Need a reason to learn how to play the electric guitar? YouTube musician FamilyJules7X demonstrates how well mad guitar skills and gaming go together in his triumphant electric cover of Jonathan Coulton’s “Want You Gone”. More »
We now know how to make a Justin Bieber song sound good: slow it down 800 per cent. But what happens when Portal’s Still Alive, that great video game song from Jonathan Coulton, gets the same treatment? Listen. More »
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Children’s choirs and soloists have worked their way through the end song of Valve’s great puzzle game Portal, but this is the first rendition of seen of it played on what appears to be a classical guitar. More »
The latest batch of downloadable songs for Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP includes the stirring love anthem “Still Alive” from Portal, which will be available, free of charge and includes delicious cake. More »
No this isn’t an early April Fool’s joke. Harmonix, MTV Games and Valve have teamed up to release Portal endsong Still Alive on Rock Band tomorrow for free. That’s free for the Xbox 360 and free for the Playstation 3.
“While the cake may be a lie, the free download of “Still Alive” is confirmed truth,” said Greg LoPiccolo, VP of product development at Harmonix. “‘Still Alive’ is an awesome song that brings together great gaming and great music. We’ve teamed up with Valve to deliver a free download of “Still Alive” as a “thank you” to our fans for their incredible support.”
“Rock Band has lit the industry on fire by opening a new market for cooperative musical gaming,” said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. “We’re delighted Harmonix has selected the track for inclusion in the growing library of tracks available for this phenomenal title.”
With the suspicious timing I actually emailed the publisher’s back just to make sure they weren’t pulling a fast one, but they say it’s 100 percent true.
So a funny thing happened at last week’s Valve party.
As I’m sure you’re all aware Valve threw a little party during last week’s big show (We weren’t invited. I blame our butchering of their song.) and during the tail end of it they brought up Jonathan Coulton to play a set. At the end of his last song he invited the Rock Band folks up on the stage to play Still Alive on their game, a really neat way to announce that the song was coming to the game.
I got a chance to check out Portal’s famous credit song Still Alive today on Rock Band in the Harmonix hotel suite.
While the bass is a little bit on the easy side, the lead guitar, drums, and of course, singing are all the perfect level of challenging to make it fun. I’m already a HUGE fan of the song so playing it on Rock Band was a real treat. I can’t imagine a single person with the game not wanting to pick this up when it hits the consoles.
I was a little bummed to discover that while the original singing is there and can be cranked up enough to cover your truly awful singing voice, there is no modulation for your voice while you are singing. So you can harmonize with a computer, but you can’t sound like one… and we all know how awful that is.
