World Cup 2010 Day 7 and Other Stuff!

Earlier today I caught up on the backlog of games generated by my extended work week and then caught up on some other stuff, like the 400+ Twitter updates and the pile of Facebook statuses I had queued up. I played some Resistance 2, ate an entire pizza because I hadn’t eaten properly in days, caught up on some some shows in my DVR, and read up on some of the stuff that went down at this year’s E3. X-box 360 Slim, here I come! Well, in a month or two because I want to see if they burst into flames like the old ones did. And while I’m sad to see Criterion making a racing game that isn’t Burnout, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit looks awesome. It also looks like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, which isn’t a bad thing since I really liked that game, but I’m pretty sure the Hot Pursuit title was already used by a Need for Speed game. By two of them, in fact! I’m not really sure what’s going on there. 3DS looks interesting, and can I get a hell yes for new PilotWings?!

HELL YES!

There. I knew if I left it to you jokers in the comments, I’d get nothing. MONSTERS!

Moving on… Kinect is a stupid name. Not as stupid as Wii, but damn near close. I think someone moderately drunk would have trouble deciding which name would be worse to bring home to have a drunken night of abandon with and then wake up the next morning, be startled, and feel shame and remorse. I sure hope it doesn’t become a dumping ground for ports of crappy Wii games that didn’t sell. Then again, if it does and they don’t sell here, maybe the crap-tastic developers behind them will get the hint that their games didn’t sell not because Nintendo players don’t buy games, but because Nintendo players don’t buy GAMES THAT SUCK YOUR WILL TO LIVE. Not that I’m bitter about constant streams of disinformation or anything.

The 3DS looks interesting, and 3D or not, I’m sure looking forward to the games they’ve announced for it like Mario Kart, PilotWings (HELL YES!), and Metal Gear (!). Definitely one to watch. Oh and Goldeneye Wii remake? Awesome. The only thing better would have been a Perfect Dark Wii remake, but at least I’ll be able to get Perfect Dark HD once I get the redesigned 360.

Sony doesn’t seem to have much good stuff for me this year. Playstation Move? Move where? So it’s Wii HD, basically. Wiiiiiii! And the garbage names continue! Oh and a paid PSN subscription? The hell with that. The thing that grabbed my eye was the new Twisted Metal game! That. Looks. Awesome. I don’t care if it does everything, I want it to do Twisted Metal, and then I will be happy.

On a completely different note, it occurs to me that this category system I have going on the site is in direct conflict with the tagging system I have. I almost feel like it should be one or the other. The tags are definitely more flexible, but I feel I could get some use out of the categories if I go back and redid them all. Of course, that means redoing the categories on all the posts I already have. Good thing I go for years without posting a thing! ;)

OK, enough nerding. Time for some World Cup! I took notes while I was watching, and I was going to pretty em up and make them into real sentences and everything, but I’m too goddamn tired. So here are my notes on each game, edited for readability, continuity, and such. It’s a different format than what I’ve been posting, but its been a busy day and reworking all this into real paragraphs and article structure would take longer than I’m willing to commit to it right now. Besides, I want to play more video games before I go to bed. Maybe some Super Mario Galaxy 2. [insert ridiculous Mario sound]

South Africa vs Uruguay:
• There was an exciting moment near the beginning when Forlan chips it in off of crossbar from long range. Gooooooooooaaaaaaalllllll!
• South Africa got pretty outplayed.
• You know you’re an accident when your parents name you Surprise Moriri. Yes, there really is a South African player named Surprise Moriri. Awesome.
• An unexpected red card for the South African goalkeeper Khune, who has done an excellent job thus far, leads to point scored on the penalty kick.
• South Africa came to life second half, but not enough to save them.
• Late 3rd pt for Uruguay to put the final nail in coffin.

Argentina vs South Korea:
• South Korea ends up scoring an own goal off of an Argentinian corner kick. Hilarious! I probably shouldn’t love own goals so much, but I laugh every time.
• Higuain nicely heads in the second point for Argentina.
• Argentina is more offensive minded, but South Korea has been getting back into it after the own goal.
• Argentinian carelessness leads to a lone SK striker stealing the ball and a goal! The score now 2-1 in favor of Argentina.
• The pressure exerted by both teams has been high for much of the game and there have been several good shots on goal.
• Holy hell, Argentina launched a wicked assault! The first shot was saved, the second went off the post, and the third was gently tapped in past everyone! Beautiful play!
• Another fearsome Argentinian assault leads to another goal and now Higuain has a hattrick!
• Final Score is 4-1 Argentina.

Greece vs Nigeria:
• Nigeria scores on Greece about 15 minutes in on a free kick which was awarded for a yellow card offense that the Greeks should never have committed.
• Kaita earns a red card and gets ejected for freaking out on a Greek player after the ball was out of play. It was a silly foul and it puts the Nigerians down a man for the rest of the game. Good thing they already have a goal scored.
• Greece scores via a deflection off of a Nigerian player just before the half to tie it up. Things are a lot more tenuous for them now. Credit to Greece for seizing the opportunity.
• Nigeria blows a fast break. Caught out Greece, the first shot is blocked and the rebound should be easy goal but they don’t get a good foot on it and end up kicking it wide.
• After a series of fantastic saves, there was just one too many assaults for the Nigerian goalkeeper and he let a rebounded kick get by him. It was a valient effort, but I don’t think Nigeria will be able to pull off a draw. To make matters worse, several injuries are forcing them to use their subs and hurting nigerian play quality.
• Prediction correct, Nigeria loses 2-1. On the upside for Greece, they scored their first ever World Cup goal and got their first ever World Cup win.

France vs Mexico:
• A more physical game that we’ve seen thus far, France and Mexico seem to be pretty evenly matched. No major runs by either team yet and we’re going into second half scoreless. There was one almost goal by Mexico, otherwise good goalkeeping both sides. A game where the teams are really well matched can either be really exciting, or really not. Unfortunately, so far this one is the latter. While the skill on display is great, it’s not edge of your seat stuff.
• A fantastic but possibly controversial goal for Mexico give them the lead! There was some question as to whether Javier Hernandez was offsides, but it looked like he was right at the edge and the call could have gone either way. His grandfather scored against France years ago and now he gets to follow in those footsteps. Pretty amazing!
• A penalty kick gives Mexico another point. We have another first! The first Mexican player to score in three different world cups is Cuauhtemoc Blanco! (Try saying that three times fast!)
• There were lots of yellow cards handed out this game
• Mexico takes it! Pretty unexpected, given France’s last World Cup performance.

Do you know, I just had a thought. A somewhat startling occurrence, I know, but hear me out. I think I may do a liveblog kind of thing for future posts. That might work better because it captures my thoughts at the moment and I don’t have to worry about turning notes into fancy pants writing. I’ll probably forget less stuff to include too. Maybe some open source, embeddable twitter-like app. I very nearly think Dreamhost has something like that available. Hmmmm…

EDIT: I just realized that the timezone setting on my blog has been wrong for… quite some time, shall we say. It looks like it was calculating times in UTC or some stupid nonsense like that instead of my local time. Good job! Because that’s useful! It’s fixed now, but all my old posts have timestamps that appear to be off by about 7 hours or so. Can you feel that, WordPress designers? I’m flipping you the bird as hard as I can!