Joystiq

Namco Bandai, er ... we mean Surge rented out the Geisha House in Hollywood last night in order to throw a party for the launch of Afro Samurai, and Joystiq tagged along to check things out. The best thing about the night? Plenty of stations to play the game on both PS3s and Xbox 360s. Sadly, the sound was so loud in the place that you couldn't hear the hacking and slashing from the samurai with the gigantic hairdo.

Also puzzling was the fact that Samuel L. Jackson was listed as a co-host of this party and was a no show. That was a real surprise, since he provides both the voices of Afro Samurai and his sidekick Ninja Ninja and is a co-producer of the series. Either he didn't show at all, or he really does have ninja-esque skills and we just missed him. Update: he actually did show up, we just missed him. Plus he was dressed for freezing weather.

Check out the gallery below, and highlights after the break including a video performance by an afro-bedecked The RZA, who provides music both on the show and in the game.

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Mattel had a booth at CES pimping out things like U.B. Funkeys, a Barbie nail design automatic applicator contraption, and Mindflex, a game that claims to harness the untapped power of your brain's beta waves. These are waves that the brain generates when you're busy solving problems, concentrating, or trying to decipher what the sales chart trends on Joystiq are pointing toward.

Mattel wants to channel said waves into a franchise of games under the Mindflex banner, the first of which offers a "float the ball with your brain" challenge. To play, you slap on a funky headband, attach little butterfly clips to your earlobes and then concentrate really hard. If you do it well enough ... the ball floats. Relax your brain or close your eyes, and it hovers down.

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As UGO's purchase of 1UP continues to send shock waves across the gaming landscape, details about what to expect under the site's new overlords have begun to emerge. Or rather, what we could have expected. 1UP's Scott Sharkey drops his synergistic ideas for a new site comprised of lists, boobs and lots of both. But alas, Scott's been promptly muzzled by his new handlers.

Don't worry, though. Joystiq plans to "borrow" all of your fine ideas, Scott, for our new megasite: JoyDaily.com -- brought to you by AOL's TMZ!

Relic Entertainment's Mark Noseworthy has confirmed with Joystiq that the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 closed beta will begin January 21st if you purchased the original Dawn of War expansion, Soulstorm. Procrastinators, take note: you'll be introduced into the public beta just a week later on January 28th. Or, break the cycle of lethargy and pick up the expansion in order to grab an early beta spot.

We got a closer look at Dawn of War 2 during CES, and fans of real-time strategy games will not be disappointed ... unless you don't own a PC (but c'mon, how could you be an RTS buff without owning a PC?). Dawn of War 2 will be a PC-only release with Games for Windows Live features like voice chat and Achievements.

We learned a valuable lesson at CES last week: Don't demo an RTS game on a trade show floor. Why? Because it's nigh-impossible to hear a developer's instructions over the deafening noise of geek-outs. It turns into something like this dialogue snippet from our hands-on experience with Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 2:

Relic: "So, you'll quickly want to set a rally point here." *taps screen*
Joystiq: *clicks on random units* [units march off-screen]
Relic: "Okay, so if you look at this icon, you'll see that your character is earning zeal. You might want to build some heavy firepower units for support."
Joystiq: *attacks enemy power generator* [cue: bad move!]

It was just too darn loud at CES to get good instructions, and Relic only had one demo station on hand, which obviously did not feature any PVP gameplay. Naturally, we had StarCraft 2 in mind as we fooled around with Dawn of War 2, measuring Relic's RTS against what we've played of Blizzard's next blockbuster. We can say that Dawn of War 2 is currently winning in the looks department. As we watched an Imperial Tank literally roll through walls and crush them into powder while Space Marines jumped over the action with jetpacks, we were remiss to have left our drool bib back home in the hamper.

We've embedded a pair of videos from our session after the break, including producer Mark Noseworthy blowing stuff up!

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On the way to Microsoft's booth, we encountered a man clearly so tough that he doesn't even need to class up one of the world's largest electronics shows by including shirt sleeves. Just in case that didn't get the point across, the writing on the back of the shirt says it all. This is clearly a man who ain't takin' any lip from some puny HDTV pitchman. Even Scrat in the back can't believe his attire.

Ladies, how often have you taken a look at your poor little Wii Fit, and thought "If only there were some sort of peripheral to let the world know that I'm both concerned about my fitness aesthetics, and was emblazoned with pink"? Probably so often that you've lost count. As you know, pink is completely 100% the only color women are allowed to love and/or get accessories in. So the Lady Fitness Workout Kit has your name on it. Sorry, boys.

Situated in the exact opposite corner of the CES Central Hall, Microsoft must have been strategically placed so that no wars would break out between the two juggernauts. Although Justin McElroy thinks it's so that an employee from Microsoft won't fall in love with an employee from Sony and cause complete chaos. That's definitely more plausible.

However, just like Sony, Microsoft only had a tiny section devoted to gaming. You could get some hands-on time with Fallout 3, Lips, the new Scene It, Gears of War 2, Dawn of War II and Halo Wars. The rumor we'd heard that Fallout's upcoming Operation: Anchorage DLC would be there turned out to be untrue, so we spent most of our time beating young girls at karaoke with Lips. Okay, we kid. We geeked out on Dawn of War II. More on that soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the gallery below for you booth addicts.

Sony's a pretty big company. Shocker, right? They're busy putting out things like new digital cameras, wafer-thin displays, televisions that show realistic 3D images, and some new piece of tech that replaces your brain with a network of recycled Memory Sticks. Amazing.

Still, with all that going on they do still manage to churn out games. Only a tiny part of their booth at CES was dedicated to gaming, but they managed to fit in Patapon 2, Killzone 2, Resistance: Retribution, Flower and an in-progress EyeToy game. Check them all out in the gallery below.

There was one gaming title at CES that wasn't produced by Sony, Capcom, Microsoft or Activision, that was Paleo Entertainment's Merchants of Brooklyn. Here's an excerpt from their presser: "You take the role of an elite neanderthal fighter with a taste for blood. Having had your arm unwillingly detached from your body courtesy of a chainsaw, your new prototype biomechanical arm transforms into different twisted and brutal weaponry to aid you in the slaughter." So, does this sound like Bionic Commando meets The Flintstones?

There's not much to see right now, but the level we played was pretty fragtastic and it's rendered in a cell-shaded art style that we don't see enough of. It's running on Crytek's CryEngine 2, and should be out for the PC/Xbox 360/PS3 set later this year. There wasn't enough of the game in the demo to get a feeling for what it'll become, but being able to pick up your enemies body parts and charge them up to toss grenade-style was fun. If a caveman merged with tech is your dream come true, you won't have to wait much longer. In fact, you can check out the trailer after the break!

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Imagine, if you will, that all of CES (which includes over 130,000 attendees) has been shrunk down to a scale model roughly the size of a football field. Or better yet, the map room in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Off in the far corner, there's an extremely small, tiny, miniscule hut. Way back behind the big temples and buildings and such. See it? Probably not. Well, there's no headpiece to the Staff of Ra to illuminate it, but that's representative of the "Gaming Showcase" at CES.

The real thing is off the beaten path, and none of the people staffing the information booths had heard of it. They kept sending us in endless loops back to the Hilton, where it most definitely is not located. In fact, we saw so much of the Hilton (which is now sadly missing the defunct Star Trek: The Experience) that we memorized the entire layout of the place. Finally, after throwing away all of our maps and tosing caution to the winds, we accidentally stumbled across it in the South Hall.

It was full of wholesalers, the ever present Entropia Universe, Boomchairs, third-party peripheral accesory makers, headphone manufacturers, and a very sad dearth of games. In fact, we only saw one game being shown off. It's called Merchants of Brooklyn from Paleo Entertainment, so check back for a writeup on it shortly. Until then, enjoy the Gaming Showcase gallery below, and pray for us to unearth another secret room contaning the Ark of the Covenant of gaming. Or some energy drinks and granola bars.

Boom Blox
My Wii gathered so many cobwebs this year that it looked like it was a prop from a creepy old Boris Karloff movie. The phenomenon of Wii Fit had me dust it off and breathed some new life into it for a few days, but before long it was relegated back to its hiding space under the couch. That is until Boom Blox slid smoothly into the disc slot. Two days later, I could barely move my right arm due to my newfound obsession, and I still fire it up on a regular basis just to hurl balls at Jenga towers.

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