For those of you that don’t already know, I’m the Social Media Director for the audio company Cyber Acoustics. While at work, I slave away trying to create a community out of nothing. It’s harder than it sounds – believe me.

This week, I’ve been lucky enough to attend Las Vegas’ 2010 Consumer Electronic Show. Although my company does not have a booth, I have had the wonderful opportunity to peruse the show floor in search of all things nerdy and technologically arousing.

Sadly, there has not been anything this year that has really grabbed onto my geeky heartstrings. Yet, anyway. For most of the big names – Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, LG, Samsung – 3D-ready TVs have been this year’s award-winning show dog. Sure, 3D televisions may be the “future,” but, due to seeing movies in 3D at the theater, the tech does not feel fresh and new. The show can be summed up with this picture:

In the future, we all can look crazydumb.

Sony had some pretty fun game-related items in their booth, although most of it the public has already known about. I’ve uploaded a few videos of Heavy Rain and EyePet on my YouTube channel. I suggest watching those as soon as you can. They’ll make you happy; I promise.

Tomorrow, I’m going to swing back by the show floor and hopefully check up on booths that I missed today.

Much love.

So, what games are they? Well, read on, child. (pictures not included, because these are NUGGETS!)

Yakuza: I think I’ve started this game three or four times in the past year. I’m about 6 hours into this play session – the longest I’ve gotten so far – and I’m starting to enjoy the feel of the game more. Sadly, the combat is a bit dated and clumsy, but I’m making my way through it as best I can. Because I’ve started and stopped the game so many times, the story is somewhat of a mystery to me. Mainly, I’m just going about the streets and beating up fools when they get in my face on the way to the next checkpoint.  So yeah, alright.

Odin Sphere:  With the recent release of the Wii’s Muramasa: The Demon Blade, I decided to pop in Odin Sphere, since it has been on my shelf for the longest time; hey, this shit’s pretty. However, I wish the game were in high definition, but that ‘s asking too much of the PS2. I only played about 30 to 45 minutes of the game, but I can see myself going back to it sometime soon. How soon? I have no idea.

Mini Ninjas: On a more recent note: I rented Mini Ninjas for the PS3 because I felt giddy playing the demo a few weeks ago. I’ve been in the need of a solid, not-too-much-thought-put-into-it action game, and Mini Ninjas almost satiated my appetite. I said almost. As much fun as I was wanting to have with the game, I just couldn’t get into it as much as I hoped while playing the demo. So, god dammit, I have to wait for Brutal Legend. Bring on the demo, baby!

The Beatles Rock Band: What can I say, it’s Rock Band, it’s The Beatles, and it’s extremely enjoyable. It brought a smile to my face. The. Whole. Time. Congratulations Harmonix.

I’ll be back with more games… later; whenever I feel like it.

Summer is coming to a close, kids are going back to school, and some great games are on their way out as the holidays steadily approach.

But what have I been playing recently? Well, that’s where Game Nuggets come into play. Game Nuggets are games that I’ve either played to completion and loved, or games that I’ve played about an hour of and stopped – for obvious reasons. They’re not reviews, they’re freakin’ nuggets. 

Batman: Arkham Asylum: Boy, was that game a heapin’ helpin’ of fun. Honestly, I might be considering Arkham Asylum as my game of the year; just barely pushing in front of InFamous. Not only did Rocksteady Studios make one of the best comic book games to date, Arkham Asylum is easily one of the best action games to come out in recent history. Sure, some complain about the (practically) one button combat or that most of the game is played in detective mode, but it can’t be denied that the marrying of the various play mechanics Batman presents the player with equal a game that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Rise of the Argonauts: Yikes. Talk about a shining example of a game that was either released too early, or didn’t have any care put into it from the start. Granted, I don’t know what was going on at Liquid Entertainment while this game was being developed, but the end product is something that I can’t see anyone having fun with.

Damnation: Believe it or not, I was really looking forward to this game before it came out. The setting of Damnation is great: a steam-punk western taking place in a re-envisioned America during what seems to be the Civil War. To me, that sounds like an awesome environment for a game. Too bad everything else about Damnation is damn mediocre. I’m not going to go into detail here though. I mean, come on people, these are Game Nuggets!

World of Warcraft: Oh God, I’m playing WoW again. But this time, my girlfriend is enjoying the experience with me. Couples that raid together, stay together. That has to be on a shirt somewhere. It just has to be.

Wet (demo): Based on the demo, Wet could have some cool action moments in-store for the player, but I couldn’t help but feel like I’d played this game already. If not that, then at least I’ve seen the movie before; I’m sure it was done by Quentin Tarantino. Hmm.

Well, that wraps up this week’s Game Nuggets. Maybe I’ll keep doing these? Maybe. Probably.

Maybe.

I’m currently in the process of finding a career. It’s taking up a lot of time.

For serious.

I’ll try to update more; I promise*.

*no promises

Eliss is a simple, yet divinely challenging cluster-eff of chiptunish beats, clever multi-touch tactility game play and seizure inducing colors and shapes.

It’s also my iPhone Game of the Week. Word.

In the beginning “phases” of the game, the user is presented with slowly appearing circles (dubbed planets in the how-to section of the game) of two different colors. When the planets fully materialize, it is up to the user to not let two colors collide or they will lose energy from what appears to be a health meter at the top left of the screen. Eliss allows the player to move multiple planets around by a using the iPhone’s multi-touch screen.

During the play session, what are known as “squeesars” appear on the playing field. The point of the game is to remove the squeesars from the play field by generating a supernova. To perform a supernova, the player must move a like-colored and sized planet into the squeesar, thus removing them both from the play field and pushing the player one step closer to passing the phase.

In concept, Eliss sounds simple enough, but the difficulty soon ramps up when the user is presented with more than two colored planets at any given time. The size of the planets also come into play. A planet that is much larger than the squeesar must be broken down, while larger squeesars require, you guessed it, larger planets.

Sizing planets is as easy as colliding two like colored planets together or using two fingers to break them apart.

At $3.99, Eliss is an excellent challenge for the price. Shoot, I bought it weeks ago, and I’m still stuck on phase three.  I suck.

Photos courtesy of toucheliss.com

Today’s iPhone Game of the Week is a simple one. Created by Kenji Eno and developer Studio-Kura, One-Dot Enemies is the minimalist’s approach to wasting time.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t strangely fun and addictive. There is not much to this game, if it can be labeled a game at all. I find One-Dot Enemies more of an interactive art piece as opposed to a game. Whereas some artists would use a paint brush on canvas, Kenji Eno chose to use the iPhone as his artistic vehicle. 

One-Dot Enemies is set on a pure white backdrop with little bleeps and bloops as the soundtrack. As the name suggests, the enemies are a single black pixel floating among the eye-straining whiteness. All the player has to do is touch the pixels as they move to destroy them.

There is no failure in One-Dot Enemies, but in turn, there is no victory either. The piece never ends until the player stops and goes back to the title screen. To get to the title screen, the player simply shakes the iPhone. Once back at the title screen, the player can tap on the RESULT button to view a virtual toilet.

Within the toilet are all the one-dot enemies the player has destroyed during their play through, and the player also gets the option of flushing all the enemies down the toilet. It’s a simple process yet feels extremely rewarded. Take that, you god damn dots! After flushing, One-Dot Enemies shows the player how many enemies have been destroyed all around the world. Right now, the number is 14,273,835, but it’s growing every second.

Now go and download One-Dot Enemies from the App Store. Don’t worry, it’s free.

All pictures courtesy of Studio-Kura

Hey look! A new weekly feature!

Starting today, I hope to add my iPhone game of the week each Friday or Saturday for your reading pleasure. Cause hey, I don’t only play bad games.

I usually try and stick to free games when it comes to iPhone purchases, but this game had excellent word of mouth, so I made the $2.99 plunge, and every second has been worth the purchase.

Hit the jump to find out more about my iPhone game of the week – Drop7

Drop7 is Area/Code‘s first foray into the iPhone and iPod Touch gaming territory, and as a freshman release from a small company, Drop7 paves its way as one of the most simple, yet ingenious, puzzle games available on the App Store.

The set up is simple: players are presented with a 7 X 7 grid, with each starting game having a random amount of circles on the board. Each circle is designated with a number (1 through 7), and those without numbers are gray.

Like other puzzle games, the goal is to get as many points as possible without letting any of the columns fill up past the top of the grid with circles. If that happens, or the entire grid fills up, the game is over.

Each turn has the player dropping one randomly generated circle onto the board. To clear out circles, the player must drop a numbered circle into a column or row that corresponds with its number. For instance, if you get a #4 circle, it would need to be dropped on top or next to three other circles (to make four) in order for it to disappear.

This creates an element of strategy when lining up chains. Chains occur when the player drops one circle creating a string of actions eliminating multiple circles.

Other then the numbered circles, the player must also contend with the gray circles. Gray circles have two layers. In order to chip off one of the layers, the player must eliminate a numbered circle next to a gray circle. After chiseling the two layers away, the gray circle changes into a random numbered circle.

Each time the player drops a circle, a dot from the meter below the grid goes away. Once all the dots are gone, the player gains a level and gets a substantial increase in points. However, when a new level is reached, the bottom row of the grid fills up with gray circles, thus pushing up all the other circles.

Just recently, the game was updated to add leaderboards  as well as the ability to link up with the player’s Facebook account and share scores with friends there.

Drop7 is a simple game in concept, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun as hell. With three different modes of play (Normal, Hard and Sequence), there is a lot there for the money.

Get on it.

All images courtesy of Area/Code

Be sure to digg it and my DSi review… you know, if you wanna.

Did the DSi come out too soon in lieu of the DSlite’s upward, unstoppable and unforeseeable-ending success? Maybe. However, is it still an amazing piece of hardware that creates an all-around streamlined DS experience? Most definitely. My black and blue, sexy clamshell review is after the break.

While gripping my hands on the Lite revision of the DS back in 2006, I was thinking to myself, Man, how is Nintendo ever going to top this classy piece of tech? Compared to the original DS, the DSlite was a small, eloquent bit of plastic wrapped in the kiss of Nintendo’s newly Apple-inspired design approach. The pure, serious-business aesthetic of the Lite improved greatly over the original design in that it gave the user softer buttons, better speakers and battery life, brighter screens, a smaller and sleeker casing and a bigger stylus. Shoot, I’m getting a bigger stylus just thinking about it.

Who would have thought that in a mere two-in-a-half years, Nintendo would improve upon the DS yet again with the DSi.

At first glance, the DSi looks remarkably like its older brother, the Lite. But don’t be fooled. Under the hood, the DSi supports four times the amount of RAM, 256 MB of internal memory and a 133MHz CPU.

“But Beau, what does that mean for me, the average DS user?”

Simple: the DSi is slightly faster and has more internal memory for saving information. Both of which are huge pluses when it comes to usability, especially the added internal memory.

The internal memory comes in useful for a variety of reasons. Mainly, the memory is there to store the numerous pictures you’re going to take with the new built in cameras the DSi provides. As I played around with the various settings and functions of the camera and the system’s editing capabilities, I discovered how simple and streamlined Nintendo is being when implementing their blue ocean strategy.

For example, the cameras themselves do not support very high-quality lenses, so taking a professional-looking photo to slap in your portfolio is a non-event; however, the straightforward and fun to use editing tools make up for the camera lenses’ lack of quality by giving the user different ways to make their photos stand-out.

Other software differences include the new, but forgettable, DSi Sound options. With this “program,” users can either take audio tracks from their SD cards or self-recorded audio snippets and manipulate them. While this feature sounds fun on paper, it’s horribly boring upon usage. It feels like a late-in-development, tacked-on feature to add another bullet point to the DSi fact sheet.

The newest and most important software-side addition to the DSi is the new DSi Shop. Like the Wii Shop Channel, the DSi Shop allows the user to purchase new games and programs specifically made for the DSi. Also like the Wii Shop Channel, users use DSi Points to purchase said software. Right now, there is only a handful of downloadable titles available, but I did find the shop an exciting look into the future of what downloadable titles Nintendo could make available. Gameboy virtual console anyone?

Although it’s a little nerdy, the updatable firmware option the DSi provides has to be mentioned. Unlike the two previous DS iterations, the DSi’s firmware has the ability to be updated via a wireless internet connection. If Nintendo needs to update the system, the DSi has the ability to do so.

With software aside, there are a few welcoming revisions to the overall sleek design of the DSi’s predecessor. While the original DS had clicky buttons and the DSlite has squishy buttons, the DSi’s buttons fall somewhere between the two. It’s a slight change, but a refinement in comfort nonetheless. The DSi’s screens are slightly larger as well, which gives the unit a far more open and inviting feel. Lastly, the right side of the machine houses a SD card port for future memory expandability. Gameboy virtual console anyone?

Closing comments:

All in all, the DSi is a welcomed addition to the Nintendo family of handhelds. Is its release too soon though? Is Nintendo splintering its own DS market by giving people two options instead of one? And here’s the truly scandalous part: right now, the DSi retails for $169.99 compared to the DSlite’s $129.99 price tag. This begs to wonder if the DSi is Nintendo’s way of phasing out the DSlite and artificially upping the price of entry by only allowing DSi systems to be purchased. As a stalwart fan of all things Nintendo, I surely hope not. It just seems too devious an act for Nintendo to pull off. But, in the end, they are a business.

If you have a working DSlite right now, I’d say hold onto it for a little while longer before making the plunge toward the DSi. However, if you’re a person with the original DS or no DS at all, get this thing – you’ll get infinite cred among your peers. Maybe.

All photos courtesy of Nintendo

Are you excited?

Stay tuned.