Sound Track-Down

A few days ago, i was talking with some of my friends about the music we listened to when we were younger. After a few minutes of talking we quickly came to the realization that shaped our musical taste's of today, came from video games. While at the time we had no idea, games like Tony hawk and Burnout actually played a part in our life while having nothing to do with the game itself. Quickly springing to my computer i began to look through my i-tunes library, and could almost relate 200 songs worth of my favorite music straight to video games i had played before ever hearing of these artists. Just a sample of these songs includes









Alkaline Trio (THPS)
Rise Against ( THPS)
NOFX (THPS)
The Transplants (THPS)
Bad Religion (THPS)
Jimmy Eat World (Burnout)
The Von Bondies (Burnout)
Silent Drive (Burnout)
Bouncing Souls (Burnout)
Atreyu (Burnout)
Fuenral For a friend (Burnout).
These are just a small sample of the artists i have subconsciously discovered due to video games.

What's a MOBA?

Excellent Question! A MOBA is a new, exciting genre of video games that has rapidly grown in popularity over the past few years. MOBA is an acronym for "Massive Online Battle Arena" in which players take on the role of a Top down viewed champion and battle against an opposing army as a general of his own army. With up to 5 players on a team, the goal of each teams general is to push the opposing AI "Creeps" (Computer controlled weak soldiers) through their home base and destroy their castle, while fighting against the enemy teams player controlled general. The game plays out like a much more indepth version of chess, and is heavily focused on teamwork and coordination. Games of this genre include DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) and LOL (League of Legends), Both of which are free to play and extremely addicting to anyone from casual to hardcore gamers alike.

FPS + RPG = ?

For a long time, i feel like game companys have been missing out on a huge opportunity. First person shooters and role playing games have almost always been two seperate entity's that never crossed each others path. With the knowledge that every almost every attempt at an FPSRPG has crashed harder then a 12 year old after a bottle of mountain dew, Double fine studio's had put themselves out on a limb with a game called Borderlands. Borderlands masterfully crams the action and intensity of a first person shooter into the frame of a deep, complex, strategic role playing game. Where games like Planetside (First attempt at FPSRPG) have failed, Borderlands excels with flying colors. By using a loot system, when enemies are killed they drop weapons and items that scale in value just like in RPG's. RPG Dungeon's and raid's are masterfully incorporated so that you and your 4 online friends can attempt to grab some rare gear from the difficult dungeon bosses. Borderlands has over a million different weapons, (A MILLION DIFFERENT WEAPONS!!!!) so that a player will never pick up the same gun twice. Borderlands is a must have game for any fan of either genre.

Its all about the hype!

When it comes to gaming, anticipation is half the draw. Game companys hype their games up so much that some players might chew their arm off with excitement before the game comes out. In some circumstances, games that may not neccesarily be any good will be a huge selling sucess if they hype is done right, and if the game happens to be done right the sucess is almost instantly doubled. My current "chew my arm off in excitement game" is none other then "Call of duty Modern Warfare 2".

Bieng an avid player of the prequel, Modern warfare 2 was automatically on my buy the first day list. At E3 (Electronics Expo) a trailer of the game was released, and after watching it at least 45 times my jaw still remained on the floor. Company's that can deliver and experience of the game without ever playing it is a huge leg up in selling games and gaining popularity without ever releasing a game.