D’ya know that Australian sounding chick in the last epic to the eye balls trailer of Final Fantasy XIII? Well, she goes by the name of Oerba Yun Fang. And as you can see, Oerba is a bit of a looker. Sexy in a mysteriously exotic kinda way. But the name is a weird one. It sounds like a Korean delicacy! I honestly would’ve preferred her name to have been Oerba Kimchee (seeing as I touched on the subject of Korean delicacies and all). Her name certainly gives licence for Final Fantasy XIII’s black dude Sazh to drop a corny line like “So, your name’s Oerba Yun Fang? Woooo, you a young thang!” and then give a reassuring look to himself like he just dropped the funniest and slickest line ever. I actually wouldn’t mind that…

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Tekken 6 isn’t the series’ best soundtrack. I don’t think Namco are ever going to touch the awesomness that was Tekken 3’s soundtrack. But 6 is certainly the most varied of the bunch sonically. Each piece is completely different in style and tone to the last. Many of them you wouldn’t associate with a Tekken game at all.

Amongst the various styles that the Namco sound team play with, “Fallen colony” is my pick of the bunch. It’s just a bad ass piece of music. Distinctly Japanesey, yet with many musical styles thrown into the mix. Live drums, kickin’ guitar solos, strings, chants, trumpets, percussions, drum ‘n bass, synths and several bars of awesome.

Dishing out cans of whoop ass to this song feels incredibly gratifying. More so if you manage to smash your sucker of a victim through the glass floor of the stage this music features on, and then juggle their arse up off the floor. Good times…good times.

Listen: Fallen colony

Tekken 6 OST
© 2007 Namco Bandai

For the mp3 players: Fallen colony

A while back I had mentioned receiving an email from Netflix asking me my thoughts on whether I’d use the instant streaming service on a PS3. I crossed my fingers wishing it were true, now months later a little birdie in the form of an uptick in share price, yes I watch financial markets, sends me sleuthing.  What I find is news of a deal between Netflix and the Playstation 3.

Users will need to request a PS3/Netflix disc allowing them access to the service and if you already have a Netflix account, the functionality is free. Depending on how you frame the argument you can say Netflix is already free on the Xbox360, that is if you omit the $50.00 Gold Membership XboxLive charge.

However, as the title suggests, the devil is in the details: “Watching instantly is included with an unlimited Netflix membership”. I’m not totally sure what this means since all Netflix plans include unlimited instant watching (except 1). One might complain/scoff at the idea of having to keep handy a PS3 Netflix disc around to play content, but licensing plays a major part in this.

The original Xbox needed a DVD dongle (at the cost of Xbox owners) to play DVDs whereas the PS2 didn’t and Sony had to pay a large upfront fee for licensing. When Netflix first appeared on the Xbox360, Sony Pictures and its subsidiaries were blocked out of being shown on instant streaming to Xbox360 owners. With Sony/PS3 now reaching a content agreement, the full Netflix instant library may soon be available, but only to Playstation 3 owners.

[The Industry Standard]

I had remembered seeing something from studio house Quantic Dream, about an Origami Killer. Aside from seeing the beautifully rendered screens and marketing buzzwords such as “innovative and experimental” it was easy to look over, much ado about nothing. Then comes the ingame footage and now, a developer diary of sorts.

It’s impressive. I don’t know much about upcoming game “Heavy Rain”, but Guillaume de Fondaumiere speaks above regarding the experience and focusing on the adult audience. Told via 4 playable characters Heavy Rain inputs every action into the overall storyline as you search for the killer. What I find most interesting are the statements of “game overs” being a thing of the past. This will clearly be a film like experience when playing, but I’m not sure how they will be able to pull it off in a neat package. I approach with cautious optimism.

Breathing new life in old designs, Ben Heck’s mods transform otherwise stationary consoles, making them portable. The newly released PS3 Slimline was the next beast to tackle. Combining the unit with a 17” widescreen HD Display and custom case with built-in sound controls, the PS3 laptop is a brilliant hybrid.

While a little bulky and I’m sure quite heavy; similar to the Xbox360 Laptop I can see myself taking the PS3 on a family trip. You get Blu-ray media center and gaming platform in a nice tight little package. My only changes would be to include a way to video/audio out.

Full design making process on Ben Heck’s site.

[BenHeck via Geek]

TGS is gone but it left nice spoils like the overly dramatic FFXIII trailer. Well, it’s also left us a new Bayonetta trailer and boy is it a good one!

There’s so much going on in these 3 minutes of video that makes me believe this game will not only be hard but dense. First of all  we have Cereza, Bayonetta’s daughter, who’s come out of the blue but with that sweet face and addictively saccharine voice is sure to become a loved character in the game. Then there’s Bayonetta’s father who seems to be a power figure beyond good and evil whom you’ll no doubt have to kill at some point. And then there’s this blooming love affair going on with Luka. Oh god I think they are slipping us a family drama disguised as a hardcore action game.

Oh and did you catch Fly Me To The Moon used in the game’s soundtrack?

As a bonus here’s a couple of videos, first up 2 semi-live action tv ads for the game currently running in Japan. Gorgeous actress!

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Square Enix released their latest trailer for Final Fantasy XIII at this year’s Tokyo game show. And it’s bloody epic. We’ve got love, heart attack, conflict, pain, talks of death, mecha’s, magic and a warblicious Japanese ballad plying all the while. If you didn’t want this game up until this point, you will after having watched this.

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It appears the PS3 version of Ninja Gaiden 2 will feature motion control. More specifically, it will include motion controlled breasts. Now, given the demographic of anyone who buys any Team Ninja game, this is a killer feature. And as such, the trailer above advertises it in the most honest way possible.

Remember those extremely excited families on Wii game trailers? Yeah we all know that’s over-acted. But this? This is exactly what will happen.

Going above and beyond their own call of duty, GameTrailers.com breaks down the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 trailer depicting a heated multi-player match of capture the flag (new to the CoD franchise). The highly anticipated sequel to 2007’s CoD: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2 will hit stores November 10, 2009.

[Gametrailers.com]

I was pretty shocked when I first checked out the playable demo of this game. Because what I had previously thought was the main theme to the game, turned out to be the battle theme!

It’s definitely a departure for the Final Fantasy series in terms of it’s sound. You’d never have thought when you first heard the piece play in the trailer a couple of years back that it’d get chucked into the game as a battle theme.

I love the composition. I did from day one. It’s grand. It’s catchy and brilliantly arranged. It really does convey the feeling of being part of a big epic adventure. But as a battle theme!? I’m not too sure. It has a sound about it that I wouldn’t necessarily associate with a battle theme. It’s sound fits, yet doesn’t at the same time: in a good and bad way. Plus, hearing it every single time you fight a battle throughout the game – it would get annoying and wear thin after a while. I’m hoping Square Enix either re-arrange it to keep it in line with other Final Fantasy battle themes and feature more of a kick, or that they’ll have different battle themes for different locations and situations.

But I do love it though. It’s a great piece of music. The sound, the sweeping strings, the mix of edgy guitars with operatic style strings and brass sections. It’s hard not to like it for what it is: a stunning bit of music. Although for a game that Square Enix claimed would not be your typical, pigeon holed J-RPG, they gave the game a very Japanesey style battle theme. All its missing is a koto and a shakuhachi.

Listen: Battle theme

Composed by Masashi Hamauzu
Final Fantasy XIII
© 2008, 2009 Square Enix

For the mp3 players: Battle theme