Perhaps it isn't all that interesting to some, but I'm always fascinated by the approach Hollywood and television composers take when developing music for video games. Tyler here packed the tracks he created full of sounds in order to make sure that every gameplay decision would be covered. It must have been a real challenge, but the man who scored The Day the Earth Stood Still and Rob Zombie's Halloween movies was more than up to the task.

Nothing big, nothing fancy, just a PS3 with a free copy of a popular movie. Won't set the world on fire, but then, free movies don't hurt when you're sitting amidst a pile of torn wrapping paper on Christmas day, either. It's available now for £300 (USD$440).

Zack Snyder making three games for EA [The Cut Scene] [Pic]

"I actually think that the phenomenon of 300 is really, in fact, a manifestation of the video game experience in kind of the collective conscience. The audience who came to see 300 was weaned on video games and what they saw in the marketing materials for 300 was a similar experience. They didn't show up because they were interested in the Spartans, or because they read Herodotus, or because they thought the Battle of Thermopylae was a great, untold story.

They showed up because they saw a movie experience that was the most similar to the game experiences that they've grown up playing. The movie works because it's violent and it's actually very video game-ish. Upon first reading this I thought to myself, "No, I went to see the movie because I like Frank Miller, silly movie man," but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. The fact that there wasn't a major video game released for the movie (the PSP version does not count) didn't really phase me because 300 was just the sort of visceral, intense experience I crave in a video game, only without a controller.

Hit up Gamasutra for more on the growing bond and blurring lines between video games and film.

Sony's Landau: 300 The 'First Video Game Movie Translation' [Gamasutra]

In the wake of Variety calling out movie critics for likening the movie 300 to a video game in a bad way comes this short piece by the Grumpy Gamer using the movie to insult video games.

300 is a vacuous film filled with bad dialog, stiff acting, a pointless one-dimensional plot and interchangeable characters that hardly deserve to be named in the script. The film barely has a first act and does nothing but drive to a preposterous conclusion led along by a sequence of ridiculous events. The Visuals are nothing more than technical masturbation.

Simply put, 300 is the best damn film I've seen all year. I haven't had this much fun watching a movie in a long time. It's nice to see Hollywood is finally striving to be more likes games.

Ouch. Brian Crecente

The Convergence [Grumpy Gamer]

Thankfully, you don't actually have to watch three hundred videos, you only have to watch five videos for the upcoming Spartan masterpiece, 300 for your chance to win a copy of Crackdown. Sign on to Xbox Live and download the five 300 movie clips and get the special codes from each clip. Then, head on over to the official contest page and enter the codes in any order for your chance to be one of the big winners. There will be a total of three hundred copies of the game given away (clever, eh?). Oddly enough, they aren't giving away copies of the actual 300: March To Glory PSP game. I wonder why? Hmmmm..... Flynn De Marco

300/Crackdown Contest Official Site [Warner Bros.]
[via Major Nelson]