A new year, a new… podcast?!

Don’t worry, the “Barrel Roll!” podcast isn’t going away any time soon despite its absence this week. In the meantime, “Sound in Action” discusses the aspect of games that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: the music. As your host, I’ll take you through a selection of songs in each episode and talk about why I feel each song and soundtrack is notable. I don’t claim to have the ultimate musical knowledge, but I have been an avid listener of game soundtracks for over two decades and have been remixing game music for many years. Think of it less as a critique and more of a celebration of an often ignored subject.

That said, I need your feedback! Please have a listen and tell me what you liked and what you didn’t. This show is still in the idea phase and I want to make sure there is enough interest in it to continue producing it.

On this first episode, I take a look at six of my favorite soundtracks from last year. You can find links on where to purchase these soundtracks at the bottom of the post.

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It’s that time of year again where “Top 10″ lists saturate gaming blogs even more than usual. And yet, game music will once again receive little to no attention on most sites. That simply just won’t do! For the third year in a row, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the sweeping scores and bumping beats that the soundtracks of 2011 brought us.

Of course, listening to every soundtrack released in North America last year is an impossible task and my taste might not sync up with yours. I may have not listed your personal favorite (let me know in the comments), but maybe you’ll discover something new. I’ve included a four song sampler clip and purchase link for each soundtrack below for your convenience.

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There is only one way to bring about peace in the galaxy on this week’s Barrel Roll Podcast, and that is to go inside. That’s right, this week Jonah, Adam and Jesse are injected inside Martin Short thanks to a shrink ray experiment gone horribly awry.

While all the news is taken up by Black Friday Sales talk (which we skip), there are some new releases of note that we go over. We also take a good chunk of time talking about Rockman EXE: Phantom of Network and the Mega Man Battle Network games in general. Adam has also played through the 3D Classics version of Kirby’s Adventure and gives us his thoughts on the slight update to the NES classic.

Jonah has still been sucked into the world of Skyrim, but peeked his head out long enough to bust some caps in Saints Row The Third. It turns out the secret to its success? Infinite parachutes. That sounds kind of familiar…

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jesse completed Super Mario 3D Land‘s main worlds and moved onto the much harder bonus worlds. He also played more on Ace Combat for Babies, or Ace Combat: Assault Horizon as it is better known. There was also some Uncharted 3 punch-time explosions involved.

All this plus more on the latest episode, Barrel Roll #142, “Innerspace: The Game”.

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This week on the Barrel Roll Show, Wes joins Jonah and Jesse for some Uncharted 3 multiplayer chat. Jonah and Wes also talk about Diablo 2 and how it holds up.

But before that we get into that, we discuss the games we’ve been playing over the last week. Jesse gave Ace Combat: Assault Horizon a shot to find it a bit of a mixed bag. He also played through Aliens Infestation which it turns out is a pretty good video game.

Wes has once again been sucked into Borderlands and the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC. Perusing the games on his Steam list that he’s never gotten around to trying also prompted him to boot up Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich.

Meanwhile Jonah is flabbergasted by how much fun he has been having with Scribblenauts Remix, even after finishing the game’s 50 levels.

All this plus the new releases for the week and the gaming news on Barrel Roll #138, “Jonah’s Ironic Rugby Challenge”.

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