Rockstar Table Tennis

This game does not have much in the way of MEGA crazy audio but I will say a few things stick out to me.

What I like:
The UI Sounds (simple, effective, well recorded)
The Focus Sound (Powerful, quick, and mean, it gets me in a table tennis mood for real).

MY FAVORITE THING:
Along with the music (which is simple and FREAKING RULES), I really really like how when the match is heating up the air of the room gets louder. Its amazingly effective.

From an audio standpoint I think this game does an amazing job of creating a hyper real experience. Its real enough to where I believe everything but its hyper enough to put you truly in the mind of someone who is there.

Good Job AUDIO PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Style

Okay so before I get too involved in all of this ranting online business there are a few things I want to point out.

1. Proper spelling is optional (for now)
2. I'll probably no longer assign numbers even though people LOVE numbers,, who am I to assign numbers??
3. As far as consistancy goes there will probably not be much of that either.

So I'm off now to play some games and note some particular sound effects that I love.

mtcs

Hollywood Actors in Video Games

Okay this is a bit of a rant but today I was discussing with a friend about why it has NEVER impressed me when a big name hollywood actor does a voice for a video game.
NOW there are two exceptions I can think of off the top of my head.

Mark Hammil in Wing Commander 3 (I was young)
Vin Diesel (the name of the game escapes me but I was VERY impressed,, they used the best compressor out there for sure).

I know of two companies personally that have hired hollywood actors and both of them had two things in common.
1. The games were kind of decent at best and the publisher and the upper management thought that people would buy a game based on name recognition.
2. The actors both commanded more than 100k for a days worth of work (and in one case 250k and four hours).

Now I know a lot of audio guys/programmers/artists etc, and these are the people that make the game happen and to be honest they're doing pretty well in the industry if they're salaries are equal to that one days worth of work.
I don't know a single person who goes to buy a game and says "hmm I wonder what Christian Slater has been in lately" who cares!!!! Its more like "whats fun, cool, how many things are there to destroy, and do they have multiplayer???

I work constantly with voice actors and honestly I would put these guys up against any A list celebirty anyday (as far as doing voices are concerned).

Spending money on a name in an entirely different industry is essentially pissing away money. Maybe you'll sell an extra 1000 copies and if you do your math thats equivelant to (at the ultimate best) 50k. If you do the math you've already lost money.

Pay the programmers/level designers/artists/audio people etc instead of rushing off to hollywood to throw money in to some chumps pocket that really doesn't care anyway.

Condemned Criminal Orgins

As far as a game to play Condemned might not really be my bag. Namely due to the fact that most of my game time comes fairly late in the evening and this game is REALLY FREAKING SCARY. Now with that being said while I wasn't necessarily the one manning the controls I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
From an audio standpoint this game is REALLY well done. The satisfying sound when you finally find one of the birds sounds (EXACTLY LIKE A DEAD BIRD). Its kind of gross and a bit creepy. I'm actually fond of the fact that they didn't use a more UI type sound when finding a bird. Its a funny story actually at E3 I was having dinner with one of the sound designers from Monolith and she mentioned the sonic orgins of the dead bird sound. Guess what,,,,,,,,, its a dead bird. Now she claims they just found it, but these people are dedicated to their art so who knows what REALLY happened.
The audio package in this game is absolutely driven by realism and the impact sounds (espeacially with the lead pipe) are very well done and impactfull (no pun intended). As far as the techy UI sounds I'm a huge fan. They are not so techy that you feel like your in the matrix or anything but they are unique enough and real enough to be believable in our world.
The music in the game is equally well done in fact the music is so creepy and atmospheric that I would venture to include it in the sound design catagory. It works well because there is absoluteley no grounding in reality and it paints a nice sonic picture next to the highly effective and realistic sound design.
If there are any complaints about the audio package it is the voices. I'm sorry but if I was walking through a sewer with a lead pipe and a lot of demon/heroin addict looking people I would probably not answer my communication device as loudly and as confident. The reads from the enemies are well done (although the cursing is off the train tracks). I'll give the obnoxious use of cursing the benefit of the doubt and venture to say that probably if your a drug addict living in the sewers cursing might be the least of your problems.

All in all the game is extremely well done from an audio standpoint. I bought it all and never thought to myself (wow that seems out of place). Everything fit nicely in to the world.

Overall:8.5
SFX: 8:0
Music:8.5
Voice:5