels are in reality poorly executed death traps that reek of laziness.

Laziness is another thing that rears its’ ugly head in New Super Luigi U in multiple ways. The introduction is the exact same as the original, except Mario is missing from the scene and Nabbit follows you as your adventure begins. While it’s a minor complaint, the fact that none of the bosses are changed from the original is. For a game that remixes every level, the fact that the bosses are not changed at all is a deathblow to any hope that the experience within could be any better than the original.

Overall, New Super Luigi U, while worthy of the $20 price tag, is a disappointment. While some levels shine brilliantly, others are broken just as badly. Combined with some laziness, Luigi is once again relegated to a sideshow rather than the center stage.

Score: 7/10
+ Nice sense of flow in most stages
+ Good sense of challenge in most levels
- Some stages are abhorrent in quality
- Finding some secret levels is complete trial and error without a guide
- Re-used Boss Fights

Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon Review

The original Luigi’s Mansion is one of those games that ended up being just an interesting concept. While the gameplay still remains fine, it’s ultimately simple and relatively short. It may have some replay value, but it’s not really rewarding to play again. The sequel, developed by Next Level Games looks to build on that original concept and make a better experience.

The story here is simple; the dark moon has been destroyed, causing all of the ghosts in the world to go crazy. It’s now up to the mighty Luigi to restore the power of the dark moon to turn the ghosts back to normal. Your main goal is to receive a piece of the dark moon from each of the game’s five mansions, which have varying themes. The first mansion being your standard haunted house and it sets up a good tone and atmosphere for the game. The lighting is great, along with the game’s animations, which help sell that the game has some polish to it. The game does have a few framerate problems, sometimes hitting 60 and other times getting in the single digits. It’s fine for the most part, but it is a noticeable issue at parts.

Another notable issue is that the game does get frustrating in some places, leaving you wandering around levels aimlessly with no clue at what you need to do. The same goes for a couple of bosses later on that might take you hours, but fortunately for this review, were handled with ease. Beyond the game not giving you many clues and a few unforgiving boss fights, the game gives you a few upgrades to make the game proceed smoother, including upgrades to your Dark Light and Poltergust’s power. It’s a nice progression path that exemplifies the game’s good pacing. While the controls might feel better if there was an option to use the Circle Pad Pro, they do what they need to do well enough and aren’t frustrating or hand-cramping.

A new addition to this installment is multiplayer, both local and online in the form of the Scarescraper, which allows you to play with up to three other players as you traverse up to 25 floors in ghost hunting fun. Levels are randomized, and the money you earn also carries over with you to single player, which is a welcome feature. It’s something that if you want to continue playing is the mode you’ll want to go back to, since going for missing collectibles, Boos and 3-star ranks in single player is an ordeal not many will find the urge to do.

Overall, Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon is a fun, lengthy but ultimately forgettable experience. There’s not much in the way of memorable music or enemies, but the animations and multiplayer are worth experiencing. It’s a nice entry into the series and hopefully Nintendo will build on it in the future, hopefully with a bit more personality.

Overall Score: 8 out of 10
+ Animations
+ Multiplayer
+ Good Pacing
- Some frustrating puzzles
- Enemies are forgettable
- Framerate problems

The Embarrassment that is the Canadians

Last night the Montreal Canadians were handily defeated in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals at the hands of the Ottawa Senators by a score of 6 to 1. While that is in and of itself a complete joke of a score, the true embarrassment from this game comes from the fact that the game featured 236 penalty minutes, 129 for Montreal and 107 for Ottawa. By the end of the game, both teams had around 5 players left on their benches, so 10-11 players total. All in all, this was a complete embarrassment for the stories Montreal Canadians franchise and its' fans.

After the game, Ottawa coach Paul MacLean said 'they did that to themselves' in response to a question of whether or not the timeout he called with 17 seconds left was to embarrass the Canadians or not. At 7:04 of the third period, 5 fights broke out at once, resulting in 20 penalties, 8 of which were game misconducts and 10 were 5-minute majors for fighting. What's so embarrassing about this? The fact that Montreal did not win one of these fights. You'd think by the law of averages that they'd win at least one, but no, they didn't. A smaller, more agile team taking on a tougher team is never a good formula for winning fights in the NHL, and Montreal reiterated that with their pathetic attempt at machismo last night.

The Canadians players embarrassed themselves last night, as well as their fans, who probably aren't waking up to put on their traditional colors this morning. The Ottawa Senators proved a point last night, and that's that the Canadians can't beat the Senators at their own game, and if they try it, they'll get embarrassed yet again, and probably worse next time as well.

2013 NHL Playoffs: A Primer

The 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs are set to begin tonight, and as always, I thought I'd do a pre-show discussion of what the first round matchups entail, and maybe some predictions as well. I haven't been completely vested in this year's playoffs due to the strike as well as concentrating on other things, but the Playoffs is really what Hockey season is all about. It's the shining city on the hill for any hockey fan, regardless if you're team is in it or not...unless you're a Panthers fan.

Eastern Conference
#1 - Pittsburgh Penguins vs. #8 - New York Islanders
While the Penguins handily won the season series, these two haven't played each other in a month, which includes the time when the Islanders didn't lose in regulation for 11 straight games. The Islanders are playing good hockey at the right time, and I think given the heated nature between these two teams, surprisingly, I think this will go deep. It may not go 7 games, but I expect the Islanders to give the Penguins trouble before bowing out.
Pittsburgh wins 4-2

#2 - Montreal Canadians vs. #7 - Ottawa Senators
This is a match-up that I'm not too familiar with, so when I say that Montreal will have home ice in all games played in this series, don't take it to heart. Anderson for the Senators has played great all season, including the last week of the regular season. Montreal has struggled of late, but they might have turned it around during their final two regular season games against Winnipeg and Toronto. Time will tell, but Montreal does have the advantage here.
Montreal wins 4-1

#3 - Washington Capitals vs. #6 - New York Rangers
While this match-up seems to happen every year, it doesn't. It's only happened four of the past five years, with the Rangers taking last year's contest in 7 games. Both teams, particularly the Rangers were better last year. The difference here is that the Capitals are playing much better this year than last year, and instead of playing overwhelmingly defense, the Capitals are playing a more aggressive style of hockey of late, losing only twice in April, both to the Ottawa Senators. That's what I think is the key difference in this series from last year.
Washington wins 4-2

#4 - Boston Bruins vs. #5 - Toronto Maple Leafs
Both Boston and Toronto are entering the Playoffs at a tough stretch, struggling to gain footing. A week ago, the Bruins were poised to take the 2 seed, but couldn't get enough points down the stretch by blowing lead after lead. The Maple Leafs haven't looked good since clinching a playoff birth, and even before looked to be a bit jittery with their current position. If the Bruins were playing good hockey, I'd say they'd win this one in a walk, but since both are struggling, both will probably try to use this series to rebound, but I think Boston's experience prevails here.
Boston wins 4-3


Western Conference
#1 - Chicago Blackhawks vs. #8 - Minnesota Wild
This is the only series that I look at and say 'chalk.' The Blackhawks are playing well, and the Wild barely got in, and probably only in part because they played the Colorado Avalanche in their final game.
Chicago wins 4-0

#2 - Anaheim Ducks vs. #7 - Detroit Red Wings
The Ducks have flown under the radar all season. While they have a great offense, none of their players have more than 15 goals, showing the depth and teamwork they have. However, they now face a team that's bested them all year long, the Red Wings, who are playing at the heights that are expected of them. With that in mind, I expect this one to go their way, in a not-so-surprising upset.
Detroit wins 4-2

#3 - Vancouver Canucks vs. #6 - San Jose Sharks
This is another series that I'm not really inclined to against the season series on. Both have loads of playoff experience, and both have profound disappointment in their playoff results. It seems like the perfect time that both of these teams face one another.
San Jose wins 4-2

#4 - St. Louis Blues vs. #5 - Los Angeles Kings
These two faced each other during last year's playoffs, but the difference here is that Los Angeles isn't on a massive spree of wins as the lowly 8 seed. Both of these teams are built to win in the Playoffs, but only one will win, and I like the reigning Champions here.
Los Angeles wins 4-3