This article was contributed by Brad Jolly (@DYoshii), co-host of New Game Plus, airing Mondays at 10:30pm on Channel 31, as well as being posted online.

During E3, Australian distribution company Bluemouth Interactive announced they would be pairing with gaming company Astro to release their line of headsets into Australian stores. Previously only available to Australians online, these A30, A40 and A50 headsets are slated to be released through the usual gaming retailers in the coming months in what appears to be a segmented format.

A quick demonstration of the A40 was given just before the E3 presentation using Battlefield 3. Although short, during the playtest I was able to hear how they sounded in a gunfight, in airplanes and tanks, as well as tinkering with the game/chat ratio settings that the Astro lineup is known for, and it all sounded rather pleasing. In the busy environment I was stationed in, most sound around me was drowned out and replaced by the deep audio of guns firing and vehicles exploding. This sound wasn’t only loud, it was immersive and like any good gaming headset should do, conveyed everything I needed to hear in a crisp manner. Gunfire to the left, a grenade to the right, and AI yelling behind me – positional hearing came out very clearly and it was easy to pick what direction all the sounds were coming from. Talking to the Astro rep guiding me through (who turned out to be the General Manager of Astro) was as easy as boosting the chat setting, and although he wasn’t actually talking to me with a headset on, it lowered the game audio enough to be able to hear him relatively clearly.

Knowing me though, I was probably still screaming at him in response. Isolating headphones and first person shooters are good for that. Look for Astro headsets in our stores in August.