Dwanny Feroloson Indeed

I'd like to continue with the idea I good-touched on in my last post--good-touch meaning Wild.com's new look, not the bad-touch meaning that against the 'Nucks, the Wild played like some of students write.

One of the new features o'er there is a blog by one, Dutch Schnell, a famous Goalie Racer--as famous as Goalie Racers get in MN. If you've ever been to a Wild game, you've seen Dutch and the rest of the goalie racers... well, race during intermission. Anywhore, Wild.com gave him a keyboard, as if the internet has a fever, and the only prescription is moooah unqualified idiot-opinions. At least, that was my initial fear as I clicked the link with reluctance. Turns out Schnell handles the keyboard better than every other goalie racer I've read. He plays der garmzanen too! Unfortunately, and this is what will keep Dutch from greatness, his favorite garmz year is the wrong one; clearly, he's not as roots as some of us. I just want to bad-touch on one thing--but quickly because I'll start to rant and fume if I spend too many sentences on it: Sire and I hatez EA NHL 06. Well I hatez it more than Sire. I hope it's not too late; I hope you weren't just at EvilEmpire.com, ordering it.

Anyone who's played any hockey garmz before will understand--shit, it's an epidemic in ALL sports garmz--each offering's revolutionary new features and controls, player customizing like Silly Putty for the face, textures, models, and animations that make it move in your pants... don't mean jack if the programmers didn't fix the same fucking difficulty bullshit that's been WRONG since '94. Somehow, "easy" means 23-1 over Detroit. Of course, it's only logical that "medium" means 1-23 Colorado--just because it's fucking Colorado.

Yeah, the early NHL garmz were the best and the difficulty thing never bothered me then. 20+ goals has always been ridiculous but back then, they were video games. Now though, garmz studios interrupt and say, "Not video games, love: sports simulations!" Then they puff from a pipe.

Programmers, I implore thee: Get it right, fuckers! Make challenging garmz with realism, not hardness by goals-against for the sake of goals. Giving the opponent goalie TCRP Mutagen, and giving our goalie a case of the downs doesn't equate to challenging. That's just lame and not fun. I've NEVER played a hockey garm that's gotten difficulty right. The closest was the Sega Sports ESPN 2K series which allowed a metric shit-ton of both human and AI difficulty settings. Still though, they weren't quite right: Vlanch score PPG fifteen ticks in. There's no other way. It's in the fucking stars.

So much for brief bad-touches.

The Anyway Disclaimer: Dutch Schnell's post is a couple weeks old, so there's a lack of dejection present in his tone regarding the Wild's latest lackadaisicalamities. I'm not delusional; I don't expect our greenback band of rebel scum to win every game. It's just that before the last two games, I'd been getting a similar vibe to that of our 2002-03 Conference Final run. We had a great start that year too, only better. I credit my father, The Hawk, that I'm so hopeful, and it's Mah's doing that I'm practical when hope settles for Beta. I think it's a good mix, but it makes for a Terry Davis rise-n-fall hockey season.