Soundtrack Spotlight is a weekly CFD! feature devoted to all things VGM. Every week we celebrate the best in game music, highlight new releases and forgotten tracks, and bring you the best in auditory awesomeness.
Having played an embarrassingly scant amount of the original StarCraft, the release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was very much a non-event for me. While I’m sure one day I’ll find the time necessary to fully play and appreciate the two games, for the time being I’ll just enjoy the dulcet tones of their soundtracks.
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Those who pay attention to our marvelously irregular podcast will know that I’m a one-trick pony when it comes to RTS games on PC. I played Age of Empires II nonstop for nearly ten years, so when Microsoft Game Studios announced that Age of Empires Online was in the works at Robot Entertainment (the successor to series creators Ensemble Studios), I danced for joy.
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Despite being published by Activision, Singularity was released with more of a whisper than a bang just over a month ago — but that doesn’t mean that this game isn’t worth shouting about. Singularity is a sci-fi, first person shooter experience, where you destroy mutants in increasingly creative ways and solve environment puzzles with the aid of your shiny gadget/weapon, the Time Manipulation Device (“TMD”), whilst jumping between eras in time.
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Been itching to play one of the best RPG’s of the year but never got around to buying an Xbox? Well, don’t fear the Reapers because Commander Shepard and his crew are taking the Normandy 2 to the Sony galaxy in January 2011.
At the Gamescom conference in Germany, EA announced Tuesday that Mass Effect 2 will be coming to PS3 at the beginning of next year with “hours of bonus content.” No word yet on the extent of this content, but BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka promises “a seamless introduction to the world of Mass Effect, for players that haven’t experienced it before” that “provides a lot of the back-story and introduces you well to the story-arc.” Which is handy, as the Microsoft-published original game will come out on a Sony console when hell freezes over.
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There are few game series with a longer and more distinguished pedigree than Castlevania. Many now-adult gamers fondly recall playing the first game on the original NES when they were but wee vampire hunters. Decades later, a string of exceptionally well-crafted titles bearing the beloved Castlevania name graced the more portable screens of the GBA and DS and captured the hearts of old school gamers again. And of course, who could forget Symphony of the Night, the seminal entry that gave rise to the “Metroidvania” sub-genre. Simply put, Castlevania games carry lofty expectations.
Unfortunately, not every game in the franchise quite lives up to the prestigious family name (especially when they try to go 3D). So where does the Xbox Live Arcade exclusive Harmony of Despair fit into this large (and often dysfunctional) family? Hit the jump to find out, and fear not, gentle reader — I won’t bite.
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Xbox Live Indie-Dome is a weekly feature where we sift through the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace to find the best and worst... so you don't have to!
Aaaaand I’m back. I feel much better now, thanks for asking.
It’s been an interesting week for indie games, I must say. There were some typical mediocre attempts at adding to an already over-saturated genre, some shining moments of awesome and even one very unique (and damn near coma-inducing) take on puzzle games. All-in-all, I’ve enjoyed seeing what bizarre/dull/idiotic/genius concepts the Live indie developers have offered up. Let’s hope next week is as varied as this one was.
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Obviously having blocked out the fiasco that was my previous guest experience, the boys over at PPR (Georgie Boy’s AXE, Toast and Seraxxor) were kind enough to have me sit in on their most recent show yet again.
The topic on hand?
*Please put on your special glasses now*
3D Gaming!!
Did that work? No? Huh. Oh well.
Still, we discuss 3D gaming, get distracted by the mystery of canned bread and all other manner of fun stuff. Go listen to it now! And brace yourself, because George returns the favor by guesting on the next episode of Team DeathChat, which will be up… soonish.
In case you missed it, Hydro Thunder was a motorboat racing game from 1999 that Dreamcast owners still use as proof that there were good games for the system. A decade later, Microsoft has released the sequel Hydro Thunder Hurricane in the unenviable position of following up Limbo in their “Summer of Arcade.” How could Hurricane possibly live up to the expectations of the critically-acclaimed Limbo? I don’t think you’ll find anyone calling Hydro Thunder Hurricane an “experience,” but as a game, I believe it stands up incredibly well.
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Over the last couple days we’ve written about the ins and outs of games that more or less fall into the Western genre. To wrap up our old-timey week of content, we’ll be focusing instead on non-Western games that happen to feature characteristics, values, and themes commonly associated with the genre in question.
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Soundtrack Spotlight is a weekly CFD! feature devoted to all things VGM. Every week we celebrate the best in game music, highlight new releases and forgotten tracks, and bring you the best in auditory awesomeness.
Though we’ve seen a bit of this type of music already, with cuts from Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, as part of CFD!’s Wild West Week this Soundtrack Spotlight highlights even more of the best pieces in the genre from a variety of games. So wet your whistle, limber up your whippin’ arm, and practice your Morricone, because it’s time once again to ride into the wild blue yonder that is Western video game music.
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Hi kids! As a special treat for our Wild West Week, I went back to my parents’ house and searched an old box of my stuff. Under some empty Surge bottles and my Darth Maul lightsaber, I found it: the first video game review I ever wrote! Here it is, all typed up. I edited out some of my nine-year old misspellings for the sake of clarity and because I was only willing to go so far with this conceit.
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I won’t mince words — the basic, vanilla Western isn’t to everybody’s liking. Some people find the concept of cowboys and indians, the dusty wilds of the American Southwest and gunslingers dueling in the street at high noon to be hokey; anachronistic relics from the childhood fantasies of a generation silly enough to have been born before personal computers could fit in your front pocket.
Let us ignore for just a moment how stupid and wrong these unimaginative people are (and they are, believe me) and assume that the standard Western in video game form is boring on principle (which they generally aren’t). What do you do with something that you don’t especially like on its own? You mix it with something different that you do like and you suddenly find that it doesn’t taste as bad as you originally thought. Or, if you already liked it, you now realize you’ve created something truly amazing… or at the very least interesting.
The following five games take the standard tropes of the Old West and stir in something that changes up the flavor — kind of like Cold Stone Creamery, only without the pretentious highway robbery prices. Seriously, $4 for a small with one extra mix-in!? Where the hell’s my Dairy Queen?
Ahem. But I digress…
Welcome to the Weird West.
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UPDATE: Amanita Design has just extended the cutoff date for the sale to August 16th. So just in case you “forgot” to buy it before, now you have a few more days to fix that problem.
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They’ve been around ever since the Dawn of Man. Thieves, Crooks, Robbers, Brigands, Cattle Rustlers, Pirates, etc… Ever since people have existed, there’s always been those who would prefer to simply take rather than earn.
F*cking scumbags, the lot of them.
It’s no surprise that Amanita Design’s phenomenal (and peerless) adventure game, Machinarium, has been pirated. Despite the fact that a hard copy is only $20 and includes the game, soundtrack and a special bonus EP, and the other fact that it’s made by a small group of people (an independent developer, if you will) as opposed to a massive, soulless corporation, people still stole it. Rather than get mad (although I’m sure they did anyway), Amanita Design is actually giving these human brown-eyes a chance to make amends in the form of a special 75% Off sale.
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The West is a big place, or so I’m inclined to believe after kicking around in Red Dead Redemption. Between Mexico and the fictional Western-America border states, there’s quite a bit of real estate to traverse, and along with that expanse comes an often overwhelming amount of detail. During my time playing and reviewing the game, I began mentally taking note of these small touches; over time, the list grew longer and ultimately blossomed into this feature.
While this list is certainly not perfectly comprehensive, it does cover a fairly broad range of in-game occurrences, and if nothing else it should encourage you to keep your eyes open to everything as you play the game.
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There are so many apt comparisons and analogies I’ve considered throwing at Red Dead Redemption, yet I seem to find myself repeatedly returning to one in particular.
Chances are that when you were a child, you pretended to be things that you were not — someone and somewhere exciting and spectacular. Red Dead, in many ways, feels like a modern-day realization of such childhood fantasies, a fulfillment of what the imagined “future” of video games often was for me, and may well have been for you. I don’t want to imply this in a hyperbolic sense. No, I mean simply that the way Red Dead Redemption allows and encourages immersing yourself in the nooks and crannies of its Western “world” often feels like the consummate you-are-in-this-place-and-it-is-yours sort of experience that I yearned for from games as a child.
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Rob Thomas
Rob Rich
Sage Knox
Beki Sutcliffe
Dustin Stevens
Jason Smith
Scott Thompson
Aubrey Klanecky
Zuri Grimm
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