Get ready for your wallet to be upset with you. The Limited Edition SOULCALIBUR V OST is out, and it will cost you a pretty penny. But just look at that thing. It’s gorgeous! Can you really say no to that box?

Aside from the 56 track OST (3 discs), you’ll also get 20 pages of liner notes, a behind the scenes DVD detailing the creative process of the game’s score, and a set of character cards. It’s quite the package.

The soundtrack itself is a diverse mix of composers and performers spanning five different countries. It includes music written by Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana), Andrew Aversa (Monkey Island 2: Special Edition), Cris Velasco (God of War trilogy), Inon Zur (Dragon Age series), and more with performances by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra and Choir.

You can find a handful of sample clips on EminenceOnline.com as well as a photo gallery showcasing that sweet, sweet packaging. I highly recommend checking out “Blood Thirst Concerto” (embedded below). (more…)

Were you as surprised as we were by how great the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo was? Perhaps while you were slashing away at wolves and throwing fireballs at bears, your attention was grabbed by the game’s music. If so, you’ll be happy to know the release of the official soundtrack is imminent.

On February 7th (the same release day as the game itself), you can grab the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Original Soundtrack in physical or digital format. The “dark fantasy score” is composed by Grant Kirkhope (GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Viva Pinata) and performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Head over to Amazon to listen to sample clips. There’s also a full interview below with Kirkhope on the game’s music and sound. If you don’t have a full seven minutes free to watch it, at least check out the last twenty seconds. It’s practically guaranteed to make you crack a smile. (more…)

Just over two years ago, The King of Fighters XII released with a great fighting system, a hopelessly broken online experience, and an almost complete lack of single player modes. Today, the latest entry in the series releases with the intent to right the missteps of its predecessor.

The expanded roster of The King of Fighters XIII doesn’t have much new for the series, but it brings back a lot of the fighters missing from XII including Team Women Fighters members Mai, King, and my personal favorite, Yuri. With over 30 fighters available, the amount of choices are once again approaching the levels of its decade-old asset ripping, last generation entries.

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Have you been scared off by the complex nature of the fighting game genre, but intrigued by its resurgence in recent years? Atlus is planning on replacing that fear with knowledge by dishing out a new series of tutorial videos leading up to the release of The King of Fighters XIII.

This first video featuring Dream Cancel community member, Metaphysics, starts with the basics. And I mean the very basics. While the first half is more of an introductory course on fighting games in general, things get a little more interesting when character archetypes and play styles enter the discussion. (more…)

Last year, Sonic Colors showed me that 3D Sonic games could be fun again. Of course, this was the very same year that Sonic 4 dashed my hopes of a quality 2D Sonic experience. So when it was announced that the next game in the series would feature both styles of play, I was skeptical of SEGA’s ability to handle the classic stages.

It turns out they actually learned from their mistakes… well, most of them anyway. Sonic Generations, while not perfect, manages to be a rather successful blend of old and new Sonic gameplay that’s fun in spite of its shortcomings.

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You know that moment in gaming where you’re no longer making conscious decisions and instead find yourself relying on pure, razor fast instinct? This is how I felt for almost the entirety of the time I spent with SkyDrift. Much like the fantastic Split/Second, SkyDrift‘s brand of racing puts you on the verge of death constantly, and everytime you manage to narrowly escape certain doom at the hands of the track’s terrain or your opponent’s weapons it feels like a miracle.

It’s amazing how much the concept of flight changes how a racing game plays. The added verticality of racing in an airplane instead of a car allows for a sense of freedom that really makes every race play out differently. This is also helped by some really superb track design. There aren’t a ton of tracks, but the ones that are there are filled to the brim with branching pathways, a ton of variety, and plenty of extra dangerous obstacles that reward players willing to take risks.

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Hot off the heels of their Back to the Future game, Telltale is back with another license close to the heart of my youth: Jurassic Park. It takes risks, leaving behind the traditional point and click interface of their past games for something a little different.

The first of the two demos I played was exclusively an action scene. Several of the game’s protagonists were stuck on a roller coaster and I had to prevent them from being eaten by a pack of dinosaurs. The solution? Successfully complete a lot of quick time events including button presses and quick flips of the analogue stick. You could sum up the entire action demo simply by saying “Space Ace”.

But there was a weird layer of detachment added to this scene. The character whose actions were affected by my inputs constantly changed. This made me feel less involved with what was happening on screen since no singular character represented the player. Occasionally I’d fail and watch a death scene before snapping back to the last checkpoint. I watched my cart go on the wrong track into a pack of dinosaurs, a young girl falling out of the car to her death and more, all while my death counter rose.

If this was all the game was, I’d be pretty sad. Thankfully the second demo I played was far more interesting, though still different than Telltale’s previous games.

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Final Fantasy XIII was a highly divisive game when it released last year. I found myself enjoying its finer points, but also finding fault in some of its design leading me to write a rather mixed review. With a sequel on the way, the opportunity for a more consistent experience has been opened.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place three years after the first. Lightning has disappeared and Serah (her previously unplayable little sister) is out to find her with the help of a new character named Noel. The demo wasn’t heavy on exposition, but there was enough talk of “points in time” and “anomalies between dimensions” to pique my interest.

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As a fan of the genre, I’ve seen my fair share of modern scrolling shooters or “shmups” as they’re often called. Yet, after the magnificent Gradius V back in 2004, I haven’t seen very many that actually look modern. Even some from this year tend to look like something you might’ve seen in the arcade as much as a decade ago.

That’s the first of many ways in which Sine Mora sets itself apart. The game is gorgeous. There’s a real sense of depth to the environments that manage to strike an effective balance of being attractive without being distracting. Colors are often vibrant, environments are varied, and giant bosses are real spectacles to behold thanks to art direction from Grasshopper.

And yet, as great as the visuals were, it was the unique mechanics developer Digital Reality put into the game that kept me coming back for another try. Sine Mora is not about one hit kills or traditional health systems. Sine Mora is about time (in more ways than one). While you’re playing, the clock always counts down. Killing enemies will send the clock backward a bit, while getting hit drastically reduces your time. When the clock strikes “00″, you die.

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Thinking of picking up the Augmented Edition of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the PlayStation 3? Here’s a fun fact I found out the hard way so you don’t have to! The bonus “DVD” that’s included, despite having “DVD” printed on the disc itself (and the back of the box), is actually a Blu-ray disc.

“But my PS3 is a Blu-ray player! What’s the big deal?” you might ask. Well, gentle reader, you may be annoyed to find out that while you can access the videos included using your PS3, the soundtrack will not work. You can attempt to select it from your PS3, but it will promptly tell you to put the Blu-ray disc in your computer to retrieve the files.

Like many people out there, my computer has no Blu-ray drive. Considering I personally only went with the Augmented Edition for the soundtrack which is currently inaccessible to me on a Blu-ray disc with “DVD” printed on it, I’m a bit annoyed to put it nicely.

I’m sure in time we will all have Blu-ray drives, or perhaps even Green-ray drives, installed right into our heads that will allow us to download soundtracks right into our brains, but until that time you better have one in your computer or it’s no soundtracks for you!

Update: The support forum thread on EidosGames.com is full of people having this same issue