Mass Effect 3 Gets The Sound Of Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream

 Michael McWhertor — The soothing sounds of Clint Mansell will accompany BioWare'sMass Effect 3 later this year. Who's that? The longtime Darren Aronofsky collaborator who's scored films like The Fountain, Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream.

Mansell's work can also be heard in sci-fi fodder like Duncan Jones' excellent Moon and the big screen adaptation of id Software's Doom. But his most recognizable work may be "Lux Aeterna," the theme from Requiem For A Dream used again and again as go-to dramatic music.

The composer tells The Quietus "with something like Mass Effect you're more like a DJ, with all these elements."

"You've got the holding pattern, then the big explosion where you need the score to kick in," he explains. "Then you need to take it off on a tangent. You've got all these different elements that change depending on what the player does. You have to figure out an overall symphony, but be able to break it down into component parts. You can bring the pain when required."

Not feeling any pain, it seems, is former Mass Effect maestro Jack Wall. He tells Eurogamerthat it was "time for a change" and that he still has a great relationship with developer BioWare.

Unspoilt By Progress: A Conversation With Black Swan Composer Clint Mansell [The Quietus via SlashFilm - thanks, David!]

The Best Games To Get For The New Verizon iPhone

 StephenTotilo — The Verizon phone is out, and you just might be getting one. If you are, you'll need some games. We know games, and we have recommendations.

The Best Dozen

Plants Vs. Zombies, Infinity Blade, Words With Friends and 9 others (Free - $10) There are many good iPhone games, most of them very cheap and crafted for gaming sessions that last as long as a stoplight. We pulled a list of our favorite dozen, each the best of a different style of game, from racing to karaoke to even an excellent Tomb Raider. [Check out our top 12 iPhone games]

The Confusingly Named Duo

Colorbind and Colorblind (Free-$1.99) Some nefarious iPhone game developers intentionally name their games similarly to others, just to trick you into buying the wrong one. Others do it by accident. A mistaken purchase of Colorblind led to two two fantastic iPhone games. [Read about Colorblind, then read about Colorbind.]

The Funniest One

QWOP ($1.99) Buy this one for a laugh. You're controlling an Olympic runner, or at least you're trying to. [Watch us stumble through QWOP.]

The Least iPhone-y

Dead Space ($6.99) We're still marveling that Dead Space is an iPhone game and not something running on, say, an Xbox 360. This is one amazing glimpse at the future of iPhone gaming. [See what's amazing about Dead Space on iOS]

Our Latest Obsession

Legendary Wars ($0.99) We already have some new favorites that came out in 2011. This one tops the list. [See what's great about Legendary Wars.]

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Are these not the games you're looking for? You can find impressions of new downloadable games, some for iPhone, others for iPad, Android and Windows Phone 7 five days a week. Just go to our Gaming App Of The Day page and scroll through our sidebar for more recommendations, warnings and video of the games in action. (And if you made a great game for those platforms, let us know.)

Rhythm Control Is Big In Japan

 Brian Ashcraft — This is not your typical story: an American and a Swede meet over the Japanese language and decide to make a video game. That game then takes the Japanese iTunes charts by storm.

Dubbed Rhythm Control, the game has players touch bubbles that appear on screen. It's simple and fun, and in Japan, it's the number one music game on iTunes. The highest it's reached on the overall paid Apps charts is number six. Impressive, indeed.

"Yeah, we got surprised over how popular it got," says Said Karlsson, one of the game's developers. He first got the idea of making a music game a few years back while working at a game company in China. Fast forward to the current day. When he met programmer Matt Scott in Tokyo, they created Daikonsoft and moved forward with the game.

Some of the twelve songs were made by a friend of Scott's, while Karlsson, who used to DJ in Sweden, was able to approach artists he knew for licensing. "Basically I asked some artists I knew from back then if we could use their music in exchange forthem getting their bio and links to their homepages and iTunes," he says.

Part of the game's success is no doubt due to the fact that it's an enjoyable game, but also, it's done to the care Daikonsoft took in its approach to Japan, even translating the menus if the iOS device is set to Japanese. Also, the game's character, Maru-chan, might have helped the game's appeal.

Maru-chan was designed by an artist who made the rest of the game's graphics, Karlsson says. "She was supposed to appear in several places in the game, but since he suddenly got a full time job he couldn't complete everything we planned," he adds. "She's currently just on the title screen and in the tutorial."

Well, there's always the sequel.

Rhythm Control [iTunes]

How FOX News Gets Video Games So Wrong

 Luke Plunkett — Yesterday, FOX News ran a story on Bulletstorm and got pretty mucheverything wrong. That's not the real story, though. They real story is how they got everything wrong: they did it on purpose.

Yes, we know, it's FOX News, but still, how the media outlet steadfastly refused to consider both sides of the argument in this piece makes for interesting reading.

You see, in preparing the piece - in which it was claimed outrageously that upcoming shooter Bulletstorm can help encourage rape- FOX sought comment from authors, psychologists and video game experts.

The psychologists got their turn, and performed as expected. But other experts and commenters were not so adequately involved.

M2 Research's Billy Pidgeon, for example, was quoted alarmingly out of context. And Scott Steinberg, a respected industry veteran, was contacted and his responses - which clearly spelled out the game's satirical bent - not used at all.

As John Walker over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out, what's of interest here isn't FOX per se, but how it serves as a wonderfully detailed example of the short shrift games are given in media that doesn't normally cover, well, games.

You can read both men's full, unedited responses to FOX's questions at the link below, where you'll also find FOX's delightfully loaded questions reprinted in full.

[The Fox News Debacle: TechSavvy Update]
[Churnalism: Fox News' Selective Quoting, Rock, Paper, Shotgun] [image credit]