The sound of Alien: Isolation

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When you’re hiding in the dark what you can hear may just be the key to your survival

Al Hope there, creative lead of Creative Assembly, adroitly summing up the entirety of how you do sound design for a survival horror game. The more we learn about Alien: Isolation the more I look forward to it. The recently released video discussing the sound design for the upcoming game is ticking all the right boxes – a dynamic music engine, use of the original assets and processes, audio as an integral aspect of gameplay, and even some of the musicians from the first film.
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Game music: Homeworld

Homeworld BoxWhen it comes to space-based strategy games nothing comes even close to the Homeworld series’ mastery of the genre. From humble beginnings shuffling about a handful of ships to the epic climax seeing you in command of a mighty fleet of capital ships, Homeworld remains unmatched to this day.
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Microsoft thinking about planning the possibility of maybe trying to design a 360 emulator for the Xbox One

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Microsoft’s Mattrick says he doesn’t think compatibility is really a problem. He said only 5% of customers play older games on a new videogame system anyway, so spending time and money to develop technology to allow them to play older games isn’t worth it.
“If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards,” he said.

» Wall Street Journal, May 2013

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are there plans for an Xbox 360 emulator on Xbox One?
SAVAGE: There are, but we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself.

» Build Developer Conference, April 2014

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And the 2014 award for “Most Generic Fantasy Trailer” goes to…

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Elder Scrolls Online!

It was kind of inevitable really. By all accounts the game is a mediocre MMO and an awful Elder Scrolls game, and the marketing has been less than effective. That the cinematic trailer would fail to inspire is unsurprising, but the level of mediocrity exceeds expectations.
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Game music: Serious Sam 3 BFE

Serious Sam 3 BFE OST CoverThe original Serious Sam games hold a special place in my heart – I’ve never been much of a multiplayer gamer but some of my fondest memories of of ad-hoc, jury-rigged LAN parties – Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Age of Empires 2, Rune and Serious Sam 2. Serious Sam 3 was a worthy successor and it’s time the soundtrack got some love here.
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Bastion minus most of Bastion

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Everyone knows Bastion is a great game (and yes, has great music). Over at SDA a speedrunner called Vulajin has managed to finish the game in only 15 minutes and 9 seconds. Just… wow.

It’s funny to watch – so much content is skipped that the story falls apart and makes literally no sense.


Getting hopeful: Alien Isolation

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Rock Paper Shotgun have posted a hands-on with Alien Isolation and after reading it I’ve gone from disillusioned fan to please-don’t disappoint-me-this-looks-so-good enthusiast.
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Finally – Office for Android and iOS free at least

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Being an armchair corporate strategist is easy, but just occasionally a company does something that has people saying “What took you so long?” Today the company is Microsoft, the reason is “new CEO Satya Nadella has new vision for company” and the decision is “dump the subscription fee and make Office for Android and iOS free”. That’s right, from now you can view and edit office documents natively on your phone or tablet.
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Indie game music: Fire Chopper Inc

Fire Chopper Inc

The second response I got to my call for indie game music was from Nicholas Bogart for his game “Fire Chopper Inc“, an interesting looking 2D fire-fighting game.
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Indie game music: Lumena

Lumena

I recently asked on Twitter if any indie game developers had any music they’d like reviewing or posting. The first response I got was from Elevate Entertainment regarding their upcoming game Lumena.
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