You Found a Secret Area!

Tag: soundtrack

Here’s Some Stuff I Bought: The Rest of 2025 Edition.

Welcome to 2026 and the 14^th year of You Found a Secret Area. It’s kind of weird to think about for me. Over the past decade or so, I’ve seen a shift more towards video and streaming content, with long-form writing being shoved away. While I had dabbled in such things in the past, there’s been one thing that’s been constant, and that’s me sitting down at least once a month to put down a bunch of words about… stuff.

I don’t really have any super strong goals for the blog this year, besides to keep writing. Even in the age of AI slop, where cheap fly-by-night blogs scrape the internet to make blogs full of SEO marketing drivel that’s not even correct half the time, I’m not giving up on writing. It’s arguably one of my strengths, I don’t wanna offload my work to the plagiarism machines, the human element is most important thing to me.

That being said, back in June I said I’d make a “rest of 2025,” and here’s me fulfilling that promise. I know I did a separate post for Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2025, but this is the stuff I bought outside the convention. Here’s Some Stuff I Bought through the rest of 2025:

This first one was a case of a happy accident. In October, I decided to roam around the area and spotted a small resale shop called Village Merchants. Funny enough, a taco truck is also parked right next door to it, and they used the signboard to use “Who Wants a Taco,” which I think is sage advice we can all agree with.

Village Merchants is a quaint little place, mostly full of clothes, but also knick-knacks and other assorted things like music CDs. And I spotted one that really caught my interest.

$2 – Bob Miller’s Polkarena

Okay, I’m gonna be talking about local Portland, Oregon stuff here, so skip on if you’re not interested in knowing about local personalities from my neck of the woods.

This is a Christmas album made for 1190 KEX, an AM talk radio station that had a handful of local radio personalities, but nowadays is just a place if you wanna hear right-wing talk radio and Coast to Coast AM all day.

Bob Miller was a longtime personality for the station, starting in 1979 and continuing until 2003, moving on to KPAM until retiring in 2014. 35 years is a hell of a run for any radio personality, honestly. For a good chunk of the late 90s to the early 2000s, KEX would put out these charity CDs for the holidays. According to Discogs, this has a 1998 copyright, something I couldn’t easily find on the disc itself.

I bought this only because of the concept of a polka version of the famous “Macarena” one-hit wonder sounded appealing. It’s silly, mostly Bob talk-singing about German related things while trying to get Horst Mager, a famous Portland celebrity chef at the time, to sing. It’s not nearly as interesting as I was hoping, but it’s goofy even if they’re massively late to the party.

The rest of the album is various sketches and songs featured on Bob Miller’s radio show throughout 1998, including adding lyrics to the Olympic Games theme, A blues track about traffic on Interstate 5, and even some other Oregon themed tracks. There’s even a bit where Dennis Nordin, part of the KEX traffic chopper, talks about a tale of a woman stuck in a tree. Guess Portland has always been weird even in the late ‘90s.

While writing about this, I found out about Wes Cooley, a former Oregon Republican infamously for lying about his military record (not to be confused with the motorcyclist); and Jake O’Donnell, a former NBA referee who seemed to have a massive beef with Clyde Drexler, a basketball player who was a longtime player for the Portland Trailblazers. I’ve been living in Portland, Oregon all my life and I suddenly learned more about my city and state with this album. Thanks, Bob Miller.

For being a typical radio station charity CD made for the holidays, it’s Perfectly Fine. Nothing to write home about. It’s no Z100 Evil Barney Christmas, that’s for sure.

Fun fact: The track listing on the back of the CD doesn’t match the actual CD track listing. A performance of Heywood Banks’ “Diddly Squat” had to be yanked at the last minute due to licensing issues, so instead we have a silly little Christmas-themed song by Bob Miller instead.

(more…)

January 10, 2026
Desert Crisis: A Half-Life mod with a soundtrack straight out of 2004.

Every once in a while I get a bit nostalgic for that early-to-mid 2000s era of computer gaming. Though less for major games like Unreal Tournament, and instead for those who have existing games but want to expand beyond what the vanilla multiplayer for Half-Life was.

For me, that was absolutely the norm around this time, playing the notable multiplayer mods like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic alongside classics like The Specialists, Sven Co-op and Natural Selection. Of course, I was reminded of another multiplayer mod I was into, but has mostly fallen into obscurity in recent years.

An action-packed romp. (Source: ModDB.)

This is Desert Crisis, a modification for Half-Life released around 2003-04. Done by a handful of amateur modders/mappers from the Half-Life mod scene, it’s a multiplayer mod that is very much “everything including the kitchen sink” in terms of design.

Two factions, the USA and the “United Peace-Keeping Organization,” an enemy faction built from various other countries after a decades-long global conflict, go and fight against each other with realistic firearms, melee weapons and space lasers. Think something like Action Half-Life or The Specialists with a bit of Unreal Tournament’s Assault mode mixed in.

It was pretty damn ambitious for what it was trying to do in 2003-04, especially with games like Half-Life 2 around the corner. There aren’t very many gameplay videos of it, since it was around before YouTube was really a thing, so have this action-packed low quality trailer uploaded from 2006 to get kind of a feel of what the mod was aiming for:

But I’m not really here to talk about the mod itself, though it could be an interesting topic on its own. No, I want to talk about the music of the mod.

In something you don’t really see often for a game mod, this mod does have an official “theme song” that plays in the menus when picking your team and loadout. Theme 1 is for the “USA” faction: A fairly simple chugging rock tune with fairly basic riffs and your go-to guitar solos. Theme 2 is for that rival “UP-KO” faction that’s a bit more Rammstein-esque in terms of style, with those chugging guitars.
(more…)

September 8, 2025
Legendary Original Soundtrack: A high note in an otherwise average performance.

Hey look, another post about this game! But this time, we’re focusing on one little part of it: The music. I briefly hinted at it when I wrote about Legendary, but the music is probably the game’s most shining moment. Which is me kinda lowering my standards here, since we’re talking about something as average as Legendary. Though it had been nearly a decade since I last played the game, the music is the one thing I remember from it besides the literal soul sucking and that time where I fell through the elevator at the end of the game.

For a little context: I like film and game scores, especially when it’s stuff that is mostly forgotten. It’s become one of those things I tend to collect because it’s neat to listen to scores to mostly forgotten films like Paycheck or the TV score for the 2000s reality show The Mole. That also applies to video game scores. Since Legendary was released around the time where companies were going “Oh yeah, we can do soundtracks for our video game,” a lot of games got soundtracks. And of all the games to get a soundtrack, this was one of them.

Okay, it looks fairly cheap, but hey, better than nothing.

Composed by Jack Grillo (the audio director at Spark Unlimited at the time, who’s since moved on to Crystal Dynamics, working on audio for the Tomb Raider games) and Ricardo Hernandez (presumably a drummer friend of Grillo’s, his name is hard to find info on him easily), this soundtrack was released in September 2008 on most digital storefronts, and also got a physical release on Melee Sound Design Records, Hernandez’s self-published label.

So what does it sound like? It’s mostly chugging guitars and heavy drum hits. After “Prologue,” which is mostly a monologue with occasional guitar playing throughout, “Flashpoint” is the first proper song on here, which plays while in the game’s main menu. It starts with a suspenseful guitar intro, before the drums kick in and layers of guitars are blended into this fairly intense menu music, which is probably the best way to get you pumped up to play the game.

It’s also really interesting how there’s voice lines from the game featured. “Prologue” and “Epilogue” are literally featured from the game itself at those particular sections, which is expected, though they are truncated from the actual dialogue. featured However, the way it’s framed makes the album as trying to tell its own story, outside of the game. “It’s Just Business” is framed like Deckard just got severely wounded and about to get killed by LeFey, but in the actual game he says this line from a hijacked video line before a squad of baddies come to murder Deckard and Vivian in a subway. I’ll chalk this up to creative liberty with the material featured, but honestly I could’ve done without the random dialogue bits featured here.

You can kinda tell they had to put a different TV model in front of the original model. That’s game design hotfixes for you, baby!
(more…)

November 29, 2024
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 5: Of Masterminds and Missing Links.

I never thought I would ever come back to this. After a steady stream of music packs released throughout 2014-2016, I assumed Valve was done with the whole “CS:GO music kit” concept. After the Radicals Box hit in 2016, there had been nary a peep when it comes to that kind of content.

Then something changed. Throughout 2019 to 2020, Valve started slowly doling out individual kits, which was a better strategy to me as I could basically write about them when I had enough music kits to review. Then in late April of this year, they just dropped a pack of 7 new kits, which means I had to throw those plans immediately in the garbage.

It’s weird. The last major music kit release was in 2016, so to see them go from absolute silence to adding new ones every few months is a surprise. Especially with the spread of musicians we have on offer this time.

While I don’t play much Counter-Strike: Global Offensive these days – Call of Duty: Warzone has been my current vice, as my previous article could tell you – I still find some charm in the game. Global Offensive does things that seem absolutely baffling by modern shooter standards, yet works perfectly well without feeling too old school and too modern. That Valve has mostly stuck with it while adding elements of its competition like character skins makes it interesting to look at as a game, even if I’m not as invested as I once was. But we’re here to talk about the music, and talk we shall.

This was available first to people on Patreon. If you wanna see content like this one week early, check it out here. Just $1 will get you to see this content early.

To start, I’ll cover the four music kits released in the interim between the Radicals Box and the Masterminds Box. Like before, I’ll cover information about the musician in question, whether the music itself is good, and whether it fits in the context of Global Offensive’s gameplay. I’ll finish it off with a verdict. So let’s get started.

Like before, I’ll link to a YouTube video or to CS:GO Stash if you want to listen along.

The Verkkars, EZ4ENCE

DESCRIPTION: The Verkkars rise through the Finnish charts with a heart-pounding tribute to ENCE. Can it really be so EZ?

LISTEN ON: YouTube (courtesy of YouTube user ThEMaSkeD), CS:GO Stash

AVAILABILITY: Available for purchase as a standard kit for $4.99, a StatTrak variant for $7.99, or on the Steam marketplace.

The first of the interim kits, this was released as a promotional kit after the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice tournament in 2019. The Verkkars are an electronic dance band based in Finland, the same country that Major qualifiers ENCE are from.

ENCE is an eSports team that consists of noted Finnish CS:GO players, including allu, one of the replacements for Fifflaren in the classic CS:GO Ninjas in Pyjamas lineup, and was a fairly reliable player during his tenure with that team. Combined with some other good players from the Finnish CS:GO scene, they came to be the underdogs of the tournament, getting as far as the finals in Katowice.

The downside was that their opponents in that final were Astralis. Or as I like to call them, The New England Patriots of Counter-Strike: A team that you can’t deny their high-tier skill and abilities while playing, but they are absolutely boring to watch them dominate everyone. (Surprising no one, Astralis beat ENCE 2-0 in the final, winning their second consecutive Valve-sponsored major.)

This was clearly made as a promotion for the team ENCE, and the title is a reference to a line that people were spamming in Twitch chat about the team when they were at their peak. The song itself is… okay. It’s bog-standard EDM. It really didn’t grab me.

Then the chorus got stuck in my head. The whole song is in Finnish (except for some sampled English dialogue from a tournament that plays during the breakdown), but the tone of the chorus just… hits the right notes to just get stuck in my head in the most obnoxious way.

I put “EZ4ENCE” in a category I’ve called “terrible god damn earworms,” where a specific portion of a song – usually the chorus – gets stuck in your head in all the worse ways and never ever leaves you. The Verkkars’ ENCE anthem is in the same league as Paul Oakenfold’s “Starry Eyed Surprise,” or Paul McCartney’s “Temporary Secretary,” which is quite an impressive feat.

If you’re a fan of the team, it’s a good pack. If you’re not, Mord Fustang’s Diamonds does the same kind of EDM stuff but without the earworm chorus. Even listening to it again for this review has that damn chorus stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

EZ4ENCE, ENCE, ENCE

Dens putted upperbelt

Putted upperbelt…

VERDICT: Only recommended if you’re a fan of the team. Otherwise I lightly recommend it, get it on the Steam marketplace.
(more…)

May 8, 2020
Ghosts I-IV for Quake: A different kind of soundtrack.

If there’s one thing I need to improve on in my life, it’s to write something in the moment. I’ve bought plenty of games, played a bevy of mods, grabbed other assorted things for potential blog fodder…

Then I do nothing with it. This has happened more often than not, but only because I get the problem of being an ideas person and rarely act upon them. I’ve been slowly improving on this front, at least more than I was years ago.

Which brings me to this post about a game mod. I played this on a whim back in 2018, and thought it was pretty neat. While I’m currently wrapped in a few other things right now, I thought I’d write something quick for this month.

A few years back, I wrote an article praising the wonders of Red Book CD audio. CD audio tracks that would play in certain games, from PC classics like Half-Life, to even Sega CD games like Sonic CD. Unfortunately, modern technology is not too kind to the concept, as it often struggles to work properly on modern devices. In some cases, digital re-releases of games like Starsiege: Tribes didn’t even come with the CD music, removing part of the ambience.

There have been solutions thanks to source ports and game updates. For instance, playing Half-Life on Steam has all its music files as MP3s, so if the game (or a related mod) calls for that CD track, it’ll play it without needing the CD.

Looks just as good as it did in ’96.

Which brings me to a classic in Red Book audio: Quake. One of the earliest PC games to use it, popping in the CD would fill your ears with weird ambient music by Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails. Modern source ports such as Quakespasm actually support playable CD tracks in MP3/OGG formats, which means one can rip the soundtrack from their copy of Quake – or just find it on the internet, I doubt id and Zenimax care these days – and play it easily, proper looping and all.

There’s a handful of Quake map packs that come with custom soundtracks tailor-made for the level pack, such as Travail. Others outright replace the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack with different ambient tracks, like EpiQuake or Quake Epsilon. But what if I told you someone replaced Nine Inch Nails music with Nine Inch Nails music?

Ha! Now I won’t be burned by hot slag. Take that!
(Oh wait, now I can’t get out…)

“Ghosts I-IV for Quake” is an interesting mod. Replacing the original 1996 soundtrack with the entirety of Ghosts I-IV, an album by Nine Inch Nails with nothing but ambient instrumentals seems like a good fit. In a sense, Ghosts I-IV is a spiritual successor to the original Quake soundtrack, even if there’s little similarities in style.

The album itself is interesting: Frustrated by their record label, Trent Reznor severs his contract with Interscope Records and decides to go independent – for a while anyway – and released this under a Creative Commons license. This license is how the mod exists without lawyers getting involved, as it’s a free mod for a commercial video game.

Shooting switches with the power of magic pellets!

There is one other feature of this mod: There’s no monsters or weapons. Now there’s mostly empty levels with switches, lifts and other assorted things, but nothing to shoot. With god mode turned on. In a sense, this changes the perspective of the game entirely. No longer a straight explosive romp, it’s strictly an exploration-based affair.
(more…)

February 23, 2019
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland Soundtrack: Where rock meets punk.

I write about a lot of random junk here. Such as writing about about having a strange collection of video game related albums in the past. Sometimes just simple soundtracks of games, other times stuff like the soundtrack of the the first Tomb Raider film, or even a set of songs featuring the cast of the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? game show. Struggling with what to write about to wrap up the year, I thought I’d grab one of those unexpected soundtracks and give a review to wrap up 2017.

So let’s look at the soundtrack album to the the once-yearly skateboarding franchise: Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland. Or as the CD spine calls it, “TONY HAWK’S AMERICAN WASTLAND.”

This looks so low-quality compared to the cover it’s based on, The Clash’s London Calling.

This is the second released soundtrack album for a Tony Hawk game. The first being a “music from and inspired by” album for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, which had a bunch of songs from people who didn’t appear in the game like Outkast, Papa Roach, and Drowning Pool; while omitting good stuff like Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades.”

The soundtrack for American Wasteland only covers a small portion of the 64 (!) tracks that are in the entire game, and the 14 songs featured here are all covers of punk songs of the ’70s and ’80s like Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits, The Stooges, and even Black Flag. Considering Tony Hawk games tend to hit the gamut of multiple genres, it’s a bummer they focused on this and not the rock or hip-hop sides of the game’s soundtrack.

While I ended up finding the album at a thrift store for a pittance, you don’t have to do the same. The whole album is available on digital streaming services, including Spotify, so you can listen along with me here:

Some of these songs are by bands I’m familiar with thanks to their appearances in Rock Band or Guitar Hero — My Chemical Romance, Dropkick Murphys, Fall Out Boy, Rise Against — but the rest of the bands featured are pop-rock, post-punk or emo-rock bands that came and went. A fair share of these bands were modestly popular for the era, but unfortunately my music knowledge post-1998 is kinda like swiss cheese: it’s full of gaping holes everywhere.

Punk is also a genre I don’t know all that well besides the more mainstream representations of the genre, so in this case I ended up having to go back and listen to the originals to see if the cover is better than the original, and most importantly if it’s worth listening to Taking Back Sunday cover The Descendents.

The album starter is Senses Fail’s cover of Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized,” which was originally a deluxe edition bonus track on their debut album Let It Enfold You. Senses Fail appeared on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock‘s soundtrack, with a song I barely remember because Guitar Hero III wasn’t that good of a game. As for the song, Senses Fail give the song a much harsher pop-punk kind of sound, complete with slightly changing the lyrics since the original songs reference the lead singer. It’s alright, but kinda lacks the raw, do-it-yourself feeling of the Suicidal Tendencies’ original. At least they didn’t cover “Cyco Vision.”
(more…)

December 19, 2017
Five random video game CDs I own.

In my many years of running this blog, I’ve ended up collecting a fair share of video game-related junk. Demo discs. Hot wheels cars. Even collecting bottles of Mountain Dew Game Fuel. But one thing I’ve gotten the most often these days is random video game-related music.

It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by music, from the styles and genres, to their appearances even in video games. Naturally, over the years I’ve gotten a bunch of music CDs, each with their own little story that I’ve either found on a past I Bought Stuff!, or something I had for years.

I have the traditional soundtrack fare of music straight from the game, but there isn’t a whole lot I could write about those. For example, I own The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that Nintendo Power was giving away to people who re-subscribed to the magazine, but there isn’t much to say about that. However, I do have a fair share of stuff that’s tangentially related to video games that I think are interesting instead, so I’m gonna go with that option here.

So here are five random video game-related CDs I own, in no particular order.

Music from the Motion Picture: Tomb Raider

This was around the time where the franchise was probably at the absolute biggest it could be, despite a slight slump thanks to Eidos following Activision’s philosophy of pumping out a new game in the franchise every year, something that would inevitably lead to the abysmal Angel of Darkness in 2002.

I never saw the Tomb Raider films, but I heard they’re fun, goofy action flicks. Angelina Jolie being the box office draw probably helped too. This film also features Daniel Craig way before he was James Bond, so it already has piqued my interest.

I honestly didn’t think the film would be filled to the brim with licensed music, but there’s a lot here, and it’s a mix of industrial (Nine Inch Nails, Fluke, Oxide & Neutrino) and electronic artists (Chemical Brothers, Moby, Fatboy Slim). A lot of it is a good example of that late ‘90s-early 2000s style of pop/industrial and hip-hop/rock sound. A lot of these are artists I’ve heard of, but the only song on here I was familiar with prior to listening was Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At.” Which is so early 2000s it hurts. That song felt like it was everywhere around this time!

The only thing I’m saddened by is no portions of the film’s score by Graeme Revell. That was released on a separate CD – It was common to release a soundtrack of the licensed music and a separate CD for the film’s score – but even having one or two tracks on here would’ve been a nice surprise to me. Film scores are something I find appealing, if anyone who’s seen me talk about the music kits for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
(more…)

April 29, 2017
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 4: Let’s Get Radical!

I’ll admit that my interest in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has dropped off in recent months. There not being a lot of major updates is the main reason, but also because I love when they announce new music kits. Just when I thought Valve was basically saving 2017 to be the “year of CS:GO,” they drop a bomb on us:

A bunch of gloves that are rare as a god damn knife, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about those darn music kit!

I know this whole project sounds silly, but I’m always interested in what musicians Valve can cajole into this project. This time, it’s all lumped into a $7 case called “The Radicals Box”, and they’re all “StatTrak” versions so any time you get an MVP in a competitive match, your teammates and enemies will know how awesome you are.

This time, we got seven more music kits. Three of them are from bands from Red Bull Records, which I covered previously, while three more are from a different record label, Hopeless Records, the band that notably had artists like Taking Back Sunday, Sum 41 and Yellowcard. Sadly those bands aren’t featured here, but instead we get the B-tier bands on their catalog. The last remaining kit is from a returning musician, and it fits with the theme of rock and metal. (Hint: It’s not Daniel Sadowski.)

Like before, I’ll link to a YouTube page and the CS:GO Stash page so you can listen along. That being said, let’s get rocking.

Beartooth, Aggressive

Beartooth is back for round two. This new music kit hits harder and is even more aggressive. We’ve also made the MVP anthem extra heavy so your opponents feel really bad after they’ve lost to you.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Our first returning act, Beartooth has another pack based on their newest album, Aggressive. Their last music kit was one of those that took a while to warm up to, but this one’s actually damn good. All the tracks are various cuts from the album, in instrumental form. “Loser” highlights as the main menu track, and their other singles “Aggressive,” “Always Dead” and “Hated” contribute to various parts of the kit from action cues to bomb timers. But they even went for album cuts for the remaining sections, such as “Censored” being one of the round/action cue timers.

Since these are the instrumentals, they really do highlight the rocking metal feel of the tracks without someone screeching over them. This also didn’t take long for me to like it, compared to “Disgusting”, which took a while for me to warm up to.

VERDICT: Recommended. A lot less harsh than Disgusting, and is quite catchy in spots.
(more…)

November 30, 2016
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 3: A goddamn smorgasbord.

About a day or so after I finished writing the last post about Counter-Life, I took a nap. When I woke up, I found out about this:

More CS:GO music kits.

Not only more of them, but practically doubling the total number of music kits from 16 to 30. I nearly fainted after that. This time it seems we’re getting a big variety sampler pack, from returning artists to new contributions from notable film composers, to even an interesting collaboration between Valve and a record label. In addition to the new music kits, they now added “StatTrak” variants that keep track of the times you’ve become the MVP in competitive matches. It seems a bit silly, almost like a joke someone made to Valve without saying they were kidding afterwards. But if you want it, it’s there for $6.99 if you want them, or on the marketplace for cheaper.

Since I’ve written about the previous ones before, it’d be remiss of me not to continue the tradition. Like before, I’m gonna write how I felt about each one, mentioning some of my favorite tracks, and whether or not it’s worth the $5-7 to grab, with a quick verdict at the end.

Now in the last collection, I had made videos of the new kits, but this time I passed on doing that. It’s not that it wasn’t fun to make, it’s that considering my meticulous nature for making these things, I would’ve taken a month to work on something that’s already been eclipsed by other YouTubers for lesser effort. So for the sake of this, I linked to other YouTubers or CSGOStash if you wanna listen along.

So without further ado, let’s get started…

AWOLNATION, I Am

AWOLNATION Alternative Rocker AWOLNATION brings you a music kit for the ages. This kit is jam-packed with an eclectic selection of tunes and includes cuts from singles ‘I Am’ and multi-platinum hit ‘Sail’.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Over the past year or so, we’ve gotten fairly notable electronic musicians: Noisia, Feed Me, that sort of jazz. For this series of kits, Valve teamed up with Red Bull Records to bring three notable artists from their label, including AWOLNATION.

AWOLNATION (yes, in all caps) is a notable artist because of their multi-platinum award winning song “Sail.” A lot of this music kit features tracks from their recent album Run, though it’s all instrumental with the occasional shout here and there.

Alas my knowledge of the band comes from “Sail” and little else, so I had to hunt down what songs were used for each track thanks to Spotify.

The kit is named after one of the songs, “I Am.” Surprisingly, it’s not the main menu track as expected, but another track from the album, “Windows.” Other songs like “Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)”, “Run” and “Jailbreak” are used for the Action cues, Bomb Timers and Lost Round/10 Second Timer, respectively. “I Am” shows up as one of the action cues, whereas their biggest hit “Sail”, the only song from their previous album, shows up as both an action cue and the MVP Anthem.

Yep, once you frag dudes and get the MVP, everyone will be hearing the keys along with Aaron Bruno yelling “SAIL!” at the end. It’s worth it just for that alone.

VERDICT: Recommended just on the MVP Anthem alone.

Beartooth, Disgusting!

DESCRIPTION: Beartooth brings an agressive [sic] back-to-basics hardcore stomp that gets crowds moving and breaking stuff. A perfect soundtrack for your no-scope scout frags. Rock ’till you’re dead.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (through the official Red Bull Records YouTube channel), CS:GO Stash

Here’s Valve/Red Bull Records collab number two. Beartooth is a metalcore band by Caleb Shomo of Attack Attack! fame. (Just so we’re clear: We’re talking about the Attack Attack that did that awful guitar crab-walking to a song called “Stick Stickly,” not the Attack Attack from Wales that’s the infinitely superior band.)

I’m fairly picky about my taste of music. If there’s anything I hate about metal sometimes, it’s a guy screeching incomprehensible words into the microphone. If that’s all the talent you need to be a metal singer, then I should be auditioning to be one right now. Thank god the music kit is strictly instrumental, which unearths some pretty decent metal underneath.

All the songs here come from their 2014 album Disgusting. Their single “In Between” serves as the main menu track, whereas other songs like “Keep Your American Dream” and “Body Bag” are the action/round cues. There’s some pretty okay metal on these tracks, and if you loved stuff like Skog’s Metal from the original set of nine, this is right up your alley. I’d be okay with them releasing more stuff like this.

VERDICT: Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam marketplace for cheap. Great for those who want more rocking in their CS:GO soundtracks.

Daniel Sadowski, The 8-Bit Kit

Daniel Sadowski creates the first ever 8-bit Music Kit for Counter-Strike complete with authentic 8-bit sounds.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (courtesy of YouTube user DeezTurbed), CS:GO Stash

Our first returning composer, and I honestly wasn’t expecting him to return for a third time. This is Sadowski’s third music kit for CS:GO. This, along with the DOTA 2 music kit he also did recently, makes me think he’s practically a official composer for Valve considering how much he contributes to their games recently. It’s great, really.

Considering the name, you can guess this aims for a chiptune approach, which is drastically different from his previous offerings (Crimson Assault and Total Domination). While we got fairly close to chiptune with an unused MVP track in Feed Me’s High Noon, this is the first music kit to actually go for the retro game music approach, and he does a fine job here.

Some of my favorites include the Start Round, Choose Team and Start Action tunes. A lot of these fit right in line with NES-era music, which I consider to be a fairly difficult thing to master.

After hearing this, I’d love to actually see notable chiptune composers have their take on chiptune game music for CS:GO, such as Rushjet1, or Danny Baranowsky. If someone like Sadowski can make a solid retro game music soundtrack, I’d love to hear someone else’s take at this.

VERDICT: Recommended. Good for those who love chiptunes that actually are chiptunes and aren’t just someone adding samples to crappy MIDIs.

Darude, Moments CSGO

Yield freely in the soundscapes of Finnish producer Darude’s familiar musical flavours and tones. Enriching yourself with access to a heavy fusion of progressive overtones and scores of tingling melodic structure from the sounds banks of one of dance music’s most renowned pioneers.

LISTEN ON: YouTube (courtesy of YouTube user CSGOPoetry), CS:GO Stash

Ah yes, Darude. That guy who made that “Sandstorm” song that got popular in the early 2000s. Then it got popular again because Twitch chat users thought it’d be funny to go “DUDUDUDUDUDUDU Kappa” and make “Sandstorm” jokes on DOTA2 and CS:GO matches. It seems Darude has taken this in stride, at one point DJing at The International 4 after party and pretty much trolling the entire crowd by teasing “Sandstorm” the entire night before finishing it as the encore.

I’ll mention this upfront: No, “Sandstorm” is not in this kit. The kit itself has tracks that sound like “Sandstorm,” but none of the tracks are actually “Sandstorm.” Rather, it’s a unique track made specifically for the game, though it’s titled after his most recent album. Despite being named after an existing Darude song, “Moments,” it sounds nothing like the music kit featured here. In fact, I really couldn’t find the song he used here, so it’s likely an original composition named after his most recent work.

A lot of the tracks have the same catchy beat to it, with additional instrumentation where appropriate. The first Start Round/Action has good instrumentation, and I like the slowdown touches on the Round Loss and Deathcam cues. But a lot of it sounds similar, which is slightly disappointing, but hey, this is a bigger get than when DOTA2 got deadmau5.

VERDICT: Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam marketplace on discount. It’s not Sandstorm, but Darude made a good enough substitute.
(more…)

September 25, 2015
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Music Kits Series 2: Crossovers and… Christmas?

Let’s ignore the stickers here and look at the big prize: NEW MUSIC!

It’s that time again. On February 12, 2015, Valve introduced a second batch of music kits for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I had written about the first nine late last year, and it’s become one of my more popular posts recently. If you wanna see my reviews for the first nine music kits, click here.

Since there’s new ones, I thought it’d be nice to come back and write about these brand new ones and see if they’re worth your money.

Naturally, I’m going to review these, complete with videos so you can listen along. Like before, these music kits will randomly appear in the game as an offer for $4.99 for a standard one, or $6.99 for a StatTrak one that counts your MVPs in competitive matches. If you’re cheap like me, you can buy these on the Steam Marketplace at a cheaper value if there’s a specific kit you’re interested in.

I’m also gonna throw one in that came out in December, after I had written the original CS:GO music kits post. Consider these music kits part of a “Series 2,” if you will.

(The Midnight Riders music kit video is courtesy of YouTube user wtiw. All the other music kit videos are made by me.)

Midnight Riders, All I Want for Christmas

“HAPPY HOLIDAYS, ****ERS!” -Midnight Riders

LISTEN ON: YouTube, CS:GO Stash

Wow, the first official Valve crossover in CS:GO. Granted, some of the maps in Arms Race and Demolition are based off stuff from Left 4 Dead 2, but this is the first item that actually references another game entirely.

Midnight Riders is a fictional band that appears in the Left 4 Dead 2 universe. Their music is mostly southern rock, with such awesome songs like “Midnight Ride” and “One Bad Man.” In late 2009, they released a new track, “All I Want for Christmas is to Kick Your Ass,” which is used as the base of this music kit.

Most of the kit is taking the 3 minute track and splicing it together to fit CS:GO‘s music. Some of these, like Round Start 1, Lost Round and Death Cam make good stingers, but the rest is kinda slapped together, especially since a lot of the tracks like Won Round have a hard stop that’s a bit jarring. More proof that this feels slapped together is that the Bomb 10 Second Timer and Round 10 Second Timer are exactly the same. There’s not even any changes in instruments, they are literally the same track. Feels real lazy.

Compared to the other music kits, this seems slapped together as a Christmas promotion, and it could’ve been better. This one is currently unavailable for purchase in game, but you can still buy it on the Steam Marketplace if you’re curious. Though I can’t blame you if you’re not interested.

I wouldn’t mind seeing another Midnight Riders music kit, just put a bit more effort into it next time, Would you Valve?

VERDICT: Want some holiday cheer? This’ll work. Even works outside of the holiday season. Lightly recommended, get it on the Steam marketplace on discount.
(more…)

February 16, 2015