A wave of gaming could be hitting a town near you. Think of high-end gaming machines by Alienware fitted with Athlon64 3400's and FX-51's paired with an Asus SK8N, 1GB or more of memory, nVidia 5950 Ultra's, 80GB SATA drives with a huge LCD monitor and these machines are loaded with the latest and hottest games in the industry. As if that weren't enough, you're surrounded by more LCD monitors attached to an X-Box each with all of the latest console games loaded and ready for you to push start. Now imagine that you have a whole day to try them all out. Well if you're lucky enough to attend one of the 33 GameRiot Tour destinations this spring, this is exactly what you'll find.

The GameRiot Tour launched on March 24 th in Las Cruces , NM and runs until May 13 th in Los Angeles , CA. at the E3 event. There are 30 stops on the tour and a total of 33 events across the country. I was lucky enough to attend the one held in Kansas City , MO. This event was held at a large bar called The Beaumont Club in the Westport District. The event was started by Games Media Properties, a leading creator of video game entertainment events, based out of Los Angeles . The event is sponsored by Spike TV, nVidia, Microsoft and AMD along with the various game creators.

The event also offers a ton of tournaments for both PC and X-Box games The Tourneys are viewable to the rest of the attendees via 6 42inch Flat screens. The MC keeps peoples interest with his high energy level and ruthless demeanor. The DJ rocks the house with tons of techno and house music; so much in fact, that they couldn't start any of the tourneys or music till after 5:00pm in KC due to a noise ordinance.

The event looks like a LAN party for the wealthy with all of the great hardware visible. The Alienware cases demand attention as well as the plethora of LCDs. I was smiling as soon as I walked in. I took a quick lap around the event and zeroed in on one of the FX-51 machines loaded with UT2004. After schooling the others in a friendly game of onslaught I moved on and played a little bit of Americas Army. Both games looked amazing and played flawlessly. Battlefield Vietnam and Far Cry were also among the PC game titles available and also played fantastic.

After playing around with the games for awhile I went around to get some other attendee's thoughts on the event. The majority of people attending the event were over 21. This was a bit of a shock to me but it was still early. Most people fell into one or both of two categories. They were either there to check out what the event was all about or to get a look at some of the games before they spent their hard earned cash. A small amount said they came for the tourneys and/or the GameRiot Girls.

The event cost $15 for a single event and $30 for all day. Most events have 3 different timeslots for the day but due to the noise ordinance they broke it into two shows for Kansas City . The reason I bring this up now is that many of the attendees felt that $15 was a little on the high side for what was available. I have to agree with them but the price wasn't too far out of range. There are not too many places you can go play all the hottest games on bad boy PC's for just $30 for 10+ hrs.

As the time passed by and we waited for the surprise noise ordinance time to expire, we enjoyed some laughs with the nVidia and X-box reps. These guys are crammed on a tour bus and set up the event 5 days in a row in 5 different places each week. I doubt there's a one of them that hasn't finished each of the games single player offerings by the end of the event. The atmosphere was a little down and the event staff was certain things would pick up when the NO expired. The Project Leader actually took some time to sit down and enjoy a game of America 's Army.