MTVU visited the Mississippi State University campus Monday with its Game0RZ Ball Tour, a videogame-related event featuring recently-released Xbox and Xbox 360 games.
The company set up its tent on the Junction at noon. The apparatus, a large, inflatable, six-legged construction, sat near the Leo Seal M Club until 4 p.m., giving campus gamers and gamers-lite time to sample the various games included in the tour.
The tour, which began Oct. 26 at the University of Louisville and will end Nov. 14 at the University of South Carolina-Upstate, is presented by companies including Burger King, Amp’d Mobile and Tampax Pearl Plastic.
“I thought it was pretty interesting that Tampax sponsored this,” said junior chemical engineering major John Hall. “When I got here and saw the sign out front, I thought, ‘Is this the right place?'”
Despite what some may consider an odd endorser, the event catered its goods to gamers and MTVU viewers, handing out free CD samplers, band stickers, T-shirts and Xbox games.
The free games came from the Burger King pod, which only required a person to try out one of the three King-themed games. “Big Bumpin'” takes the form of a bumper car game, “Pocketbike Racer” finds its nich‹¨ as a kart-style game and “Sneak King” lets gamers jump into the shoes of the King himself to feed the masses. See the following review on “Sneak King.” After sampling one of these games, the gamer was allowed to pick one of the three to take home.
Beyond the Burger King room, the tour tent was divided into six other compartments, each room featuring a different theme.
One room contained action-themed games including the recently released “Splinter Cell: Double Agent” and “Saints Row,” along with Xbox mainstay “Halo 2.” Another room featured a plethora of Xbox Live Arcade games as well as the physical, high-energy “Dance Dance Revolution: Ultramix 3,” which will see its fourth incarnation released on Nov. 14.
Another room featured the PC game “Counter Strike: Source,” a re-imagination of the popular online multiplayer game upgraded with the Source engine from “Half-Life 2.” Six players could play with or against each other on laptops provided by the tour.
The sports room drew a crowd with some unreleased games including “Tony Hawk’s Project 8” and “WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007.” Other featured titles were “NBA Live 07” and “FIFA World Cup 2006.”
“I enjoyed ‘FIFA,'” Hall said. “I was glad to see a soccer game there. It’s not one of the sports that’s usually represented.”
The larger central area of the tent housed a large flat-panel screen allowing players to compete in a “Madden NFL 07” tournament. The winner of the tournament received a free copy of the game and an Amp’d Mobile prize pack.
Junior software engineering major Jeremy Davis said more announcements could have been made about the event.
“I didn’t hear about it from the school at all,” he said. “The only way I knew about it was because my friend saw it on TV at 3 in the morning. It could’ve been better advertised.”
Davis also said he would have liked to have seen a tournament that did not involve “Madden” but involved a fighting game or first-person shooter.
From MSU the tour continued Thursday to the University of Alabama and will be on the Georgia Southwestern State University campus today. For more information about the Game0RZ Ball Tour, log onto www.mtvu.com/uconnect/game0RZ_ball/2006.