Win The Soundtrack From Bastion

In our ongoing quest for awesome free stuff, 3FL has teamed up with Supergiant Games to give you the chance to win a copy of the soundtrack to their massively successful game Bastion.

We have 10 copies of Darren Korb’s epic soundtrack up for grabs and all you have to do is come up with one of the least boring entries we receive – easy!

Check out an impromptu acoustic performance by Darren and vocalist Ashley Barrett below to see what you could be nodding your head to on the train to work. Never heard of Bastion before? Shame on you. Go watch the trailer immediately.

To enter, all you need to do is send an email to contests@3fl.net.au from your iiNet, Westnet or Netspace email address and tell us (in 25 words or less) what the opening line from the narrator would be if you were the hero in Bastion. Please include your preferred name for when we announce the winners (whether that’s Brad or d00mie22 is up to you).

Be as creative as you want to be, because you’ll need to be one of our 10 favourites to score yourself a soundtrack!

Entries close at 12PM WST on Friday 3rd February 2012. Winners will be announced shortly after and notified via email.

Liquid Physics Puzzles in Vessel

I’m calling it now – the next cool little indie physics game with sweet music that’s going to make insane amounts of money is Vessel from developer Strange Loop Games.

Vessel is all about inventor M. Arkwright and his liquid-based Fluro machines. What starts as simple puzzles solved by water machinations soon turns into complex puzzles with lava, slime and all sorts of other liquid physics.

Check out the trailer below or read on for a more in-depth look at the game in the new videos promoting the game’s March 1 release on Steam.

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Mass Effect 3 Demo on Valentines Day

Forever alone this Valentines Day? Bioware’s got your back with the Mass Effect 3 demo hitting Xbox, PS3 and PC on Feb 14.

The demo will include both single-player and co-op multiplayer (which unlocks on Feb 17) levels along with voice recognition using the Xbox Kinect. You’ll be able to shout commands like “Shotgun” to switch to a weapon or “LIARA MOVE YOU’RE IN MY WAY WHICH MAKES ME HATE YOU” to have Liara step aside. I’ve never considered buying a Kinect before, but being able to abuse my NPC characters for being useless could be a game-changer.

For PC players, Bioware have posted the minimum and recommended specs for the demo in a forum post on their website.

Check out the video below to see the Kinect voice commands in action, or download the HD version from 3FL entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers.

Syndicate Co-Op Demo Coming

EA have sent word that a 4 player co-op demo of Syndicate will be hitting Xbox and PS3 later this month, letting everyone try out 1 of the 9 co-op missions available in the full game when it comes out in February.

Well, when it comes out in New Zealand since the game was refused classification in Australia because we still don’t have an R18+ classification. But hey, we get to check the demo out. So I guess that’s something.

Check out the new co-op trailer on Youtube below or download the full HD version from 3FL entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet and Netspace customers.

[Update] EA Australia have confirmed that the Syndicate co-op demo will not be available in Australia, only New Zealand. I wasn’t aware they bothered limiting specific Xbox Live/PSN titles to specific regions, other than whether it’s available for EU or NA (Australia and New Zealand both falls under EU). I guess we’ll find out later this month.

Starhawk Open Beta Begins Feb 21

On Feb 21, anyone who wants to jump into Starhawk will get the chance when the open beta starts. You can get in earlier if you’re a PSN Plus subscriber or bought Uncharted 3.

Woohoo, free stuff! Everyone loves free stuff!

Starhawk is the sequel to Warhawk, one of the first multiplayer PS3 shooters, known for its gyro-controlled Warhawk jets and combining solid team-based FPS gameplay with vehicles to really make the player feel like he’s in the middle of an epic battle.

The sequel kicks things up a notch by adding the ability to deploy buildings, defensive turrets and energy shields on the fly in the middle of a game and adding the ability to transform the jets into a rad looking mech while singing Robot Rock (at least that’s what I’ll be doing). It’s the sort of ambitious design for an online shooter that makes me wonder whether it’s going to actually work well outside the controlled environment of the developer’s studio.

However the video below has a lot of resounding endorsements, so it sounds like the new stuff really works. It even includes a few people who don’t have to big the game up just because they write for Playstation Magazine, so it’s probably reliable.

Besides, the game just looks like it would be a lot of fun. Check it out.

Abobo’s Big Adventure

Today’s Flash Game Friday is Abobo’s Big Adventure – a throwback to old Nintendo beat ‘em up games, starring one of the most under-appreciated video game characters around.

Some know him as “That Bald Guy In Double Dragon”, some refer to him as “Tomato Man”, but most correctly refer to him by his name – Abobo.

Abobo’s Big Adventure has been lovingly recreated in flash and jammed with a cameo from every NES game character possible.  If you’re too young to have lived through the beat ‘em up phase, then you’ll probably find this game to be really boring. Personally I think it’s awesome, so I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

It does take a while to load, but it’s totally worth it.

Dinner Date (Stood Up For A)

Is this one of those Japanese SIMs where you work all day to pick up chicks?
Is it like Burger Time, but with other types of food?

Not at all, but prepare for questions like these if you try this game. Even calling it a ‘game’ feels like a stretch. It’s more like an immersion simulator, or an ever so slightly interactive short film.

Dinner Date, by Stout Games, places you in the subconscious mind of young single Julian, waiting alone in his apartment for his date to arrive, alone with his thoughts as he realises she does not intend to show up. Putting it very bluntly, you’re up for half an hour of listening to some British guy complain about his life. And, oh – none of your actions affect the story.

I realise I’m not selling this very well, and with good reason – it’s not for everyone. It’s introspective and poetically mundane, easily falling in company with Trauma, Myst, Grow Cube and I wish I were the Moon, but with no unlocks or surprises. Despite this, I found something oddly engaging about sipping wine, eating bread and nervously checking the clock in time with the crests and troughs of our hero’s 30 minute monologue.

Though Dinner Date is a cheap anti-thrill by today’s standards, it makes me want to imagine the levels of immersion we can look forward to in tomorrow’s gaming world. If the sound was better, if the graphics were crisper, if my in-game motions were Kinect-ed to my body motions – if technology allowed me to see only the tiny, lonely apartment and hear only the ticking clock – I wouldn’t just play Julian, I could be him.

Hopefully still for just $4.99 on Steam.

(Ps. Stout Games recommends drinking-aged gamers enjoy a glass of merlot while playing.)

Pocket League Story On Your Phone

Following their success with other management games like Game Dev Story and Grand Prix Story, Kairosoft have released Pocket League Story – a great little game where you manage a football team (or soccer team, depending if you’ll punch me for calling it soccer) from humble beginnings to the heights of the pro leagues.

Read on to check out my impressions and find out why it’s immediately jumped to my #1 Public Transport Game.

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Razer’s Project Fiona Tablet

Razer have announced their next effort to prove that PC gaming isn’t dead in the form of a weird hybrid tablet with the guts of a high-powered gaming PC inside, called Project Fiona.

While the announcement was light on the full specifications of the tablet, Razer have confirmed it will be powered by an Intel Core i7 processor, run Windows 8, feature a 10.1″ 1280×800 resolution multi-touch screen and provide THX-certified Dolby 7.1 sound.

The debut video showed an… interesting variety of games running on the tablet, ranging from slick-looking recent releases like Space Marine and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, to some odd choices like 2010′s HAWX 2 and the 2D cartoon RPG Terraria.

If you’re looking at it and thinking “Wait, how many PC games are going to suit a dual-thumbstick interface?” well apparently Razer’s already thought of that. Project Fiona will allow you to plug a regular keyboard and mouse into the tablet and use it as a monitor, as seen in the video below.

The final device won’t look exactly the same as the proof-of-concept prototype unveiled at CES today when it goes on sale later this year for under $1000 RRP. I’m sure it will get renamed to the Razer Daggerblade or something equally cool-sounding too. Kids love names that remind them of knives.

Kinect Coming To Windows PCs For $250

Microsoft announced at CES today that they will be bringing Kinect to Windows PCs in February this year. A blog post on the Microsoft website goes into more detail.

You’ll be looking at a cool US $250 to add the ability to dance and shout at your PC, whether that’s for gaming or office-related purposes is up to you. If it lets me send emails by yelling COMPUTER… SEND while pointing to the horizon, I could probably get on board with this.