The Worst Battle Theme Of All Time

 

Metaphor ReFantazio is an upcoming game with a stupid title from the boys over at ATLUS that I'm actually quite exicted for.  It looks like a neo-persona game, right down to the main chracter and Mitsuru-elf but its set in some weird fantasy kingdom full of monsters that look like abstract paintings come to life.  I'm avoiding most of the news and updates regarding it, as I do with most games, so that when I do get my hands on it I'm not tainted by hype or marketing but one thing crossed my path from this game that's so batshit that I can't help but want to talk about it.

A video popped up in a Megami Tensei group I lurk in that featured the games battle theme.  I'll embed it here so that you can hear it for yourself. 

At the start it sounds fine, just a sort of generic orchestra dollar store tier Nier wannabe music but then the male vocals kick and it sweet mother of baby Demifiend what the FUCK is that actual shit?  It sounds ridiculous.  Maybe if it was some kind of real world language being used then I might not think it so laughable but it just sounds like some guy doing opera gibberish.  It's distracting and sounds fucking awful, I have no idea how I am going to be able to take any of the combat seriously if this starts playing every time I get into a fight.

But when I look at the comments for this track, people seem to be praising it but I have an idea as to why I'm having such an adverse reaction to it.  Back when I was a child there was a panel show on British television called Shooting Stars.  The hosts of the show, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer would sometimes do a "club singing" round, where Vic would sing a very distorted and silly version of a song and the contestants had to guess what it was.  Example below

And this is the problem, when those vocals kick in for that battle theme all I can see in my minds eye is Vic Reeves fucking club singing.  Hell, given the pace and the flow of the song it almost sounds as if it's Vic Reeves club singing the rap from Persona 3's Mass Destruction.  So maybe if you're British and of a certain age then the Metaphor battle theme will tickle a very silly bit of your brain and if you aren't then maybe it sounds just fine.  That's my theory as to why I and a few of my friends have had such an adverse reaction to it.

To give credit where it's due though, its certainly a memorable song.  Nobuo Uematsu came out recently saying something along the lines of modern game OSTs being a bit boring and I agree with that statement.  There's tons of games with great soundtracks all the way up to the PS3 but I don't think there's many current or last-gen games that you could name where I could just instantly start humming or singing a tunes from their soundtracks, it's all become sort of orchestral mush.  Even games that have good soundtracks like Final Fantasy 7 have them ruined by this grand orchestra bullshit as seen in the likes of Remake and Rebirth.  When I think of JENOVA, my brain defaults to that glorious, high energy PS1 version and not that absolute white-noise trash found in Rebirth.  So despite me calling it the worst battle theme of all time, it at least stands out.  It's so silly that I sometimes find myself in the kitchen singing it as I cut meat and vegetables for dinner, it has wormed its way into my brain and will not leave.

Either way, maybe in the context of the game it won't sound as silly and I'm not about to let Vic Reeves of all people ruin my enjoyment of an upcoming release.  Let's be honest, anyway, you know and I know that I'm gonna be singing along to this shit when I inevitably stream it anyway.  Bring on October, I can't wait.

Kenishi Yonezu

Look at that sexy, sexy man, hanging out in a trolley by the ocean like Mancunian chav trying to get the perfect Instagram picture.  This is Kenishi Yonezu, a sort of Japan music sensation who's been around for a good while but has really started exploding big time in the last maybe year or so.

If Yonezu had to be compared to a sort of some kind of Western artist he's sort of like Ed Sheeran.  Obviously being from two different parts of the world their actual music sounds way different but they are both pop artists that write and perform their own music and somehow just pump out really good songs constantly.

Usually with the weird, twee, "moe" type shit that infests my playlists a lot my friends hate it when I have control over a music selection but I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't found at least one Yonezu song that they really like.  My personal favorites are Mad Head Love, Flamingo and Loser so go give those a Google, maybe let me know what you think and if you find any others drop a comment about a song you enjoy.

Anyway, why the fuck am I talking about this guy?  This is a video game blog, not some kind of music blog.  I know next to nothing about music so why am I even bothering to make a post about some kind of Japanese music sensation?

So I discovered Yonezu through my wife when she started listening to a song called "Lemon".  That sort of set me down a road of exploring his library and learning a few of his songs for Karaoke.  One evening I'm in a karaoke booth with my wife and her sister when he sister drops the fact that Yonezu used to make music on Nico Nico Douga (Japanese YouTube) under the name Hachi.

Where had I heard that name before?.....

Oh yeah! He'd just had a bunch of his music featured in the god damn Hatsune Miku games.  Open, Close, Demons and the Dead (結ンデ開イテ羅刹ト骸 ) is probably one of my most played songs of the entire franchise and it was written by the man himself. Before he really got going he would make songs with Vocaloid and upload them to Nico Nico which then got picked up by Sega and featured in a number of the Hatsune Miku rhythm games. So turns out I'd been a fan of Yonezu the whole time and just didn't know it! So go check him out, he's a cool guy. His songs have been stuck on my playlist since at least December and ever month or so I somehow manage to find a new really catchy track buried somewhere on YouTube. It's also inspired me to dig out my Vita and give those Project Diva games another play!

Game Dev Is Hard

I think anyone who is seriously into video game has had a dream or at least a thought of wanting to make their own game at some point.  With the rise of indie developers making huge numbers of sales on platforms like Steam, why wouldn't you want a piece of that pie, right?  However game development is INCREDIBLY hard.

I've been trying, for a while, just to make my own piece of shit game in RPG Maker.  Now maybe it's a problem with the genre I'm trying to develop for but before you even start doing anything on a computer there's so much that you have to think about.  I feel that if you don't go in with a decent plan then the project is going to, maybe not fall apart, but get pretty confusing pretty quickly.  You have to have all your ideas and how they are going to work together straight before you really begin.

Now you would think that the actual putting together of the game, the coding, would be the hardest part of the process.  While coding is an extremely hard thing to do we now live in an age where there are a number of programs to help you along with this process. For example, I'm making something in RPG Maker and I know next to nothing about coding.  Despite that, I've been able to use the tools provided to at least get SOMETHING working.  A little man walking around an island that gets into random battles doesn't sound like much but when you're starting from the bottom it's a pretty big deal.  I have another friend who is trying to make a point and click adventure game in an engine called AGS and as far as I know he taught himself all the coding side of that by just fucking around with the program and asking on forums for help.  Of course, you're quite limited when you use these kind of tools but when you're just starting out they are a good way to put your big toe into the ocean of game dev, so to speak.

But no, the reason why game development is so hard is just the sheer range of skills you need to be able to pull it off.  There's a reason that very few games are developed just by one guy.  You need to be able to do the coding, compose music, write stories if your game needs it, make artwork and have a good game play idea to make all that shit stick together.  That's A LOT to ask of a single person.  I feel like I have good ideas and if I'm making an RPG or adventure game I'd be pretty good at writing a story but I know NOTHING about composing music and I can't draw for shit.  This is a big roadblock for your average person.

However there are great examples of absolute beasts making great games entirely by themselves.  The one that springs to my mind straight away is Touhou, made by one drunk man who goes by the name of ZUN.

Awesome games, great soundtracks, incredibly challenging and fun to play and yet that artwork is....shall we say mediocre at best.  No one can be perfect though, the amount of skill the guy has in all of those fields surpasses mine by a great deal, I'm truly in awe over how these games even exist.

Still, if you do have an idea for a game and you are slowly working away at it, don't let it die.  If you can't draw, go learn.  If you don't know shit about music? go google some tutorials.  We live in an age where all this information is readily available and if you're willing to put in the hours then anyone could probably pull it off.  Just don't get frustrated when it isn't the walk in the park you were probably hoping it was.

IIDX Is Just Too Hard For Me

No one likes to admit they suck shit at a thing.  It's hard for one to throw their hands up and say "Yep, that thing, I'm fucking awful at it" but I think it's about time I throw my hands up and say yes, Beatmania IIDX (or 2 DX) is just flat out too hard for me.

I've been trying to git gud at this game for multiple years now and every time I just get frustrated and quit.  Back in high school, IIDX was the reason I got into importing Japanese games.  I got a Swap Magic, a IIDX controller and IIDX RED off Play Asia and tried to get good at it in my house since England didn't actually have any machines to play on.  Although I do think there was an original Beatmania cabinet in London, but who cares about Beatmania 1?

Rhythm games are usually something I'm pretty good at.  I play DDR fairly well and I can rock most of the top level shit in the arcades for certain titles.  Here's a video of me playing Night of Nights on Chunithm in the arcade just to prove I'm not a total inept moron when it comes to this genre.

However, that's Chunithm, now check out this video of some dude playing an IIDX song.

It's just another fucking level that I can't wrap my head around.  What's depressing about this whole this is that I actually LIKE IIDX so being shit at it genuinely saddens me. 

Still though, I'm not one to give up.  Maybe from today I'll give it another shot and hopefully in a month or 2 (or 6) I'll be able to come and make another post about how I conquered it and got good.  The chances of that ACTUALLY happening are quite low though since 1) I'll probably get frustrated and 2) The machines are usually busy and I don't wanna wait.

Still, I can dream 

BIT. TRIP. BEAT

According to Wikipedia Pong was released in 1972.  BIT. TRIP. BEAT. was released in 2009 and it just goes to show how far along even a simple concept such as pong can go in such a short time.

BIT. TRIP. BEAT. is a sort of Pong/Rhythm game where you play as a pong paddle drifting through space knocking back dots that fly across the screen in time with the music.  There's not much of a story to speak of and that's essentially all of the game play but thanks to a decent amount of challenge and a good soundtrack it's weirdly compelling.

The game throws all manner of dots at you ranging from normal ones that just fly straight across the screen to ones that will try and juke you out and even dots that have invisible connections to other dots creating a weird sense of panic when they fly at you and it doesn't initially look like you can send them back.  As you play you have 2 life meters, one which builds up when you miss and one that builds up when you successfully hit a dot back.  Hit enough dots back and you go into "Hyper" mode where the visual effects get all crazy and the music becomes more "normal" sounding as opposed to the retro feel of the regular mode.  Miss enough dots and you will level back down from hyper mode, miss even more and you enter null where the music cuts out and the graphics look like the original pong game.  Miss even more dots from there and it's game over and there are no checkpoints in the games lengthy levels so you have to start all over again.

The game is played mostly for score so if you aren't into that then maybe you wont get much excitement from BIT. TRIP. BEAT. after an initial play through but if you're a perfectionist who just needs to top those online leader boards then this game is for you.  It's cheap on Steam at £7 so even if you're just mildly into music games or Pong then it's worth checking out.  The BIT. TRIP. series is sort of long running and well known for a reason so do yourself a favor and kill a lazy weekend with this trippy pong-like.

Whats Wrong With Game Music?

While this isn't a thing that happens all that much to me anymore, it used to and it always confused me.

So up until about my early 20s, if people found out that I listened to tracks from video games they would raise an eyebrow and be like "really?  that's super nerdy and not cool at all, you should listen to something else"  This eventually faded out as the number of twats surrounding me started to dwindle but it does still happen although rather rarely.

I just never really understood that logic or way of thinking, as if music somehow loses its validity just by being featured in a video game.  Of course, in 2015 there are big name groups doing sounds or soundtracks for games so do those songs suddenly become "too nerdy" to listen to.  I'm the musician behind the game track put in just as much effort or maybe even more than the professional artist recording an album,

I like me a bit of everything when it comes to music, there isn't one genre I really point to and say "this is my main shit" because my playlists change so damn often and usually contain a little something from every genre.  Judging someone based on their musical tastes is a fucking retarded thing to do and it's the kind of thing I thought would stop by the time I hit 25 but I still see it today albeit very rarely.

If you want to stand there and argue with me that a bunch of stupid twatsockets such as One Direction make better music than let's say....this

Then you are quite obviously a huge foghorning idiot.  Don't get me wrong though, I'm not anti-mainstream stuff and I do find myself looking up tracks from my wife's iPod but claiming that one piece of music becomes less valid because it was used in a game rather than for a top of the pops chart is retarded.

Luckily we live in an age now where it's not THAT weird and video game music is quite often celebrated.  Hell I've played games where footage from live concerts for that game are included as bonus material.  You just do your thing and I'll do mine.  If you want to listen to pop chart twat du jour then that's cool but don't get all judgemental when the Megaman X soundtrack starts coming out of my speakers 

Geometry Dash

Geometry Dash is a game that came out on Steam a little while ago and as far as I understand it the thing is a port of a phone game.  That said, it is actually pretty good if not stupidly frustrating,

The idea of the game is very simple, the little block slides automatically across the level and you have to time your jumps in order to get to the end.  Sometimes you go through a ring and it will change into a little flying thing or take some other form where the game play might vary ever so slightly but all you're really doing is pressing A to not die.

That probably makes the game sound shit but trust me it's not.  The game sells and presents itself as a sort of rhythm game.  The idea is that it has a bunch of cool techno sounding songs and each level sort of matches the music so the more intense the track then the more intense the obstacles.  It's pretty fun and it's one of those games you can pick up, play for about 10 minutes and then put down again.

The game also features a level editor where you can put up your own stages and have other people download them.  Some of the stuff people make is actually pretty cool and given that the levels that come packaged with the game are sort of limited then this is a very welcome addition.

If the game sold itself as a platform game with a techno soundtrack I'd probably be a lot happier with it but when I bought it I was kind of expecting a rhythm game.  Despite the fact the obstacles loosely match up with what you're hearing the game is still very trail and error.  For example, I can go play Sound Voltex Booth and play a high level song I've never heard before and still manage because I'm good at the game.  With Geometry Dash you never know what the fucks coming until its already too late so you have to start the whole level over.

It's not a bad game by any stretch but it is VERY challenging so unless you're willing to burn a few hours learning the levels then don't bother.  Then again, for gaming masochists like me it's pretty damn good.

Eternal Sonata

There may be spoilers here, so if you care about the spoilers for a game this old, then proceed with caution.

Eternal Sonata was a game that came out for Xbox in 2007 and while I played it at launch I didn't get round to actually finishing it until much later.  Then my Xbox version got stolen and I decided to replay it on PS3 recently so I thought I'd spend a little bit of time talking about it.

Eternal Sonata is a game with a very strange premise.  You follow the adventures of Frans Frederic Chopin, the pianist, through his death dream.  On his adventure through his own mind he meets up with a colourful cast of characters and together they have to stop the evil Count Waltz from taking over the world. Obviously there's more to it than that, but if I tried to tell you every facet of the story I'd be here all fucking day.

The game itself is actually really good with a really interesting combat system, good music, nice art and really well done voice acting (at least in Japanese) despite some of the silly lines.  You spend most of your time exploring environments and fighting monsters but the environments are so varied and the combat is so fun that the the games formulaic structure never really gets all that boring.

Aside from the interesting locales and fun combat the game is also split up between chapters with some real life information about Chopin himself which is really interesting.  Each little history section has one of Chopin's pieces playing in the background and it brings a nice bit of realism into what is essentially a very silly and outlandish anime game.

The game does suffer from a few problems though.  The story does like to stop and spin it's wheels while the characters do something completely pointless like explore a mirror or some shit.  There are certain segments and certain dungeons that do feel a bit like filler in order to pad out the game.  Also the combat, while not too challenging really is extremely unforgiving.  When an enemy attacks you have a chance to block and successfully doing this will greatly reduce the damage.  Not getting a block is OK for most normal enemies but there are some boss fights where missing the block will mean the death of a character.

The ending is also fucking retarded and I had absolutely NO idea what the fuck happened.  Someone died and then came back and then someone else died and came back and they had a chat about something or other and it all made no sense.  Also the game just fucking removed ALL subtitles for the credits sequence.  This is fine for me because I can speak and understand Japanese but for people who turned on the Japanese voices just because they prefer it that way get totally shafted in the games final moments.

However these are all little niggles in what is essentially a great RPG for the PS3 and Xbox 360.  I would recommended Eternal Sonata to any RPG fan who needs a fix of whimsy and light hearted adventure. 

Patapon

You know it saddens me that games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 get all the praise it gets when it's just another bland military shooter, and then games like Patapon barely get any attention at all because it's got cute characters and gameplay that doesn't involve shooting things in the face....

My bitterness aside, Patapon is a game on the PSP that I've been playing recently that is sort of hard to put into one genre.  It's kind of a strategy game, kind of an action game and kind of a rhythm game all at the same time.
So the deal is that you are an drum playing God known to the Patapons as "Almighty", and using your drums you must guide your Patapon army to a place called Earthend so they can go and visit a thing called IT.  The Patapons pilgrimage to see IT is sort of their entire purpose in life, but there is a rival clan called the Zigatons who have their own prophecy that involves stopping you no matter what.

It's a cool plot and considering I've not managed to beat the game yet I'm genuinely curious as to see if the Zigatons were at all justified in trying to wipe me out.

So the game play involves playing drums in rhythm to assign actions to your Patapon army.  For example "Pata pata pata pon" (square square square circle) will make your army move foward on the 2D level.  Other combinations of pata, pon and chaka will do different thinks like attack, defend, charge up etc.  Between levels you are taken to a camp screen where you can change equipment, make new Patapons for your army or play rhythm mini games for bonus items.

It's a simple game but that doesn't meant it's easy because this game will fucking kick your ass sideways if you're not well prepared and cunning in battle.  If you think you can just advance and attack your way through the game you will be wiped out faster than the blink of one of your little dudes eyes.  This thing is hard and requires a great deal of preparation and planning before you can beat the later story missions, but when you do it the feeling of achievement is great.

So if you have a PSP and you have not played this, go fucking do it.  If you can't find this but you can get hold of Patapon 2 or 3, go play them as well.  I've not had much experience with the sequels but they can only get better really.

Video Games As Art

This is a question I see a lot, so I'm going to have a small talk about it!

When I was with my buddy a few days ago, we were discussing what games could be considered "art" and why.  It was an interesting discussion but we were finding it extremely difficult to come up with things outside of the obvious titles. 

This isn't because there aren't any others, there are plenty of others, but it's because it's hard to pin down the rules behind why or why not you can regard a game a piece of art.  What makes this even harder is that the rules that govern my opinion on why a game is art will almost certainly be different on why you, the person reading this right now, would consider a game to be art or not.

What adds another layer of difficulty to the whole problem is that, in my opinion, games can be considered art in more than one way.  The music, the visuals, the story, the voice acting, writing, execution of game play elements, all of these things on their own could be considered art.  So just because a game has shit game play doesn't mean that there isn't some degree of artistry in the visuals or music, or even the story telling, but do these factors stop the whole game from being considered art or not? That's really only for you to decide.

Just to give a little example which I hope to expand on in the future, Nier is a game I'd consider to be rather artistic in the sense that the music and story were fucking fantastic.  That said, Nier is a game with repetitive game play and pretty crappy graphics.  Despite that I felt genuinely invested in the characters, plot and lore of that world, and was almost sad to see it end.  It yanked an emotional response from the lump of coal in my chest I call a heart, and that, to me, makes it something you could consider art.

I could probably write a fucking book on video games as an art form, but instead I'm going to butt heads with my friend and potentially make a video series about what games we consider to be art and why.   Keep an eye out for it but it'll probably take a long time to get that sort of project off the ground, but hopefully we'll make something enjoyable to watch.

That Chick Who Shaved Her Head

So apparently this story was being spread all over the place, it's even on the fucking BBC.  I was far too absorbed in doing more important shit, like video games or folding my laundry, but this highlights a really creepy side of a certain sub culture in Japan.

The girl in the above picture is called Minami Minegishi, and she is a member of a "band" called AKB48.  AKB48 is a incredibly shit band that make incredibly catchy music, so no matter how much you want to get mad at their incredibly dumb tunes, you'll still end up humming it down the street/singing it at karaoke.

So the reason for the whole head shave thing is that she was caught spending a night with her boyfriend.  It sounds weird but this is what fans of AKB48 are like.  They are put forward as this all girl group full of innocence and whatnot and there is quite a large group of fans that feel way more connected to the girls than they really should.

We are talking about kinds of people who will buy multiple copies (and this can be way more than 10 sometimes) to get invites to "hand shaking events" as well as multitudes of other weird shit.  I get mad at AKB48 gaming CD sales like this, because it basically means that the Japanese charts are a load of shit, and I'm barely made aware of good artists because the charts are clogged with this garbage.

Anyway I got way off point here.  The whole deal is that the girls in this group have to maintain the whole "innocence" thing so that the thousands of forever alones who make up the fan base don't get upset and their imaginary wife "cheating" on them.  Of course she broke the rules and shaved her noggin but the whole thing is incredibly stupid.

So to sum up the whole thing

Shit band with catchy music and strange rules
Overly attached, creepy as fuck fans numbering in the thousands
Member tries to do something that every other normal human being would do, and it backfires hard.
She's an idiot

Which reminds me I should really give that AKB48 video game a go some time.......