The GamingNexus crew has a full schedule today, as Sean, John and I have no less than 18 different appointments/events scheduled. Some of the companies we will be meeting with today include Capcom, Sony Online Entertainment, THX, Mitsubishi Projectors, ezGear, Viewsonic, Vizio and Tritton Tech. Keep an eye out for updates on these and more.

We will also be wrapping up the day with a visit to the annual Showstoppers event (similar to Digital Experience) and then try our luck at the SOE Annual Poker Tournament, where we will also expected to get some hands on with Free Realms.  I imagine we may have more fun here in Vegas than Chuck, who is hanging out at his own convention back in Sandusky, OH.

It's CES 2009 and as with every CES I've been to the first day saw the GN group at Digital Experience. For those that don't know, it's really a gathering of vendors in a large ballroom and you can quickly hit them in a small environment compared to CES. I had a plan of stopping by three booths from the list as there weren't as many game specific ones at the event.

I'll let Dan and Sean talk about Nyko but they had on hand Wii accessories. Dan and Sean have an appointment with them later on in the week so they will have a greater detailed account of their products. I did hold the new wireless Kama design in my hand and even with my small hands I found it to be a little smaller than I liked. The lower front button had a plastic lip to rest your finger on but I found it to be a little in the way. In all honesty it was a quick look so maybe Dan and Sean will have a better feel of it when they look at the product more closely later on in the week.

There were two products at Logitech's setup I really wanted to get my hands on. First up was the Harmony 1100 remote control. The successor to the Harmony 1000, the Harmony 1100 has some nice improvements. For starters the Logitech rep was really touting the customizability of the screen. Setup the buttons to your liking and make the remote display what you want and when. I was rather impressed with the responsiveness of the capacitive touch screen and the picture was nice and bright. On each side of the screen are some small plastic ridges that correspond with a sidebar button on the screen. They aren't real buttons but they are very helpful in giving a tactile feel of where the LCD button was just by sliding your finger over from the ridge to the screen. The Harmony 1100 felt great in the hand and I think I might have my replacement for my Harmony One.

The other big product was the G19 keyboard. The new gaming keyboard from Logitech has 12 programmable keys and lets you record macros on the fly. Like the G13, you can alter the color of the backlit keys as the product features the same multi-color LED as the G13. In fact you can combine this with the G13 and the new G9x mouse and have an entire setup with matching colors that are to your specification. The major feature though is the 320x240 color LCD display on the top. It's a vivid LCD panel that was displaying a YouTube video when I was looking at it. The video looked mostly smooth but I can't tell if it's because of the video or the panel that didn't make it completely smooth. I'll be able to run some tests once we get it in though to see how well it really performs. I have to say the LCD is quite impressive up close and it will be an open source API to develop plug-ins for it. Due out in March, the G19 looks like it has the chops to become THE gaming keyboard to pick up.

NVIDIA was a quick stop for me as I will be meeting them Saturday but they were on hand to show off their 3D glasses technology. Now the system is like those 3D movies you view in the theater with powered polarized glasses and they were running it off the up and coming Samsung 22" LCD monitor that had a 120Hz refresh rate. Dan can offer up more details on the monitor but the powered NVIDIA glasses would produce an impressive 3D effect on videos and games. They had my current favorite, Left 4 Dead as the demo. I'll have more details on it after Saturday but this might be a good seller for those wanting a new experience in gaming. It does need specialized hardware in the form of the monitor to work though and I heard the way they are going to sell it was in a bundle. Look for more after Saturday.

On an unrelated gaming note, I did stop by the HTC booth which makes my Touch Pro phone. Scanning the table, I told one of the reps it's too bad he didn't have the Touch HD out to look at. With that said, he pulled one out of his pocket saying that they did for those that asked for it. The phone felt really nice in my hand and it's certainly an appeal for those who want an iPhone physical format but want the flexibility of Windows Mobile. I don't know if I could do without a hard keyboard though but the Touch HD had me drooling. [READ MORE]

• Just because you can fit it on a DS doesn't necessarily mean that you should.  Case in point, Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades.
• In choosing the right netbook, the only thing those machines have in common is an ideal.
• Fwd: Review of Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories.
• In Ghostbusters for the Wii, do not cross the nunchuks.
• Step into the shoes of President-Elect Barack Obama on Inauguration Day.
• The Razer Moray Noise Isolating Earbuds won't convince you to toss away your over-the-ear headphones.
• Techgage takes a look at proper CD ripping practices.

Thanks to Defunct Games, TheTechLounge, AtomicGamer, Commander-in-Chief.net, Tweaknews, and Techgage for today's news roundup.

New Year's Eve 2008.  My wife Grace and I paid fellow GamingNexus writer Sean Nack and his wife Stephanie an overnight visit.  We brought over Monopoly, but we weren't feeling very cutthroat.  We brought over Balderdash, but weren't feeling definitive.  Nothing at the theater piqued our attention.  And so my mind wandered back over the year, as minds are wont to do when another 365 days have come and gone.  And I'd resolved to pay more attention to indie developers for the upcoming year, 2009--but it didn't feel like it was too early to start.

Jonathan Blow's Braid was a game that I'd continually skipped past.  My Xbox 360 red ringed a week before it hit XBLA.  By the time my 360 came back, Spore hit.  Then Warhammer Online hit.  Then Civilization IV: Colonization hit.  Then Fracture (wince).  Then Dead Space.  Fable II, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Need For Speed Undercover (wince again), Prince of Persia...then a revisit to Pirates of the Burning Sea and the new-to-me Europa Universalis III.

And through it all Braid has been taunting me, calling me a spineless, lilly-livered coward for (predominantly) sticking with this holiday season's no-brainers.  Jonathan Blow is a man that, as far as I can tell from photographs and videos, has never smiled in his life; and he wasn't smiling at me now either. So it was time to take my cowardice and crutch myself on Sean Nack and his wife.  One hour before an incredibly slow-moving ball was to drop in Times Square, I convinced everyone to participate in what's been heralded in certain circles as the Most Pretentious Moment in Gaming for 2008:  Braid.  Plus it's been showing up--rather conspicuously--as the media darling on more than one Top 10 of 2008 list.

All four of us took up strategic positions on the couch, and it took all four of our minds put together to make it through the infernally-puzzling Braid.  We played, we laughed, we scoffed, we scolded, we shook our heads in defeat, we threw our heads back in victory, we pumped our fists with elation then alternately wished we could punch Jonathan Blow in the face.  It'd been several years since I'd been on a roller coaster ride, but traversing Braid certainly counted.  And just because we made it through doesn't mean the entire journey made complete sense. 

Here's what Braid's aftertaste was like to Sean and I--the following is copied and pasted from a back-and-forth email between the two of us--plus Sean divulges his sentiments on the endings of Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 as well.  We figured it was high time the discussion of Braid be taken beyond the "It's the greatest ending ever!" platitudes.

* * * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * * *

...And if you haven't played Braid, then none of this will make sense out of context anyway.  [Continue reading "Adventures in Braid and the overwrought metaphor."] [READ MORE]

A few of us here at Gaming Nexus will be at CES in a week and Dan's been saying we have to go to the Microsoft keynote. Well if what TechCrunch says is true, I'm going to skip it. The "highlights" of the keynote will be that Windows 7 will be an open beta, two already announced Halo games coming to the 360, easier networking, and Windows Mobile gets Flash in the first quarter of this year. If again this is true, then yeah it's going to be pretty boring. I mean we already have Flash on Windows Mobile via Opera on some of the latest WinMo phones and the two Halo games are pretty much well known in the gaming community. If you really want to you can find a leaked copy of the Windows 7 beta so the only thing we don't have any knowledge on is the easier networking which isn't that big of a deal in my opinion. Overall, sounds like something we can skip but who knows. Dan, Sean, or I might just stop by and check out the happenings before Digital Experience.

• Looks like videogames aren't so recession proof after all.  Xbox America discusses.
• Transformers Animated: The Game for the Nintendo DS is apparently ... less than meets the eye.
• Our own Ben Berry is suited up, Lippi Selk'Bag 1-style, ready for sub-arctic temperatures or Best Buy all-nighters.
• The In Win Matrix Chassis (case) is equipped with an 80-plus 300-watt power supply, and is intended for home theater use.
• In Win has another eye-catching creation with the NA USB/ESATA HDD Enclosure.
• Aluminum construction and serious features for cooling, the Cooler Master ATCS 840 case is one of the newest.

Thanks to Xbox America, Defunct Games, BurnOutPC, Legit Reviews, and Tweaknews.net for today's news roundup.

• You could do worse with a Mario Party/RPG mash-up.  Defunct Games reviews Dokapon Kingdom.
• Entering into the increasingly-popular netbook market, it's the MSI Wind Netbook Laptop.
• AtomicGamer hits up Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC with a C+.  Ouch.
• The Foxconn A7VA Motherboard is assembled with a successful, classic design.
• Incredible overclocking headroom from the $80 Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200.

Thanks to Defunct Games, TechwareLabs, AtomicGamer, iXBT Labs, and Techgage for today's news roundup.

Happy Holidays from everyone at GamingNexus.  Things will be a bit slow here as we spend time with out families and check out the fat loot we got over the last week or so. 

We want to know what you got though, post your best gift in the comments.

Here are a few things I missed while realizing I don't own nearly enough LEGO blocks:

• Capcom offers some l33t tips for Lost Planet
• Sony offering holiday themed levels for LittleBigPlanet
• Ars looks at the top 5 happiest moments in gaming from 2008
• GamePolitics offers their 15 moments from 2008
• Edge Looks at the top 25 heroes from the game industry as well as the top 20 defining moments
• Not to be out done, GameSetWatch posts the top 50 press releases of the year
• Game On! looks at the top games of 2008
• Read this if you suck at Motorstorm: Pacific Ridge

Here are a few things I missed while mourning the passing of Majel Roddenberry:

• Recession?  Core gamers don't fear recession (although they do fear sunlight)
• Totilo loses to Soulja boy, gets a rematch.  Begin collective yawning
• Psychopedia launched, must have resource for all the Psychonauts out there.
• Take Two can't ignore the Wii any more, will lose money on developing games for the platform like everyone else
• How to build an awesome PC for cheap without having to break into John's house
• Sony takes you inside the Heavy Rain press event
• I think these may be on the only Wii's I'm interested in
• Outsourcing leads the development trends for 2008

Yesterday's game was the fabled Pool of Radiance. It's part of what was called the Gold Box series of AD&D games set in the Forgotten Realms. A really great series, I wish someone would remake them. It's too bad the Ubisoft sequel did poorly. The screenshot for the game was taken from the Amiga version.


Today's classic might look like a Gauntlet clone but it was very fun nevertheless. It was a single player game only though but you got to killed Nazis which is always good.

The trivia for 12/15 was Rescue on Fractalus!. If I remember correctly, it was that game and Ballblazer that came out as being one of the first Lucasfilm games. I was always partial to Ballblazer myself.

Anyways, today's game comes from Ubisoft  SSI 20 years ago. It was the first in a long line of games for this series. I was pretty excited when this came out and had a great time with this one as a kid.

I've met with a few managers who actually like the fact I play video games. Reason being is that video games work on your problem solving skills and a lot of computer programming involves solving problems. Well, it seems some managers aren't liking the World of Warcraft players out there because they think they don't give 100% to their job. Personally, I haven't met anyone who's a big MMORPG person who doesn't put their job first and the game second. Not to say there aren't as you've probably read up on a few stories of marriages, relationships, and jobs lost to those playing an MMORPG too much. To me it's just like any addiction. If the person has a problem whether it be games, drugs, alcohol, or something else they are going to not be the model worker in any case. Managers should look at past work as well as references to judge a person and not by the hobbies they partake in.

Thanks BoingBoing.