The Best Video Game Soundtracks: Worms 2

Growing up playing games in 90’s, I was always a big fan of actual music playing in the background, before all this atmospheric, and orchestral stuff came along in recent years. With games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, you mainly had MIDI tracks – not that they were bad.

I think Quake was likely the first to break this trend in 1996 with Trent Reznor of NiN fame doing the soundtrack.

But then some games, rather than come up with their own soundtracks (or borrow heavily from other sources like Bobby Prince did with Doom I and II), they just licensed a number of tracks from real artists.

In 1997, the one game that had this was Worms 2 -  the sequel to the equally addictive Worms, released years earlier.

While playing, you were treated to songs like “Come Out And Play”, “Self Esteem”, and “Killboy Powerhead” – tracks off of Smash, the best album off of the then punk rock sensation known as The Offspring. You could also squirm your way to several other great tracks, like The Prodigy’s “Firestarter”.

Of course, all these tracks had different names to suit the game, like “Swim Like A Brick”. Funny stuff, seeing as the worms in the game can’t swim. I think especially the punk rock songs complimented Worms 2’s fun gameplay and defiant stance against other games at the time – particularly Doom clones or first-person shooters. It showed that a game could be fun and not overly violent to be a major success. That’s pretty much Team 17 though. They’ve really just stuck with the same sort of formula of strategy titles for the past near twenty years.

It’s a shame that it was the only Worms game to date that actually had a soundtrack as impressive as this. Other Worms titles, before and after, didn’t, to my knowledge.

The Best Video Game Soundtracks: Worms 2

New Version of DarkXL Out

It’s been several months since the last build of this project called DarkXL, which is a source port project for Star Wars: Dark Forces, was released. It’s been quiet ever since. But business started to pick up last month, as regular posting began on the DarkXL website.

Now the 9.05 Build of DarkXL is out as of this week. Stuff to look forward to in here is working night vision, and less bugs, as well as the ability to get past level 3, finally. In fact, the 9.03 and 9.04 builds were only put out earlier this month as well.

I got back into playing Dark Forces about last month – the same time that Lucius, the guy working on the project, seemingly resurrected DarkXL after several months. There was a long gap between March and September where it was rather quiet. The last build before the the most recent three, 9.02, was released in February. Before the break it had been more consistent.

Anyway, if you’re looking to play this great, and rather unappreciated at times, game, then make sure to download the latest build and get playing.

Source: http://darkxl.wordpress.com/ [DarkXL website]

New Version of DarkXL Out

Now Playing: Left 4 Dead

The other day I was digging through my collection of games. I keep a list of of my games on my HD, and I was particularly interested in playing through some of the titles I hadn’t finished – or even installed.

Why I did this initially was because I kept reading about a website online called Backloggery, where you can list all the games you have, how many you’ve finished, and how many you haven’t. The only thing is that the site isn’t accepting any new registrations for now.

So I was forced to make one of my own. So I’m going through all of these titles, and I came across a few gems which I was surprised I hadn’t even played. One of these was Left 4 Dead. It was released in 2008. I bought it nearly two years ago, and I decided I would play it to see what all the fuss had been about for nearly the past two years.

               The messages on the wall are a nice touch. Reminds me of Digg.

It’s really designed to be a multiplayer game, but it’s fun enough playing on your own with a bunch of bots, despite the AI being a bit suspect most of the time. It’s not a bad game. Kind of hard even on the easier difficulty levels, but I’m getting the hang on it. The last standoff levels are insane. Having to last minutes which seem like hours fighting off endless hordes.

UPDATE: Finished most of the levels, apart from the last one on the first campaign, No Mercy. where you need to be rescued by a helicopter on a rooftop. Throw in waves of zombies, and more Tanks than you can handle and it’s anything but a picnic while admiring the view. Keep getting killed by the last Tank, trying to board the chopper.

Now Playing: Left 4 Dead

Weapon Carrying Limit to be in Duke Nukem Forever

Just the other day there was an interview over on Duke4.net that was carried out by one of the community members. He interviewed Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox Software.

One of the questions posed to Randy was whether or not there would be any weapon carrying restrictions in Duke Nukem Forever:

“Well we are making this game with the vision of Allen Blum and George Broussard.  Their vision was that you could only have 2 weapons. This choice has been made because most players choose their favorite weapons and use only those weapons the most.  And if you need a particular weapon to defeat a boss, that weapon will be available in that area.”

So this is quite a change from previous Duke Nukem titles such as Duke Nukem Manhattan Project and Duke Nukem 3D before it. You no longer have the entire arsenal at your fingertips. Gone are the days of the old school 90’s shooters where you could somehow manage to slug all that heavy equipment around with you. In a sense, DNF is going for more realism – which sounds a little ironic I must admit.

        The ripper will likely be one of the “favourite” weapons that people wish to carry.

In fact it’s going to more like Duke Nukem II in a way. In that game you could only carry one weapon type at a time, until the ammo ran out, and you reverted to your standard weapon. Except the limitations in DNF won’t be that strict, thank goodness.

So basically you’ll have a primary weapon and secondary weapon, much like most first person shooters out there today. From the screens and trailers I’ve seen of the game, much of the weaponry from the first game will make it back. There’s a pistol, a shotgun, the ripper machinegun, the devastator double rocket launchers. You’ll just have to pick which ones you like best and use those.

I don’t yet know whether they’ll let you have ANY 2 weapons that you want, or if one of them has to be a pistol – because that would suck. If you can carry an RPG and a Devastator, then that sounds fair good.

At one stage, DNF used a weapons selection system similar to Max Payne and Half-Life.

It also hasn’t been mentioned whether this applies to the pipe bomb as well. I reckon that just like other standard FPS games these days, Duke will have his two guns of choice, and then carry pipebombs as well, instead of the more standard grenade. I’m sure all the other equipment like NV goggles and steroids will remain unchanged, and you can carry one of each, likely – just like DN3D.

In the end, I think it might actually be a better idea to give players a choice. They either have the full arsenal, or say on a harder difficulty or if an option is checked, they will then be limited, like Randy says.

Weapon Carrying Limit to be in Duke Nukem Forever

Jon St. John AKA Duke Nukem Text Editor Sounds

The other day I posted about something to do with a remake of Duke Nukem 3D as a mod using the Unreal Engine 3. I went back to that same thread over at the official Duke Nukem forums on GearBoxSoftware.com. Needless to say the topic was still going strong.

But it was on the last page that I saw something interesting. Somebody posted a link to this website and said that there were some recordings of somebody doing Duke Nukem’s voice.

So I went over to the site, only to see that the place was entirely void of content – except for an mp3 playing in the background. So I took Orbit, which is a program that is quite adept at capturing flash and media playing on a site, and downloaded the file. While I did this, I was listening to the phrases being said as the clip played. I’ve heard people try and do Duke Nukem’s voice before. Some have come close, and others have been pretty piss poor. This was Duke Nukem’s voice. This was the Jon St. John.

Having downloaded the file to my HD, I listened to the entire clip, which ran for about just over 3 and a half minutes. Jon was obviously reading the text that appears on the menu trees on a text editor. Open up any one, like Microsoft Word or something and you’ll see what I mean. It was actually pretty funny. Weird, but quite hilarious.

The guys over at the GBX forums were debating on this bit of off-topic wonder; some betting that it was Duke’s voice, whilst others were doubtful.

Like I said: I’ve played enough friggin’ Duke Nukem 3D and Manhattan Project to KNOW that is Jon. But I wanted to know how this site was found. So I did what anybody would do. I Googled it. The phrase was something like “Jon St. John Text Editor”. One of the first hits that cropped up was Jon’s wiki page. Upon going to it, lo and behold: under “external links”, there was a link pointing to that very same site, saying that it was Jon reading some menu trees for a program.

I was curious as to what the program was and who hired Jon. I gathered from the phrases in the audio recording that it was for a program called Text Edit.

I mean, in the end, Jon is a voice actor among other things (musician, former radio DJ), and has worked on other games - most notably Half-Life: Opposing Force. He is essentially for hire. At one stage I actually remember Jon offering to do voice work for something like $1 per word. He said he would even do Duke’s voice and people could dub it in to Left 4 Dead, replacing Zoey’s voice, or some weird sh1t.

If that was his going rate, then by my calculations, including conjunctions, it would have added up to about $159 just for this job. I should get in to the voice acting business…

However, I was reading, again over at GBX forums, and some poster said this:

“Get a personalized, custom recording of Duke for your voicemail, ringtone, answering machine, whatever! You write the script, and Duke will say anything you want. Your message(s) must be no more than 30 seconds total, and for private use only. Available file formats include: WAV, MP3, and AIFF. The price is just 50 bucks and payable via Pay Pal. So what are you waiting for...Christmas? Come Get Some!”

Some person over at the GBX forums also said that he “so wants Jon to do the voice for his GPS now.”

Sources:

GBX Forums
Jon St. John menu trees recording
Jon's Wikipedia page

Jon St. John AKA Duke Nukem Text Editor Sounds

Conspiracy Theory: Valve Doesn’t do Threequels

How long have we all been waiting for a continuation in the Half-Life story. It’s been more than three years since Half-Life 2: Episode 2 came out. It was first shown at E3 in 2007. And we all played it towards the end of that year, when it came out in November – which is customary with Valve titles.

Episode 1 came out two years after Half-Life 2, in 2006. The entire point of episodic content was to see that new content was released periodically and within a few months of each release. But after seeing how Valve has handled it, I maintain that episodic content is a failed idea – as far as big titles with high production values, such as the Half-Life series, are involved.

Anyway, everyone knows that everyone likes a good conspiracy theory. And there have probably been many suggestions as to why Episode 3 isn’t out yet. The last I read anything of it must have been last year.

Well, something struck me as I lay in bed one night, thinking on the subject, as one does. And I came up with an idea. Something that might well explain why we haven’t got Episode 3, or Half-Life 3.

It has to do with Valve’s games; the number of Valve games. Let me explain:

Valve’s first ever game was the epic, revolutionary sci-fi FPS, Half-Life. It came out in late 1998, and nowadays is considered one of the greatest PC games of all time. Half-Life went on to spawn two expansions or addons, developed by Gearbox Software, in Opposing Force, and Blue Shift. Decay doesn’t count as it was for the PS2 version only.                    

The next think to come along was Counter-Strike. While not strictly a Valve title to begin with – it used the Half-Life engine, and was eventually adopted by Valve, and released commercially. It became one of the greatest multiplayer-focused games of all time; still played to this day, more than ten years on. Counter-Strike had a sequel of sorts in Condition Zero. Years later Counter-Strike: Source came out, which was CS, but using the Source engine that Half-Life 2 used. It wasn’t a sequel.

Another game that started out as a mod for Half-Life was Day of Defeat. It was the obligatory WWII game that was kind of similar to CS or Team Fortress, but featured class systems that were more akin to those from olden days.

DoD’s developers were eventually picked up by Valve (which is primarily made up of former modders), and Day of Defeat was adopted by the company, and later released as a standalone retail product, requiring Steam to play. Since then it has also had a remake done, using the Source engine rather than the Half-Life or Gold Source engine. This is probably the one game in Valve’s history that has yet to even receive a first sequel, let alone a second sequel (or threequel).

Speaking of said game: Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, and again went on to further revolutionize the FPS genre, and storytelling in games as a whole. The game had planned addons in the form of the Episodes. Initially it was meant to be one big expansion called Aftermath, but Valve opted for the episodic content approach, and decided to release standalone episodes separately. To date, six years later, two of those episodes have been released.

Fast-forward a few years and we get to The Orange Box – one of the greatest packages ever bestowed upon gamers. This contained not only Episode 2, Episode 1, and Half-Life 2 – but also introduced Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

Team Fortress 2 obviously had a prequel released years earlier alongside Half-Life, called Team Fortress Classic. The series’ roots lay in a mod, originally for Quake. TF 2 was notoriously delayed for almost a decade, but eventually emerged with a completely different art style to that of its predecessor, which some didn’t like.

Portal was completely different from most Valve titles, if not most FPS games ever made. You don’t have guns. You’ve just got a portal gun which aids you in traversing through several puzzles. It was inspired by a game made by some college kids, called Narbacular Drop. Portal has an upcoming sequel, named Portal 2, which should be out next year.

In 2008, Valve produced Left 4 Dead – a multiplayer shooter set in a zombie apocalypse. It turned out to be very popular, and a year later a sequel was released in Left 4 Dead 2. This angered the community seeing as they thought Valve had cheated them out of all the promised extra content for the original. Eventually two DLC packs made it out. Two for Left 4 Dead, and one for Left 4 Dead 2. Another one compatible with both games is due out this month. So that would make it three DLCs for L4D - but DLC isn’t a full game or a sequel anyway, and The Survival Pack which contains The Last Stand isn’t even considered canon.

So you don’t really see a three anywhere there do you? Plenty of other franchises out there have threequels, but Valve doesn’t. This doesn’t necessarily make a franchise any better just because it has more games. It can have the opposite effect (see Tomb Raider).

But like I said, it’s something that I noticed, and it looks like Valve has yet to get over the big 3 hump, even 15 years on. This curse will continue until someday, miraculously, Half-Life 2: Episode 3, or Half-Life 3, is finally released. That or else one of their other franchises produces a sequel.

Conspiracy Theory: Valve Doesn’t do Threequels

NAG Magazine October 2010 Issue Out Today

It’s the last week of September, and right on the last day of the month - which is today – the new NAG will be out. It’s the October issue, and Halo: Reach, mercifully the last game in the series, has the cover.
Looking at the cover and reading through the contents page available on the site, my eyes caught the following interesting stuff:

The Looking Back section covers Duke Nukem 3D this month – very appropriate considering that the game’s long awaited sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, has come back out from under its rock and in to the public eye again. Even DNF has a feature in the mag. Of course when you read the comments over at the forum concerning the title, you’ll see that practically nobody wants to see it wasting any space in the magazine at all. Me? Bring it on!

Then there’s some major Call of Duty: Black Ops stuff, plus previews on Crysis 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the latest in the Mortal Kombat series… called Mortal Kombat.
Reviews include Mafia II, Kane& Lynch 2: Dog Days (from what I’ve read it was also crap), and that latest Lara Croft title: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Worms: Reloaded also managed to squirm its way in there in the reviews section somewhere.

As far as stuff on the DVD, I’m glad to see that the demo of Amnesia: The Dark Descent is on there. I recommended that over on the DVD suggestions thread, you know. The game is the latest from the people who brought you the Penumbra trilogy, so it should be properly scary. There’s also a demo of Metro 2033. I’ve played the full version, and you should at least play it once.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the Thief II remastered soundtrack on there, because I really wanted that. I’m downloading it anyway, so that doesn't matter too much.

BTW, you know I thought I’d mention that the editor of NAG magazine, Michael James, was on The Verge the other night, talking about the magazine and rAge - which is coming up next month. This issue of NAG is the rAge issue apparently.

Sources:
http://www.nag.co.za/2010/09/nag-october-2010-issue/ [NAG Online]
http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?t=15249 [NAG Online Forums]

NAG Magazine October 2010 Issue Out Today