As seen on NextLust:

At first I thought it was just me and my late night, non-sleeping, hard-partying ways, but today as people started asking me if I was sick, I am now under the belief that someone at CES tried to kill me with their SARS or whatever other disease they brought to Vegas. Besides myself and some members of Destructoid, it seems Gizmodo caught the plague as well. Anyone else that got sick?

Instead of getting into long-winded detail about the upcoming games showcased on the show floor of CES (which mostly included 360 and Games for Windows titles anyway), I thought I'd give you my quick impressions of each title I was able to spend some time with. Before you yell at me about Cooking Mama for the Wii, I was a dope and missed my appointment with Majesco. I should be seeing it at the end of the month, so fear not on that. view full story + comments

The 3d mouse that made waves and stole show awards away from the Wiimote and Sixaxis is finally coming to mass market.  The Novint Falcon 3D mouse is essentially a little robot with three arms that tracks your mouse movement with it's arms and simulates gravity, textures, and intertia by applying force feedback to your tugging. 

We had the opportunity to drool over it once again at CES, having jumped all over it previously at E3, and it is tighter and more impressive than ever. We were treated to a variety of tech demos where we ran a small pebble over a heavy textured surface and felt the ridges as if it was actually there, or pushed through a gelatenous clump of molasses and felt the pressure release as we ran the pebble all the way through the other side. These kind of experiences could lead to amazing new kinds of gameplay experiences,  but unfortunately there isn't any mass market support for the controller yet.

While there is plenty to love, I do have some gripes with it; perhaps moreso with Vtech -- the company that isn't delivering the original intended pricepoint.

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Sure we saw some cool stuff and sure we got little-to-no sleep, but that doesn't keep a robot down. Check out some of our most candid moments as we walked the streets of Vegas. For the photo below, that's Ron and I at the Sony Online Entertainment poker party.

Think EA treats its employees unfairly? Think gold farmers in far off lands have it bad? Check out what the crew of Destructoid was subjected to over in Las Vegas during CES. Unfortunately, we were unable to photograph the electric shock machine for bad grammar, but you get the picture ... literally. Now this is living!

By Zeus' beard, it's a Roman MMO! Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising is the debut game from Perpetual Entertainment, set in 300 B.C. Italy. Distributed by SOE, the game draws heavily from mythology and history to create a world that strived to be as accurate as possible for the setting of the time, keeping out only the parts that wouldn't make the game fun. The world is even set up as the Romans thought the area looked like in 300 B.C.!

So, click the jump to check out what SOE was kind enough to show me!

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Between gadgets and games we've just had fun running around town spreading the Dtoid love, taking photos in stupid and ritzy places, making tourists who find us out of context rubberneck and walk into walls.



Pictured above from left to right: Dale North (our podcast producer), Slashing Games Pedro, Puppet, Dick McVengeance, yours truly in full metal, Ron Workman, CTZ, Fronz, and Summatoid in the middle. Good times, good times.

We had the pleasure of getting utterly pwned by the pro gamer (an emasculating score of 10 to -1, mind you) who also went home with $100,000 from AblePlanet; a headphone company sponsoring his Quake 4 habit. Rafik practices every day for hours and also maintains a strict exercise regimen. "Staying physically strong is just as important, it makes a huge difference in my game." Definitely a refreshing break from guys playing Warcraft eating chips off their chests. Check out the gallery of the total pwnage below.

Last year's launch of two new consoles has overshadowed gaming on the PC, which has prompted the debate that seems to come and go every five years -- is PC gaming dead or has it become niche? Yesterday we were given the lucky opportunity to find out what the future of PC gaming will be like, and so far it's looking pretty damn hawt. Everything that's good about owning an Xbox 360 and playing games online on Xbox Live (consistant experience, voip, gamer rep, and cheat prevention to name a few) are coming to Windows Vista.

We have a video coming with details of the strategy and functionality of the product, but for now here's a huge gallery of teasers. Note the granular parental control and ESRB rating, the smart shortcut manager, the Windows Experience Index hardware rank, and how multiplayer sessions and friend management will be like. Look familiar? The service will be interoperable for existing Xbox Live Gold memberships and other peripheral services are being developed (such as support for dedicated servers) are also on the way.  Pricing, however, remains a mystery.

Also pictured below is a wireless dongle which allows Xbox 360 controllers to hook up on Vista without drivers. 

As you walk the CES show floor you hear many things, but certain talked-about items are more ear-perking than others. Such was the case today as I was playing some Halo 2 for Games for Windows. Here's a rough estimate of what I heard from a mysterious Microsoft rep:

"So yeah, the new 360 will have an HDMI port, a 120GB hard drive, and a cooler chip."

I heard this and thought I had missed something in the news as I was busy all day wading through the masses at CES. But, after finally getting on the Internets, I saw that no announcement had been made. Is this a rumor? Yes. Will it happen? Yes. 

I predict that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will be the most popular Xbox Live Arcade game to date when it launches (supposedly Q1 of this year). In case you hadn't heard, it is a port of the PlayStation version and retains all of the original audio while still weighing in at less than 50 MB. But how much will it cost?

Videos of Alien Hominid and Catan are after the break.

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As you may already know, charging the Sixasis with the stock 4 foot USB bundled with the console is a joyless experience; a corner cut surely to keep the price down on the PS3. Players that want to charge more than one controller at a time need to buy additional USB cables or "something else" -- and that's exactly the problem 3rd parties are trying to solve right now. As you can see from the picture above; there's some good options headed your way.

Enter Nyko's three tiered offerings: a premium long USB cable for the budget conscious ($10), a patented AC-powered Dual Charge AC that lets you charge your goods away from the console ($20) and for the ultimate in sexiness there's the grand puba solution -- the PS3 Charge Base pictured above ($30). This was obviously our favorite. We were impressed by it's slick and sturdy design, the fact that it requires no USB ports, supports all 4 at a time, and looks damn good sitting next to a PS3. The aesthetics alone are worth the price of admission. Check out the six pics attached!

We also spent some time with their new line of PS3 and Xbox 360 Zero controllers, their Guitar Hero solutions for the PS3 (we tested them on Freebird, obviously), HDMI cables, Dual-Shock 2 adapters, and more fun stuff.  Those reviews are coming as soon as we finish last night's fridge cold pizza.

 

The coin-op arcade may be dead, but they live on in their original form on the Wii Virtual Console, Xbox Live, and finally making a debut on the PS3 Network. Six classic Midway games are PS3 bound as individual downloads: Mortal Kombat II, Rampart, Gauntlet, Joust, Championship Sprint, and Rampage World Tour. With the exception of the analog-adapted gameplay of the racing game, the experience is exactly what the hardware gamer wants -- responsive no-fuss classic joystick control with a few extra bells and whistles. Screenshots, impressions, launch details follow.

 

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On the way out of the World Series of Video Games booth we ran into four of the most hardcore gamers at the event: The Frag Dolls clan (Ubisoft's secret weapon in video game tournaments). From right to left: Valkyrie, Jynx, Destructoid, Calyber, and Seppuku.  Check out more photos on their CES blog from today.

You're so jealous. Admit it. Unfortnately, we don't have any of these to give away on the site. We're keeping them to ourselves. Full res photo below, zoom in: