Does this have the Madden Syndrome where it's basically just so complex at this point that I won't have fun starting out without having played a Mortal Kombat game since the old, old, old ones? Pretty sure the last one I owned was on a Game Gear. Or am I just terrible at fighting games (MVC2 intimidated the hell out of me and I soon moved on from it)?

Kovalchuk is out tonight with a lower-body injury, either a groin or back injury. Either way it's bad news for Jersey - if they don't win tonight, I suspect it'll be a real grim atmosphere when I'm at the Rock on Thursday night.

Tempted by Sniper Elite v2. I liked the demo fine, and it seems like a good change of pace. Will probably wait for a review or two though, to make sure that the level design holds up throughout.

Ruh Rohs New Jersey.

But... but... the Devils and Brodeur had a lead on a Southeast Division opponent with only a few minutes left!

All they have to do is Staal for time...

(I'll see myself out.)

So, it's come to this...

WE ARE LOUDER!

Or at least, lengthier at press conferences by about a dozen words or so.

Bruins are out.

One thing that would make me happier would be a miracle win tomorrow night.

The only thing better than seeing Steelers fans cry is watching Bruins fans cry. Never gets old.

Beside my joy from this, to regular Bruins fans like Kozzy: They ran into a hot goalie and a team playing over their heads. What are you gonna do? They won last year, it ain't that bad.

If the Sens and Devils can win (highly doubtful)...Devils open at home against the Caps. 

You in Jersey? I'll spot you a ticket for that. I hear they're cheap, and it's an excuse to wear a Caps jersey in May.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

There, that's out of my system. What a sequence. Knuble - who was only back in the lineup because Nick Backstrom got himself suspended - starts the play, and Ward, who's been under fire since he was supposed to be signed to be clutch in the playoffs, justifies just about every penny of that $3M this year by ramming it home.

George McPhee just let out a long sigh of relief on that one. And I'm saved any beard-related decisions for another little while!

I will say this - utmost, absolute respect to the Bruins and their fans, with one exception. That was the closest-played series in history (only time ever that six or seven games have all been decided by one goal), it was agonizing at every point including when the Caps had a lead, the trolling was pretty much good-natured on both sides, and pretty much every player was a warrior. I don't hate Boston after this series the way I've hated the Rangers, Flyers, and Pens - pure respect for a battle hard-fought, either way it would have gone.

That said - fans in Boston should NOT have been chucking their beers at the Caps as they celebrated the goal. That was a low move, and sucked, and I'd be mad about it if Washington fans did the same.

Quote from Mike Gillis' interview: "I probably spent more time with Codey Hodgson's issues over the past 3 years than all other players combined"    Wow, I had no idea about that and I'd love to know what the issues were. I was under the impression he got along with management and his teammates, but it's sounding like he's possibly a locker room douche. Regardless of what the issues were, knowing that there was so many I'm thinking its good he's no longer a Canuck.

If I recall right, there were injury issues a while back and the GM/agent/player were clashing hard about the handling of the injury. Not sure about the rest of it but that probably didn't ever set him up for success with that organization.

My Vita use has trended upwards significantly since I snagged Final Fantasy Tactics. I dare say that between that and some RPGs on the PSP that I never played, I should comfortably survive the current release drought.

Anyone know whether starting with Disgaea 3 or Persona 3 in their series would be a bad idea? Or are they pretty much standalones?

Verizon Center was as loud today as I've ever heard it - I didn't bring back my voice, that's for sure.

Alas, this one has to go to Game 7. Normally I'd be downbeat, but with all the other crazy stuff happening, the Caps still have to have a shot...

I don't -think- I'm crazy - but the three of us watching the game on TV here totally and entirely thought it was Semin that scored that game-winner, not Brouwer. That was the best shot I've ever seen him take, bar none.

Off to the Verizon Center tomorrow - what a crazy series! Going to drown out the timekeeper again!

And the fun I had convinced me to get in on pre-ordering. Like you said, though - no downside to canceling the pre-order if you're that anxious about it. But I'm pretty sure Blizz isn't going to put out anything that could be called fundamentally broken on the 15th, and I liked my playthrough.

DAMMIT! Caps get the first multiple-goal lead of the series - and give the whole thing up in 28 seconds. Dennis Wideman has been unspeakably awful this series - on-ice for all 7 Bruins ES goals.

25 games for Torres being Torres:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=629019&navid=DL|NHL|home

Good. With one game served, that's the whole playoffs if the Yotes go 7 games in all the series, and if they don't, then he misses all of the preseason plus regular season games next season.

For anyone who doesn't watch videos - he swiped at the puck on another player's stick on the way in, so he knew the puck wasn't there. Hit broke 3 NHL rules (interference, charging, check to the head). He's had 5 disciplinary findings in the past, including 2 this year, for similar conduct. And Hossa was significantly injured on the play. Basically a perfect storm of doing bad things.

For context - the two longest suspensions in NHL history were both to Chris Simon, 30 games and 25 games, so this is tied with his. Dale Hunter's bit of insanity against Turgeon earned him 21 games. Wisniewski got 13 games, including preseason games, earlier this year.

That's a fair enough opinion... but man, I think you guys are all crazy. It's advertised as an open beta/stress test, it's advertised there may be connection issues, they're clearly not doing all the things they'll do at retail for uptime, so if you bail now, based on something that has advertised and admitted differences to the way they'll handle retail, I think you're making a mistake. Just one man's opinion, of course - but y'all nuts.

Well, I would love to try this out, but I still can't log in.  Getting error code 37 that the servers are too busy.

Just need to go in at off peak times, but hopefully this isn't indicative of release date. Not sure why they culdn't have implemented queues, they have enough experience of this type of thing

The whole point of this is a stress test, remember? No point if they have the servers at smooth, playable capacity - they want to turn all their fancy queue management off, throw as many players on individual servers as possible, and see just how far they can push it before the server melts down.

Really, I'm sort of shocked by how many people read 'open beta/stress test' as 'official demo' - it's not always about you. 

I get your point, but are you saying when the servers are maxed that this is what will happen and they didn't predict this. I expected an issue getting in but a little bit bet than having to endlessly retry logging in. It is a beta but I'd view part of the testing to be how they handle maxed servers and how it currently dos it is not acceptable. Cross fingers it will be handled better at release.

Actual game when I get in is pretty impressive

They completely predicted this. From the open beta page:

"It's very possible that players connecting to the stress test could experience issues with the service. While not ideal, this is exactly why we're having a stress test. We want to catch and analyze as many bugs as possible during this stress test period, so that we can try to ensure a smooth launch on May 15."

The whole point of a smoke test like this is to push their servers to the absolute limit, so that when they do the retail launch, they know exactly what their worst-case scenarios are, and how quickly they can get back up and running from them. Basically they have three days to figure out, when this thing goes retail, if they're looking at the load getting so high it crashes their servers, overwhelms battle.net logins, etc. The best way for them to do that is artificially restrict the number of servers, and get right to the threshold where they start to see issues. If anything, I'd guess they're probably taking down even more servers at off-peak times, to try and keep their utilization as close to 100% as possible.

This way, they can spend the next couple of weeks analyzing any crashes, bottlenecks, etc, and figure out what they need to prepare for May 15. If everyone can play all weekend without issues, it probably means they weren't stress-testing right (or their servers are damned amazing). Their ideal should be that everyone has mild issues all weekend - just a little bit of lag, just a little bit of crashing, etc, so they have the maximum amount of useful data - yeah, endlessly clicking retry sucks, but I'd guess they're bringing servers online bit by bit by bit, until they can -exactly- handle the traffic they've got.

I like it.

His whole point doesn't seem to be that it's a game about controlling a spaceship - instead, it's that you play a guy, who's stuck ON a spaceship. You got sent out into a universe with a ship that could only do so much, and now there are limited and dwindling resources to boot. So it's thematically almost the opposite of Minecraft - where there you had an abundance of everything and if it was gone you just had to go find more, here you'll have a scarcity of everything and how well you use it will probably be determining your success.

The computer is a key part of that - he wants it to be more realistic, harder science fiction, and so it's no so realistic to have the guy you're playing always sitting at an old-school joystick just controlling things every hour of every day. Instead, you'll probably have some baseline programs, but they won't be very good or efficient, just enough to scrape by - so real success will come to the folks who are either talented (by making their ships work better, and increasing their margins for error) or clever (putting together programs/algorithms in a new way to do things with their resources nobody else is) or just plain stubborn (by staying logged in as many hours as possible and letting their computer handle/screw up a bare minimum).

At least - that's how I'm filtering Notch's comments into my perfect universe. 

Well, I would love to try this out, but I still can't log in.  Getting error code 37 that the servers are too busy.

Just need to go in at off peak times, but hopefully this isn't indicative of release date. Not sure why they culdn't have implemented queues, they have enough experience of this type of thing

The whole point of this is a stress test, remember? No point if they have the servers at smooth, playable capacity - they want to turn all their fancy queue management off, throw as many players on individual servers as possible, and see just how far they can push it before the server melts down.

Really, I'm sort of shocked by how many people read 'open beta/stress test' as 'official demo' - it's not always about you. 

Got my tickets to Caps-Bruins game 6 on Sunday. Just hoping they can hold it together tomorrow and be fighting to advance on Sunday, not just to stay alive.

On the one hand, I'm shocked to see Detroit out in 5 - on the other hand, Nashville is just structured to make a run this year.

HOLY HELL. Holtbeast.

Braden Holtby, I don't know how he does it. That was a LOT of shots coming his way, and an extra 5.3 seconds on the game because the timekeeper messed up. New series, back to Boston!

I will for sure be in the Verizon Center on Sunday, and I will for sure leave my voice there!

Made a bet with a buddy on 11.5 goals back when only 4 went in, took the over. I'm liking how this is going.

Almost there.

Did NOT think I'd get there before 2nd intermission, though. Woo!    

Made a bet with a buddy on 11.5 goals back when only 4 went in, took the over. I'm liking how this is going.

Neal gets one game off two hearings, Asham gets four. Hagelin and Shaw get three.

Clearly, the NHL is pushing players to aspire to stardom by punishing them for not being stars.

Also - sucks that Backstrom got a one game suspension, but he should have been smarter there.

In as Trenmir.

If the league upholds the automatic 1-game ban for Backstrom, I'll officially be out of optimism.

Mostly nothing, what with playoff hockey. Have fit in a few rounds of Pinball Arcade on the Vita though.

Man watching all these other games makes me realize how much I hate the Sharks brand of hockey. It's so awful.

Also the PHX goalie got hit 10x harder than Halak and he stayed in the game. Of course they got a penalty, so I'm sure that kissed the boo boo.

Just luck of the draw sometimes - Halak has a lower-body injury, and it sure sounds like he might be out a while - same happened with Neuvirth in the regular season, just a bad fall on a hit can tear something. I'm pretty convinced Smith was embellishing, since with his concussion history team docs should have pulled him out to the quiet room if he was actually feeling anything (I think they should have anyway, but then I think that NHL players are idiots about head injuries and doctors need to have more authority there).

Holy FFFFF shit the hawks just scored with 5.5 to go. WOW.

Love it. Glad that Smith wasn't able to buy the win with the major penalty that came from his flop.

I'll be honest, I just started breathing again after that 2OT win by the Caps. 

Thomas shouldn't have awoken the beast by punching Nicky in the face - although he got lucky enough they decided not to enforce the rule (that they never enforce anyway) that a blocker-hand punch is an automatic game misconduct. 19 still got the last laugh there!

Surprised to see the Caps hanging with the Bruins so well, and shocked that Holtby's doing so well - I love the kid but I was expecting him to have a lot more growing left to do before being ready to take on a playoff series. Kid really is tough to shake.

Hopefully there are enough North American sales to sustain things for at least a little while. I figure I'll get my money's worth out of this thing if there's at least one good NHL game plus The Show for a year or two (what can I say, I like those two franchises a lot?). Getting some other good games will be a plus.

But at this rate, I'm not sure anyone's going to bother to put out a hockey game...

Yay, Bruins win! Boring game but I'll take it.

Whargarbl. Holtby played about as well as we possibly could have hoped for. A shame that a single goal of support was too much to ask - and Wideman sealed it with his traditional late reaction and getting caught out of position to give Kelly that rocket. Sure Holtby wants it back, but man, that one should have been winnable for the Caps, and hurts a lot to drop.

Looks like I will have to be streaming most of the Detroit games for as long as they are still in it. What is the CNBC station? Only channel like that I get is the news(?) station by NBC. No CBC either.  

Stupid fucking NBC with exclusivity. Just show it on FSD for fucks sake!

FYI - as far as I understand the new rules this season, the games that are not on the NBC mothership will -also- be streaming on local broadcasters, if you can stream them, just not on GameCenter Live. CNBC is the financial news station - look for a stock ticker during most of the day and you've found it if so (they use it as backup for sports or Olympics). CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, probably not practical to get if you're not by the border.

Are any places (like NBC) streaming games over their website? I have a US VPN this year so it would be nice to catch a few games if possible.

Check NBCSports.com regularly. They were pretty good about streaming the occasional regular season game, while they don't have any posted yet I bet they stream more than a couple.

Not saying it is a first...I am just glad it is there.  Typically it draws a few thousand fans who are unable to get tickets for the games, but want to be part of the atmosphere.  Is that LED screen at the Prudential Center year round, or just for the playoffs?

No idea about the screen - Like most hockey fans, I've never been to the Pru Center. 

I've never been around the outside during a game, but if they show the games on it I'm pretty sure it's only at playoff time. It's not like there's not plenty of room inside.

I would not put it past some of the Capitals fan groups to make sure everyone sitting behind Tim Thomas' goal has Obama masks on. There may also be chanting.

On the one hand, it's juvenile, the man's entitled to his beliefs, and it has nothing to do with hockey. On the other hand, HA!

I don't like the back-to-back in the Boston-Washington series.

Glad all the games get national TV, though.

Actually just looking through Youtube, CBC has some ridiculously amazing montages called CBC HNIC Stanley Cup Playoff Tribute YEAR or Playoff Openings.  Fantastic shit with great soundracks.  I'd like to get all of those on a DVD or Bluray.

Their video staff does a bang-up job, and there's a bunch of other folks out there (amateurs and pros both) that are close to that level.

KesselySnipes for Leafs highlights: http://www.youtube.com/user/KesselySnipes

Here's another good overall video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OohqTf5uvkY&feature=related

Sorry, Isgrimnur. It was a HELL of a run back from last place, though, and the Sabres are going to have a lot of good years with Pegula at the helm.

For what it's worth - the Sabres with Miller probably would get farther than the Caps will with Holtby. But I'll worry about the state of our goaltenders tomorrow - for now I'm going to the bar to celebrate.

Edit: Oh... and Brooks Laich might not be Mark Messier, like Miller said - but he was first star of the game with 1G and 1A after guaranteeing the playoffs. Don't poke the tire-changer with a sharp stick.

Oh, no no no no no....

Neuvirth was hurt in the 2nd period. Caps have a lead and might win this one... but if he's out for any length of time, that's basically a killer for the Caps. Vokoun's done for the season, Holtby is young and unsteady, Sabourin is just not an NHL starter right now, Grubeauer is done for the year with wrist surgery, and the next guy down in the system doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

If the Sabres win tonight, I'm not at all comfortable about the Caps' chances even if they hold the lead. Holtby could get lit up at MSG like he did in Buffalo, easy, and I don't see Miller laying an egg at this stage.

Nationals are over .500! I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

...okay, I'm actually a little more optimistic than that this year - the starting rotation looks good, and John Lannan is buried in the minors in case anyone gets hurt, so for the first time there's actually a little bit of depth. Would be nice to see Werth have a good year this time around, too.