Rhythm

This demo is for the unique rhythm-based action game (played in reverse) Retro/Grade, a game that was a finalist at the 11th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF). The demo can be played on the PC using a keyboard, gamepad controller or USB guitar controller if you have one. A full game is expected to release for the PC and PlayStation Network. The game trailer and system requirements can all be seen after the jump.

"Rick Rocket has just saved the universe! Unfortunately, the massive destruction he left in his wake has caused a temporal anomaly that has reversed the flow of time. The player must assume control of Rick's spacecraft and fight through the epic space battle... in reverse! Retro/Grade is an innovative game that fuses the white knuckle thrills and over the top visuals of a shooter with the broad appeal of a rhythm game. Players are forced to dodge enemy projectiles while positioning the ship to be in the correct place to fire their lasers when their shots come back to them."

Download Retro/Grade IGF Demo (31 MB)
Download HD Retro/Grade Trailer (52 MB)

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

We've talked about the amazing (and free!) rhythm games Osu! and Frets on Fire before on Freeware Friday, but never the game that started the trend of music-game reproductions. Where Osu! replicates Ouendan, and Frets on Fire copies Guitar Hero, this game takes a page directly from arguably the most successful rhythm game franchise of all time: Dance Dance Revolution. The game in question is Stepmania, and is a landmark in freeware as well as being an absolutely solid platform for anyone who loves DDR. If you have not played Stepmania, you are doing yourself a disservice, as it belongs on every hard drive.

MMO game developer Turbine is stepping into the free-to-play MMO business with the announcement today of DDO Eberron Unlimited, a new version of Dungeons and Dragons Online that will launch later this summer and will allow anyone to play the game for free.

Those folks can choose to spend real money in the DDO online store where microtransactions will be used to purchase in-game items, additional adventure packs, more character slots and other items. You can also still pay a monthly subscription fee if you want. Those players will become VIPs which means access to all of the game's adventure packs, access to more character slots and 500 points per month to spend in the DDO store among other things. The free-to-play version is currently signing up people to beta test the game.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

The PC has a strong tradition of creating freeware remakes of popular rhythm games that allow for user-created content. First came the remake of Dance Dance Revolution in Stepmania, which fueled the creation of the In The Groove series. The came the remake of the Guitar Hero franchise with Frets on Fire. Now, there is osu!, a remake of Ouendan (or Elite Beat Agents, pick your poison) that manages to put both to shame. A flexible built-in editor and player, a thriving community, and a unique online experience propel osu! above its peers in the freeware music game niche.

The Guitar Hero franchise has almost exclusively been a console experience. There have been a couple of exceptions. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, a 2007 port of the console game by Aspyr wasn't a huge sales success. Neither was that game's expansion pack Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Now GameSpot confirms via a GDC demo that Aspyr will try again with a PC version of the latest game in the series, Guitar Hero World Tour.

The PC port is due out in June and will come with the game and one guitar controller. If you want to add the game's drum kit you will have to buy the PS3 version which will work with the PC game (any USB microphone will work). The PC port will contain all of the included songs in the console version as well as World Tour's feature of creating new songs. Being able to download and purchase new songs, however, hasn't been confirmed (although the previous PC Guitar Hero game did not have that feature).

If you are a fan of the great racing-music game Audiosurf (and if you are not, then you need to be) you've got a major new update to download via Steam tonight. The update is more than just a bug fix patch; a number of new features have been added to the popular game.

Among the new additions is full Unicode support, new Russian language support, and if you have one of those netbooks that the kids are talking about a new Minimal detail setting, Freeride in the game also has two new modes; Autopilot and Visualiser, the latter of which brings some new graphics options.

This Sunday Spike TV will broadcast its annual Video Game Awards ceremony and one of the catagories will be the new Best Independent Game award. Today Spike TV and the award's sponsor Mountain Dew announced that the nominees will be made available for free for a limited amount of downloads. The nominated games include two PC titles, World of Goo and Audiosurf.

Details on how to get the free games will be made available at the end of The Next Great Game Gods, a Spike TV special that will air on Friday at 12:30 am ET. The program will feature Gametrailers.TV host Geoff Keighley interviewing a number of the nominees for the award including Dylan Fitterer, the creator of Audiosurf, and 2D Boy's Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler, the creators of World of Goo. The special will also feature an interview with Spore creator Will Wright.

This cinematic trailer for Sacred 2: Fallen Angel introduces players to the world of Ancaria and the plight the inhabitants face as they fight over T-energy. T-energy is the source of all life, magic and thought and an uncontrolled leak in its containment is mutating the world.

Download HD Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Introduction to Ancaria Trailer #1 (10 MB)

Last year Aspyr Media released a PC and Mac port of Activision's music-rhythm game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock only a few weeks after the console versions from Neversoft and Activision shipped to stores. Today the publisher announced that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the stand alone add-on that was released to consoles last June, has now shipped to stores for the PC and Mac.

Just in case you are not familiar with the game, Guitar Hero Aerosmith contains over 40 new songs for Guitar Hero III fans, including 25 Aerosmith master tracks along with other artists like Stone Temple Pilots, Run DMC and others. If you haven't bought the original game you don't need it to play this title. However if you want to buy both Aspyr will ship out a bundle containing both games on November 4.

It's been the definition of a sleeper hit in 2008 as the acclaimed indie puzzle-music-racing game Audiosurf became a major hit when it debuted on Valve's Steam download service back in February. However there are those folks who haven't learned about this whole "Intertubes" or "Intraweb" or whatever the kids are calling it so they most likely haven't even heard of the title.

Now comes word that Ascaron Entertainment will be releasing Audiosurf to European retail stores beginning in October for the cheap, cheap price of 9.99 EUR. The game, which takes a person's songs and converts them into a digital looking race track, has no US retail release date. However if you are brave you could try this "World Wide Sports" thingie...

The newly merged Activision Blizzard may want to get rid of a number of the now former Vivendi Games' developers and game titles but it looks like Activision Publishing wants to continue to expand. Today the company announced that it has acquired UK developer FreeStyleGames for an undisclosed amount.

FreeStyleGames was formed in 2002 and in 2006 released a Playstation music title called B-Boy that was released in Europe and Korea but never made it to the US. Under their new Activision owners, FreeStyleGames will help contribute to their massively selling Guitar Hero franchise and will also develop an all new music game. Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard has yet to announced what they plan to do with two Vivendi Games developers, Swordfish Studios and Massive Entertainment. Both of these teams are currently in limbo as Activision Blizzard announced earlier this summer that they don't plan to bring them into their new organization. Several announced former Vivendi game titles like World in Conflict: Soviet Assault and Brutal Legend are also without a publisher at this time.

It's Friday which means it's time to kick back, go see a movie, hang with a significant other or maybe try out some new games. Valve's Steam service has two games in their line-up priced well below their regular price for this weekend only. One is Beyond Good and Evil, the acclaimed Ubisoft fantasy action-adventure title. It's priced at only $4.99 this weekend. Buy it and check out its goodness before Ubisoft releases its announced sequel to the game.

The other game on sale at Steam this weekend is the indie music rhythm-racing title Audiosurf. For just a few days you can buy and download the acclaimed title for just $4.99, which is a near-perfect price to see what all the fuss is about.

At the young, impressionable, and stupid age of 13, I remember being influenced by Nintendo's horrid Play it Loud television commercials. The sight of gamers like myself rocking out while playing Mortal Kombat II, Super Mario World, Star Fox, Super Street Fighter II and other popular titles at full volume looked totally fun, a guaranteed way to increase the immersion factor of my favorite Super NES games and rebel against the serious, studious parents who, according to Nintendo, wanted to limit my precious gaming time.

Those of you who, like me, attempted to play "it" as loudly as possible most likely recall that the commercials were all hype -- loud, painful, and unrewarding. While pleasant at lower volumes, the sound on the SNES, while not as grating as the underwater gurgling emitted by the Sega Genesis, were muffled, crackly, and distorted at medium to high levels. Even worse, playing it loud didn't exactly sit well with parents. Sure, the commercials showed authority figures staring in disbelief at their wild teenage gamer children, but they forgot to show the part where those crazy kids got grounded for playing games at ridiculous volumes.

Quality sound systems have come into their own since then, with many snazzy setups readily affordable and worth every penny due to the theater-like atmosphere they provide. Couple that with the fact that this generation of games is actually meant to be played at a higher volume than five or six, and it's easy to understand why many gamers value their sound systems above pricey graphics cards.

The Phillips amBX system is more than just a quality audio experience. Equipped with speakers, lights, fans, and a wrist pad offering a more dynamic level of force feedback, amBX is deservedly being billed as a total immersion system, one that won't just bring pleasure to your ears, but to every part of your being involved in the gaming experience.

It didn't get a lot of publicity but last year Guitar Hero III was released for the PC and Mac by Aspyr and it's possible that the next major game in the series, Guitar Hero World Tour, could be heading to the PC as well. A listing on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board site clearly shows a "Windows PC" listing for the Activision game alongside the console versions.

Guitar Hero World Tour will not only feature guitar controllers but a new drum controller as well as singing for the first time along with a way to create your own music that can be used in the game. It's currently due out for release for consoles this fall but so far Activision has not yet confirmed if the PC version will actually be released.

Talk about making a game better on a regular basis. Audiosurf has already received one free, massive update, and now comes another one. This one, though, is interesting. This new update allows the players to make their own game modes by changing the names of the song they are playing. They can do so by adding one or multiple tags after the title of the song. We have to say that this sort of improvements to an already great game just impress us all that much more. An explanation of the system can be found on the Audiosurf forums, and the full list of tags can be found after the break or in the Steam update.