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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What was the best game of the year? It’s something that gamers worldwide will argue over for the next several weeks. You have, and will continue to see, numerous ”Top 10″ lists plastered over every gaming blog on the internet.

This year, we at WingDamage.com wanted to take a little different approach. 2011 was a fantastic year for gaming. You could pick up nearly any new release (or digital only release for that matter) and come away pretty happy with your purchase. While this is a fantastic problem to have, it does make narrowing down and ordering a “Top 10″ list a harrowing endeavor.

Instead, this year we’ve decided to give you a quick rundown of a few of our favorite games in no particular order. If we missed your favorite game, please let us know in the comments.

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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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Video game narratives have so much potential. Through this interactive medium, we are often able to forge our own version of a story with the power of player choice. But despite so many games providing us with options, we are often left creating not the story we want, but the one that fits in line with predetermined binary extremes.

The moment a game rewards you with good or evil points, you start to decide which of the two moralities you want to base all future decisions on. This is because we have been trained to assume that there are far greater benefits from leaning to one side than finding a happy middle ground. Sadly, this assumption is usually correct.

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On the one-hundred and thirty-third episode of the Barrel Roll show, Jonah is incredibly distracted by a teething baby. There may also have been some discussion of video games, or it was all a dream. Possibly, the guys were actually dead the entire time and in purgatory.

After the news and new games coming out this week, Wes returns to give us his Borderlands progress. He also redid our intro song using Cambox and does a comparison with Vidrhythym. Adam Milecki is back to tell us about Rock of Ages, Section 8: Prejudice and his initial impressions of Bastion. Jesse finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution, played the crap out of some Star Fox 64 3D and also gives us the rundown of SkyDrift. Meanwhile, Jonah was sucked into Disgaea 4 and may never be heard from again.

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As an overall experience, the OnLive MicroConsole asks quite a bit out of me as a user. Not the service itself, I have no beefs with the service. The OnLive MicroConsole is a box roughly the size of a DSi. It is designed to bring PC gaming to your television or monitor without the need of a computer with reasonable specs, or a computer at all for that matter. There is a lot the OnLive MicroConsole has to offer the world in terms of a cheap and affordable PC gaming experience brought straight to your living room. It’s hard to imagine a world where they could even live up to a fraction of such lofty goals and promises

All it asks is that you have a TV or monitor with an HDMI port, an Ethernet port to plug into nearby, and at least 2 MBPS out of your ISP to experience their service. This is where I ran into some issues. I’ve got power sockets and death squids all over the place, so that’s no problem. My TV is HDMI ready, so no need to drop 30 bucks on a component adapter, and I can handle the MBPS needed. But I’m clearly not the person they had in mind for the MicroConsole. The service allows for computers to connect via WiFi, however the console does not. The console requires you to connect either with an Ethernet cable or through various bridge techniques.

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Space Glasses are back, and this time, it’s even more personal.

On this, the one-hundred and thirty-second Barrel Roll, Jonah and Jesse are joined by Rockin’ Android’s own Adam Milecki for an augmented cyber-future podshow. It’s no surprise that all three of the guys have been delving into the world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution since it combines man show favorites: robot arts, space glasses and Metal Gears.

But before getting into that, the new releases for the week are discussed, followed by the news. The Dragon Quest X press conference was happening during the recording, but we edited out the parts that involved the hosts watching clips, as it didn’t make for the best audio show.

They also discuss Jonah’s initial impressions of Bastion, Jesse’s brief time (so far) with the upcoming Gundemonium Collection, and Adam brings us up to speed on the latest changes to Captain Jameson. He also tells us about Thrustburst and Forget-Me-Not.

All this and more on Barrel Roll! #132, “Space Glasses 3: The Sacred Stones”.

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Thinking of picking up the Augmented Edition of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the PlayStation 3? Here’s a fun fact I found out the hard way so you don’t have to! The bonus “DVD” that’s included, despite having “DVD” printed on the disc itself (and the back of the box), is actually a Blu-ray disc.

“But my PS3 is a Blu-ray player! What’s the big deal?” you might ask. Well, gentle reader, you may be annoyed to find out that while you can access the videos included using your PS3, the soundtrack will not work. You can attempt to select it from your PS3, but it will promptly tell you to put the Blu-ray disc in your computer to retrieve the files.

Like many people out there, my computer has no Blu-ray drive. Considering I personally only went with the Augmented Edition for the soundtrack which is currently inaccessible to me on a Blu-ray disc with “DVD” printed on it, I’m a bit annoyed to put it nicely.

I’m sure in time we will all have Blu-ray drives, or perhaps even Green-ray drives, installed right into our heads that will allow us to download soundtracks right into our brains, but until that time you better have one in your computer or it’s no soundtracks for you!

Update: The support forum thread on EidosGames.com is full of people having this same issue