Unitdaisy and I arrived at 9pm to O'Donovan's for Rockstar Games & The Onion's little Table Tennis soiree, only to find a relatively empty backroom with no consoles and a mere handful of patrons. Granted, weather in Chicago has been insufferable lately, but that didn't stop the hundred or so diners out on the pub's deck and front room, those that showed up to sup instead of play.

The few people that had shown up explicitly for the event seemed clueless that it was even about exhibiting Rockstar's latest. They said they just heard there was free beer available, so they showed up. Hell, even the waitress said that she received an email invite for this event and wasn't aware it was happening at her workplace.

It took the organizers about twenty or thirty minutes but finally they powered up the 360s, hooked up to projectors, handed out the free Warsteiner and two pairs of folks were able to take Table Tennis for a spin. The 360s weren't hooked up to Xbox Live, and we were playing off of empty profiles with the default characters, which meant for some slim pickings in the character options. Slightly disappointing.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, apart from a confusing five minutes with King Kong in a Best Buy, neither UD or myself had ever handled a 360 controller before. I found I want to grip the controller claw-style, like the original Xbox and Dreamcast controllers, which doesn't really work with the new shoulder buttons. Apart from our acclimation to the new controller, the game played pretty smoothly. Unitdaisy and I had a rousing set of matches and came away feeling pretty happy with the game, although I admit that we both had a lingering desire to head home for some Virtua Tennis. Both of us found it pretty easy to play, but could see there was a good amount of depth under the surface, although I'm sure everyone with a 360 already knows that.

And there's the rub for this promotional event: it seemed completely overshadowed, not only by the release of the Table Tennis demo on Xbox Live last week, but by this week's launch of another Table Tennis promotional effort, the Soft Serve Tour - a national 'Art, Music, Video & Clothing + Video Game Tournament Installation'. Mind-bogglingly, neither the demo nor the Soft Serve tour were mentioned at this event. In fact, apart from a few words about how to control the game, very little was said to promote it at all, at least not within the hour-long span we were there for.

I think Rockstar could get more promotional mileage if they spontaneously dropped by local pubs and had ad-hoc tournaments instead of trying to organize 'events' like this one. There's really no reason they need to cart around their own speakers & projectors for this sort of thing, when every reasonable sports tavern already have several in-house. I know I'd be pretty happy if I was having a drink at the corner watering hole and some reps came in, consoles in tow, and asked 'wanna play a game?' Plus, Table Tennis works well in this kind of environment - it's easy to pick up, competitive and compelling.

Or maybe Soft Serve will be a better fit. I suppose we'll find out in a few weeks, when that installation rolls into Chicago.

Highlight of the night: A father came into the room with his ten (or so) year-old son to inquire about the event. The Onion representative addressed the ten-year-old and told him 'it's the new game from Rockstar Games, creators of Grand Theft Auto'. He then asked 'You know Grand Theft Auto, right?'