If you follow tennis at all, you will know that Andy Murray was elimited from Wimbledon in the semi-final by a rejuvinated looking Andy Roddick. They both played well but I think in the end it came down to who could win the big points and get the lucky breaks, and on this occasion that turned out to be Roddick. I think a lot of it came down to Roddick’s tactics. It seemed pretty clear to me at least that he was playing much more cautiously than normal and was maybe trying to copy Murray’s own gameplan of keeping the ball in play and occasionally throwing in a big shot, and it worked.

Match Recap

When you look at the replay of the match, you’ll notice that the match could really have gone either way. The first set was decided on the first break point of the match, taken by Roddick at 5-4 up. In the second set, Andy got the quick break in the first game and went on to hold his serve to close that one out.

In the third set and I think the fourth, Murray had break points on the Roddick serve. In the 3rd set especially, he had him at 0-40 twice but only broke once. The time he broke was when Roddick was serving for the set which shows Murray’s character a lot. In the tiebreak it was close and Murray had at least one set point, but Roddick hit a lucky volley to save it. His serve was so consistently good though that he had few chances to get mini-breaks and eventually lost it by only a couple of points. If he had taken the other game where he had 3 break points, he would have won the set.

In the fourth set it was competitive all the way through. I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain serve was held all the way through to the tie-break, but Murray did have a break point at 4-3 in that 4th set which he couldn’t convert. Roddick held to take it to 4-all and subsiquently, a second tie-break. The tie break saw Roddick break first but Murray eventually got it back with a huge passing shot at match point. He got the tie-break back on serve but then hit a cross-court pass into the net while Roddick was approaching the net to give the match away on his own serve.

Now that I’ve read the play by play of the match and watched highlights again after watching the whole match earlier, I have to say that it really could have gone either way. It’s no exaggeration to say so. If Andy had taken those 3 break points at the beginning of the 3rd set he would have probably won it. If Roddick hadn’t had that lucky volley to save set point in that 3rd set tie-break he would have taken the set too.

The same could be said of the fourth. If murray had taken that break point opportunity in the 8th game of that set, he could have potentially held serve and won that set and possibly even the match in 4 sets. Or at least taken it to 5 sets where anything could have happened. So yeah he really didin’t get the breaks today but he had a great tournament overall. No one can criticise him for his effort and commitment or call it another British failure, because that’s so far from the truth.

ESPN don’t report things fairly

Before I go on and get to the main point of this post, I just want to say that I saw a recap of the match on ESPN and honestly, they went into absolutely no detail whatsoever. The old guy also said that Roddick “beat him up” and that “there was nothing left of Andy Murray at the end”. I don’t know whether he was trying to spice it up to make it sound more exciting and like a boxing match (it already is exciting and it’s kind of ironic that Andy is a boxing fan) or he’s just an old cook with no idea what he’s talking about, but whatever.

Individual Sport and the British pride and huge expectations

The main point of this post though was to say that the way British people act and expect so much has to change for the good of the game, and not just tennis, of lots of sports such as international football.

When all the British players except Andy were eliminated in the first or second rounds, people acted like it was a national disaster, like it was so unexpected. However, these players (especially the women) have improved their ranking, and even if they had got through the opening rounds, it’s very unlikely they would have won, so why should they deal with that pressure? Why should any of them have to deal with it including Andy? They shouldn’t.

Stats like how long it’s been since there was a British men’s champion is not going to help anyone. The attitude should be to enjoy this wonderful tennis event that’s held in this country for all the great players, and for all the great tennis that will be played during the two weeks, not totally focused on one person just because he or she (in this case he) is from Britain.

Like I say in the title of this post, tennis is an individual sport, except for davis cup, and players like Andy should be able to use the home venue as an advantage, which it is in terms of the crowd, but their level of expectation takes away from the advantage which is probably why he has got to a US Open final and not a Wimbledon one, plus obviously the fact that Roddick executed his gameplan perfectly on this occasion.

It’s not even got anything to do with the fact that Andy had a legitimate chance to win, he is the number 3 in the world after all. But regardless, people need to just let him play. I definitely was hopeful of him winning, but I knew that this is tennis, and it’s tough. He could have lost in the first round to Kendrick, or to Wawrinka easily, so you just have to be prepared for shocks. They happen all the time in tennis (except to Roger Federer seemingly) and pretty much every sport. Such is the depth and talent of professional tennis.

Summary and future talent possibilities

So in conclusion, US TV doesn’t get it and British people and media need to just focus on enjoying tennis rather than being so obsessed with this drought of british winners and pinning all their hopes on one person. Enjoy the tennis of every player and the event in general. You would be doing the UK players a great service by leaving them alone more.

Too bad virtually no one will change at all. Oh and another reason why there isn’t much talent coming up not just in this country but virtually everywhere, might have something to do with ridiculously high saleries in other sports like football for example. This makes tennis far less appealing. Maybe also the fact that in singles you’re really out there on your own, plus the fact that any kids coming up know that they will also be subjected to the crap the current crop have to deal with. Laura Robson is going to probably end up being Andy’s equivilent in the Womens’ game. I hope she can deal with it well but regardless she looks like she has the potential to be a great player. Her serve is amazing. It looks like the female version of Roger Federer’s which looks so fluid and relaxed. This is misleading for both because they both can hit their spots and dominate on serve.

Anyway thanks for reading and enjoy the weekend of finals.

edit: I wrote so much that I decided to add subheadings to the post to make it easier to read.

I wrote a review of Grand Slam Tennis a little while ago and I said that even though it has some drawbacks, it’s an awesome tennis game and has a lot of potential to get better in future editions. The controls and career mode were great, but left things to be improved in my opinion. With Tiger 10 for Wii, it feels pretty much like they’ve nailed the controls perfectly on their first attempt.

Obviously with golf you’re only going to make one motion with the club so it does make it much easier to design controls for. But what’s so impressive here is that they’ve not only made it servicable, they’ve gone into such detail to a point where you really feel like you’re swinging a golf club.

The draw and fade when you swing can be a bit tricky to get to grips with when you want to keep your shots straight, but after a while it will become fairly natural, especially if you’ve ever played golf before. Even if you do have trouble, you can turn on the all-play difficulty setting which essentially ignores your tilt (draw and fade) when you swing so that you can focus on power and placement. Even with this turned on, the experience is still incredibly rewarding, especially putting with the new precision putting controls where the game detects how far you pull back, and how hard and far you extend forward on each putt. You can see the distance on screen and just remember how you would play it on a real putting green or every crazy golf, and it will probably be represented close to perfectly in the game.

I went back to play the game without motionplus earlier and you can definitely feel the difference. In precision putting the difference isn’t as obvious, But when your going for a drive or an approach shot, you’ll definitely notice the difference.

With motionplus, you can see perfectly every movement you make with the club on screen. If you move it up and down quickly as you backswing, you’ll see every minute detail of that movement. Without motionplus, you’ll notice that you have to backswing the remote quite high up behind you before it’s represented on screen at all. Obviously the faster you do it, the less you’ll see the issue, but it’s still there and it defintely shows a big improvement in motionplus. Also, obviously with motionplus it can tell much more precisely how hard you’re swinging. Without motionplus, it feels much more digital, not to the point where it’s either swing or no swing, but you’re definitely much more limited in how hard or soft you are able to hit balls.

I’ve yet to really go in depth with the online component of the game but so far I’m impressed. I think overall I prefer the online of Grand Slam Tennis because it’s so simple, but this definitely has some cool options. Things like being able to “play against the pros” and using the forecast channel to import real-time weather into the courses in the game are nice little features.

Overall, this game is awesome and in my opinion the best realistic golf game ever made. I say realistic because I still really enjoy playing Everybody’s Golf. I wonder if they’ll be a version of that with the PS3 motion controller. To be honest, if that ends up being as good as it looks, then there might be little reason to play tiger on wii in future. But as of right now, you shouldn’t miss out on this game if you have any interest in golf whatsoever. I don’t consider myself a big golf fan really but I love playing it in games and you will too.

I’m very excited about next season now, especially with the 3 new teams and injection of new talent coming into the sport. It’s going to be great. I just want to see Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti coming to F1 next year too. That would be great. Just as long as the new teams (US F1?) can be competitive with their cars.

Eventually Myspace was going to have to cut back because of their reduced traffic and try to cut costs as much as possible.It’s unfortunate for the people who will lose their jobs but I guess when you work in an industry as fickle as this, you have to be prepared for it as much as possible.

It’s tough to know if Facebook will also have to take these same kind of measures soon. I mean I don’t think anything other than a new site coming along can stop their sucess continuing, but you never know.

As far as something like Twitter, It’s a difficult one to call. I’ve been on Twitter (albeit not very active) since it debuted I think a couple of years ago or maybe more. Basically eveyone has it now so that in a way is frustrating to me because it’s like I get no credit for being an early adopter, and the service risks becoming a huge fad and fading away eventually.

Personally I love twitter and dislike facebook. I like how on Twitter I can talk to everyone and get my thoughts out there in a way where even though I’m talking to the world, it doesn’t feel overwhelming. For some reason, Facebook makes me feel so stressed when I go on there and am barraged with a bunch of random crap from people I know but haven’t seen for ages. It’s weird to say because it applies to twitter too, but I really don’t care about the absolute BS people post on there constantly, and I don’t want people to know absolutely everything I do, like who I become friends with, whether I update my profile info or post a new message. I’ve never posted a status message on Facebook because I want it to be my own personal thing. I suppose if I added a bunch of those same friends from Facebook to twitter too then it might ruin twitter as well.

But on the other hand, even if that was the case and I did have the same bombardment on twitter, it would still be a better experience for one main reason. Twitter is so simple and easy to use while also being stylish. I love that. Facebook can get so convoluded and over-complicated to a point where I don’t want to be bothered anymore. Twitter isn’t like that at all. All you can do is post messages, @reply people and direct message. That’s it.

Going back to the subject of this post, I think if Twitter continues to keep it simple and it doesn’t end up being the next myspace then I think they have a good future. Same with Facebook, even if it’s not exactly to my taste.

But then after a while playing it I remembered why I loved the demo. The game is the same rock band formula that if you’ve played the full rock band game, then you’ll probably love like me. This game basically keeps the gameplay but ditches the instruments, and that’s not a bad thing for this PSP game. What I like about it is for me while it does lose the authenticity of having an instrument in your hand, what you gain is the ability to play harder difficulties and be satisfied in that way because of the way the controls are in this. Because you don’t strum or hammer-on at all, it’s entirely about timing your button taps which makes it much easier to simply get into the groove of the song and do really well, while being thoroughly satisfied.

However, the switching between tracks, while well done and fun most of the time, can also be a total hinderance. when you play on higher difficulties and a tiny dip in concentration can cause you to miss the next few notes. Plus rarely it is possible to switch to the one past the one you need to be on, also causing misses, Switching tracks is a nod to Harmonix’s original music games, frequency and amplitude where you used a traditional controller to hit notes on multiple tracks.

The gameplay is a mashup of those games and rock band / guitar hero, HMX’s recent games. While I do like the idea of playing all the instruments and switching around, I think the game would have been even better if they had added the choice to play the career mode as one person playing one instrument, or whatever one you felt like at the time. If they did that, they could also have added multiplayer, local or even online. That would have been truly a full rock band experience.

While it may sound silly to be a vocalist and just be tapping buttons, it really doesn’t matter because playing as one person and being with a group of other people would have made the game absolutely amazing. Plus, it would have made the whole DLC thing more appealing. If I could buy a song and play it either with friends or online it would make it worth paying for the songs. Right now you can only play them in career mode or in band survival mode which I’m not too keen on, and warmup mode, which is great. It allows you to play as any instrument you want and there is no penalty for not switching during the song so you can try every instrument though the entirety of each track. But this really should have been in the career mode as an option rather than hidden away in the extras menu.

Overall, if you want a very good, solid music game for a handheld devide then this is it. Sure, it would have been nice to have the ability to play individual instruments, the DLC is probably overpriced considering how limited you are in how you can use it, and a lot of the songs are currently in rock band 2 with I think most if not all of the others coming as DLC. Oh and it should really have had online leaderboards. I don’t know why they didn’t include something that central to rock band. I mean one reason why it’s so fun to go back to the console version is to keep gaining fans and move up the leaderboard, plus set good scores on individual songs.

But the game is still very good and has incredible polish and presentation. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they crammed the full Rock Band 2 experience into the PSP. The menus look stunning. The characters and stages look decent. The guitars look kinda bad sometimes but that’s ok.

As far as competition goes, this game is in my opinion quite a lot better than the guitar hero DS games. While that game is fun, the sequals are basically DLC for this game, and I’d rather just pay for the songs I want rather than being given a load of stuff I don’t care about, and have to switch cartriges every time I want to play something else.

Even though guitar hero on tour does feel more like playing guitar, this game feels more fun and much more comfortable to play. Hand cramps are very common with on tour, I’ve had them every time I pick it up and practically everyone else has too. However, Activision are apparently working on a PSP guitar hero so that will probably end up being very similar to this game. I hope so anyway. If they go with a weird peripheral for the PSP I’ll be giving it a miss.

We’ll see how that guitar hero game turns out. It’s got to offer something much better than the console versions to make me interested but we’lll see. In the meantime, and most likely after that game comes out, Rock Band Unplugged is a worthy purchase for Rock Band fans and PSP owners who want to take the band on the road or just something to play on the bus on on any car or other journey. Or just play it in bed, whatever.

But still, just the fact that a huge publisher, even if all their games are crap in my opinion besides Modern Warfare and the Blizzarrd games would decide to threaten to stop making games completely for a console is a very worrying thing for Sony. (I love blizzard but why did they have to partner with Activision of all people?).

I mean gamers thinking about buying PS3s aren’t dumb. They’re going to read news like this and they aren’t going to be brimming with confidence and really be that enticed to buy a PS3, especially when they’re so “overpriced”.

Honestly I’m so tired of people saying it’s overpriced. Yes it is more than £100 more expensive than the 360. However, it has blu-ray which would add quite a lot to the price for sure, it has free online play, you don’t need a wi-fi adapter (which is a rip-off btw) plus other things. So adding those to the price of the 360 and you’re pretty much on a level playing field. But then the 360 still doesn’t have a blu-ray player.

Even if people don’t care about blu-ray, they can’t say the system isn’t worth the price tag because they don’t care about a major feature. But this is one of the big mistakes Sony have made. The system is too powerful for this generation, too hard to develop for and too expensive to produce (although it’s getting cheaper).

Plus you have to install games which often don’t run as well or look as good while wasting your space. That makes no sense whatsoever. So my point is that Activision are basically screwing Sony further. It seems pretty obvious that a new slim version is coming, hopefully with a lower price or at least a very enticing bundle with some games. So by stating what Sony are already aware of, they’re putting negative thoughts in the minds of potential customers.

Right now it just feels like Sony are the jokes of the games industtry, and it seems like nothing’s going right for them. People criticise the price, the system itself, their exclusive, while being reviewed well, aren’t really selling huge amounts and the people who own 360’s are just saying “meh, I can live without those”. How do Sony go about changing these perceptions?

I think at this point all Sony can do is just put their heads down and really work hard to make up for all the mistakes they’ve made, and really try to learn from them, especially when it comes time for the PS4. I just hope they can pull a Nintendo and come back from the pits of embarrassing last place to make a big impact and also hope that the damage isn’t longer lasting than just one generation.

Star Defense (all ngmoco stuff is good)

Sims 3 (haven’t bought it yet but looks good from what I’ve seen)

Firemint Real Racing (also haven’t bought it but looks amazing for an app store game)

These are all really great. The only one I have right now is Star Defense and if you in any way like tower defense games, then you will love this. It’s got a cool 3D gameplay style that works beautifully with touch controls.

The other two games I have my reservations about because of their pricing but for real racing, more because of it’s controls. I just don’t like playing racing games with motion control. The only exception so far is Excite Truck on Wii. Also excitebots if that ever comes out here. Real Racing does have a touch control system too so that might be interesting to check out. It sounds strange though so I’m not too sure. What I am sure about though is that the in car camera view in that game looks incredible for an iphone game. It looks like it’s really pushing the hardware.

I heard somewhere that GT PSP might not have in-car view. To me that would be unacceptable because I’ve grown so used to using that view in GT5 Prologue that I have trouble driving well using the zoomed out camera. So I definitely don’t want to be forced to use that. And really, if RR on iphone can do it then surely the PSP can.

So anyway check out those games and older hits such as the following if you’re into the app store and need some suggestions. Also, I get most of my news from IGN.com so you would probably be wise to head over there for reviews from professionals.

Older app store releases to check out:

Fieldrunners

Peggle

Bejewled 2

Bookworm (not what I would call a game really, but fun for a few mins, plus I’m a Popcap games superfan by this point)

Zen Bound (also not for everyone but very cool in my opinion)

geoDefense (another good tower defense game, not as good as Star Defense in my opinion but has a very cool
visual style similar to geometry wars)

Blocked (simple, cheap, indie puzzle game)

Enigmo (this is a cool concept, I never got into it too much but I probably should go back. Not the most pick up and play game)

Line Rider (Do I even need to explain why this is fun? Pointing isn’t perfect though. DS would be better because of stylus accuracy, but still fun)

Trism (successful indie puzzle game, it’s been a big rags to riches story for the app store that apple highlighted)

The Tap Tap games (both free, these are fun guitar hero / rock band style rhythem games)

Topple (free and fun puzzle game by ngmoco)

TapDefense (I have it but haven’t played it yet, but I hear it’s good, and it’s free too so what’s to lose?)

Rolando (locoroco for iphone basically, although I personally am a locoroco fan so they can both co-exist as far as I’m concerned)

Crystal Defenders and Vanguard Storm (both by square enix, I have the lite versions of both and if I had the money to blow on all these games I may have bought them, both good games)

Thanks for reading.

After playing it I’m actually kinda torn. On one hand, the game is what I expected it to be and it is a very solid tennis game. But after playing with and without motion plus, I honestly find it hard to see how it’s that much of an improvement. Maybe it’s just that I’m not using it right, or that I need more practice. But I really feel quite let down because I was led to believe that the difference between motion plus and no motion plus is night and day. While it is an improvement, I didn’t feel like I had much more control over my shots when I used the wii remote with the addon attached.

One thing that is particularly frustrating is how it’s easy to go cross-court from the backhand and forehand sides and at the net. But trying to hit a backhand into the left court or an inside out forehand or for that matter, almost any shot down the line, is very difficult even in a practice situation. In an actual match, it’s almost impossible.

Another part of the game that has frustrated me so far is how net players seem to be much harder to beat than anyone else. Some matches in grand slam career mode don’t end on a tie breaker, so you have to actually break the net guys, and that (at least for me) has proven very difficult because one mistake and they will hit a winning volley. I’ve had to eventually give up a couple of times in matches when I just couldn’t break serve. I feel like this might be my fault, because I’ve had the same issues in older tennis games even using controllers. But I think if I could feel more secure in where my shots are going to go then it would be easier to have more success against the serve and volley players.

It’s quite ironic that despite motionplus being all about increased accuracy, I know that I would have much more precise control using a D-Pad and buttons. I like the idea of motion control being accurate and motion plus does have a lot of potential. But I think it hasn’t been fully realised here. I think the ideal game would be where you could make your shot without having to deal with hitting the ball in the wrong direction or just missing completely, and be able to focus more on tactics and angles of shots.

Overall though, this is a very solid, graphically nice and colourful, fun tennis game. It’s going to satisfy pretty much everyone so I think they’ve done a good job. They have a lot of control schemes to cater to everyone from casuals to hardcore tennis fans. However, I do think though that people probably should pick up motion-plus for the best expereience, and using the nunchuk is also a must-for the real tennis fans, but remote only should be fine for the majority of wii owning casuals. When I played without the nunchuk I found it to be very tricky to use the D-Pad to move to the net during points and aim serves, but when your just playing from the baseline you probably won’t have any real problems.

So I do reccomend this game. It’s definitely a big step up from wii sports tennis and it’s by far the best tennis game on wii, (sorry topspin 3). Personally I’m excited for the PS3 version later this year but I think the two versions will be able to co-exist and offer different expeirences. Hopefully next year or whenever EA does another one, they do more to refine the controls and make it easier to pull off all types of shots with the remote.

Edit:

So I’ve been playing more since I wrote this review, and I have to say that I am getting better at the down the line shots on both sides, but the inside out forehand is still very tough to pull off. But My biggest complaints with the game now are that there aren’t tiebreaks in gran slam career mode matches and that serve and volley players are way overpowered compared to baseline players.

This means that against tricky net players who are tough to break the serve of, matches can go on for as far as I know, forever until you break their serve. I’ve had a couple of matches go to about 10 games to 8 or around that mark, which is pretty ridiculous since I put the setting for 3 game sets. It should just go to 3 games all and then to a tiebreak, which would make beating net players much easier.

In a tiebreak you only have to win 1 point off the opponent’s serve while holding your own, which isn’t very difficult as a serve and volley player myself, or even as a baseliner if that was your tactic of choice.

So to reiterate, overall I do really enjoy the game. It’s definitely the most addictive wii game since mario kart by far. I hope they do another one next year and hopefully they can fix the tie-break situation and refine the controls to make motionplus absolutely amazing, because I’m sure there’s lots more potential there.

But anyway, if you own a wii and have any interest in tennis, then pick this game up, EA deserve their props for making a great wii tennis game here.

Whatever you type in to the virtual keyboard will appear in the game and I mean pretty much everything you could possibly think of, and will help you to obtain the star.

Check it out on youtube and once your mind has been suitably blown, you may proceed to pre-order the game.

Mario vs Donkey Kong, return of the mini’s and the new warioware game really show that Nintendo is fully aboard the user generated content bandwagon. I mean the warioware game, you actually make your own warioware microgames and can then share them online. That is pretty fantastic to me. I’ll hopefully be able to persuade my bro to buy them both so I can check them out on his DSi, and maybe if Nintendo really start pushing the updated system consistently hard then maybe I’ll have to get one at some point. I’m not sure. They really have a lot more to prove to me that it’s worth upgrading from my DSi.

One game that possibly will give me a reason to upgrade would be scribblenauts. Not because I can’t play the game on my DS lite, but because it just looks so good that I want to play it on the best possible console, and that’s definitely the DSi. From what I’ve played of it, the buttons feel better and the system as a whole just feels more classy and cool. It’s more of a joy to hold and use than the current model.