Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Surfin' the Sound Waves

Monday, Mar 17, 2008
Green Mushroom is a feature of Moving Pixels that allows our Multimedia writers to comment on reviews in the Multimedia section, hence giving our coverage of those games...(wait for it)...extra life.

L.B. Jeffries posted a review of Steam’s excellent, groundbreaking downloadable game Audiosurf today, a game that we just can’t get enough of at PopMatters Multimedia HQ.  It’s nice to have a music-based game that doesn’t rely on any sort of latent musical talent, and the ease with which it can incorporate any piece of one’s MP3 collection is astounding.


Having played around with it for a while, we’ve found that Underworld’s “Dirty Epic” is a fantastic candidate for a fast-paced but relaxing ride (and a ten-minute one, at that), Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer” is fun if you’re the type who likes rolling hills, and pretty much any spoken word piece (think audiobooks) is fun if you’re the type who thinks hopping curbs in your 4x4 is a good time.  Oh, and people seem to be enjoying “Through the Fire and Flames” a bit, too, as they’ve finally found a way to play that song that lets them hear the end.  No experience, however, has so far matched the good time to be had by playing the game with Akron/Family’s “Ed is a Portal”, which crests and falls so smoothly, building huge amounts of momentum for six minutes or so, after which you get about a minute of coasting up a hill for a cool down.  The combination of fantastic song and fantastic track is a sort of synergy that has, until now, been nearly untapped in gaming.  Download the demo, and try to tell us that the ten bucks for the full-on experience isn’t worth it.  Once you’ve dropped your Hamilton, come back and tip us off to some new musical experiences that we might not have tried yet.  We’ll be eternally grateful.

Media
System of a Down - "Chop Suey" on Audiosurf
Comments
Now on PopMatters
Hip Hop Es Mi Cultura (Columns) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Van Halen: A Different Kind of Truth (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Eyvind Kang: The Narrow Garden (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
The Soft Hills: The Bird Is Coming Down to Earth (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Matthias Sturm: Blood and Thunder (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Jack DeJohnette: Sound Travels (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sam Mickens: Slay & Slake (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sibiri Samake: Dambe Foli (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Big Fresh: Moneychasers (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Alyssa Graham: Lock, Stock & Soul (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
A Painting Come to Life: 'The Mill & the Cross' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 4:00 pm]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  3. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  4. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  5. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  6. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  7. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  8. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  9. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  10. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  11. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  12. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  13. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  14. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  15. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  16. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  17. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  18. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  19. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  20. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  21. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: A Rock Star’s Midlife Crisis or Valid Literature? (Features)
  22. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  23. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  24. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  25. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  26. Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (Reviews)
  27. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  28. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
  29. After Cease to Exist: The Far-from-Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (Features)
  30. Mitt Romney Can Reside at Today's Proverbial 'Downton Abbey'... Newt Gingrich Cannot (Features)
PM Picks
Announcements

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.