You connect the Oblivion bone to the Skyrim bone...

After yesterday's exposition, let's lighten things up, shall we?  I'm really excited about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  We're down to about a month and a half away from release (11/11/11!), and in anticipation of that date, I decided to play another character through its predecessor, Oblivion.  I haven't written about Oblivion before, but it's one of my favorite games.  I had actually only briefly heard of the game before I bought it several years ago.  I was in a ridiculously long line at GameStop when I came up on the discount bin.  Glancing through it, I noticed the Game of the Year edition for $15.  I snatched it up and headed home with my prize.  If I'm being honest here, it took me a while to "get" this game.  I had played RPG's before, heck they're one of my favorite genres, but this one was different.  Outside of the opening character creation level, it gave me nothing to go on.  It dumped me out of the sewers, and said, "Good luck!"  I had never played a game that was placed in such an open, do-anything format.

My first character was a Wood Elf.  Now, one of the most important parts of the game is creating your character.  Choosing his/her Major and Minor skills, birth-sign, and the rest.  I screwed that up royally, because my guy was a wiener.  I must have picked the wrong skills, because I wanted him to be a swift, sneaky archer, but he was just way too weak.  I restarted the game, and this time I played as an Imperial knight-like character, which was much better-suited for my first play-through.

Pictured: Also an Imperial

The official soundtrack contains 26 tracks, although I would forgive you if you wouldn't have guessed that high.  There are several different versions of tunes that play in different parts of the game, say in a town or in a dungeon.  It keeps the feel the same, but the sound fresh.  Probably the most famous tune is the epic-sounding main theme, which plays over the title screen. 

All-in-all, Oblivion is a wonderful, silly, epic, sometimes buggy, engrossing romp through a richly detailed fantasy world.  The screen shots Bethesda has released for Skyrim have done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for that game, and for the series.  The voice cast looks to be top-notch, and I'm sure the music will be as epic as ever. 

To Skyrim!

On Job Hunting and Becomming a Better Person

Well hello there.

It's been a while, huh?

Yeah...I know.  I should have checked in more often.  But I have a good excuse!  Not that I like to make excuses for things, mind you, I just got busy.

Doing what, you say?  Well, for the past several months I've been job hunting for a full-time job.  I have been working, but it's been part-time and Mrs. GameMelodies isn't working anymore. 

What about the blog?  Well I enjoy you, blog.  I started you to help me be productive and write about something that I enjoy.  But money?  Nah man, I don't make any money from this.  I put it on hold while I was job hunting.  I guess I thought that I would be able to find something pretty quickly and then be able to work my blogging back in.  I never thought I'd leave you hanging for THIS long.

Truth is, it's tough out there.  I know we hear all the time about what a tough job market it is and all, but I guess I never really believed it until I was stuck in it myself.  Part of my problem, I think, is that I've always put more faith into my college degree than I should have.  I grew up with the belief that a college degree equaled good times!  Plenty of cash, nice house, and a great job were all just a piece of paper away.  While I suppose that kind of future does happen for some folks, my Liberal Arts degree from a small state-funded school just isn't sharp enough to cut through the piles of other resumes. 


It's taken a while for me to realize the error of my thinking and come out of my denial of the reality of life.  Let me recount for you my first post-college job experience.  I graduated with a degree in Radio/TV and had managed to score an interview about a month before graduation with the top news station in my home town, which was an ABC affiliate about an hour and a half away from where I was going to college.  Anyway, the interview went very well and the fellow who was spending time with me offered me a job running camera and performing other production-related duties.  It was all I could do to stuff down my exuberance.  Then we came to the hours/salary portion of the interview and he says, "The hours for this job are about 25 per week and we'll pay you $6.50 per hour."  I was floored.  Disappointment has never known a vessel so deep and limitless as the one it inhabited that moment.  Here I was, nearly a COLLEGE GRADUATE, and he's offering me minimum wage? ($6.50 was minimum wage at that time, I believe)  I asked him if I could discuss it with my wife and I would call him back.  He said that was fine.  I left.  I remember this fondly because it was like being slapped in the face for the first time.  You never forget that feeling, I guess.

Looking back now, I can clearly see the error of my thinking.  I should have taken the job, even if they were offering to pay my in Monopoly money, worked hard, proven myself, and then moved up to a more respectable (and more profitable) position.  But at the time, I was stunned.  I had a wife and a kid and I was supposed to move my family, find a place to live, and all that for $160 a week?  It was definitely hard to swallow, but it was an opportunity.  Something I'm finding is increasingly hard to come by these days.

Opportunity.  What does that word mean now?  Does it still define a chance to have a rewarding career, or has it morphed into something else?  Are our expectations being driven that low?  Is an opportunity these days merely a chance to not be homeless?   That is what I fear has happened.  Or maybe I've just been sullied by my own lack of success.  But I think my real fear is that I feel like I am at the mercy of an environment that is increasingly nameless and faceless.  All the old job-hunting techniques you used to be able to use, i.e. calling the HR rep, paying the local office a visit in your professional clothes, doesn't work anymore.  At least not on any level above the small businesses in your town.  The hiring process is carried out somewhere else.  It doesn't matter where you live, the person making the decision to interview you lives two states away.  You're a name on a piece of paper.  Identical to the 500 other applicants you're competing against, and you have no way to distinguish yourself outside of your work history and experience, which rarely tells the whole story about a person.  I've been turned down for jobs that I'm more than qualified for, and I'll never know why.  There's that pesky college degree again...

So what does a person do when they are met with constant rejection and disappointment?  You don't lose hope.  You dig deep inside and begin a process of self-discovery that can change your life if you allow it.  I've been through so many depressing moments lately that it would be easy for me to never get out of bed.  To mope through life as nothing more than an anchor to my family and friends (which I have to fight off more than I am comfortable with).  Instead, I inspect everything I've ever done to see who I am and how I can change.  We are saddled with different burdens in life, all of us.  How we respond to carrying that weight is part of what defines our lives.  I've had to get over things that have kept me from having other people as a part of my life.  Relationships and communication have always been difficult for me.  This makes it hard to have people there for you when times get rough.  To have a network of friends when you need help, or a job maybe.  I've had to face those issues and try to change them, because if I don't, if I continue to bow down to the same master that has beat me down for so long, I continue to circle the same path, and get the same results. 

All that is well and good, and helps me to fix the things that have hampered me in the past.  Finding a job, a good job, remains a challenge.  Waiting is so hard.  I've been waiting to hear back about a particular job, for a couple of weeks now, but it feels like it's been FOREVER.  This is a job that I could make a career out of, not toil away for minimum wage and slowly die inside.  What happens from here remains to be seen.  It is out of my hands now, and hopefully it works out in my favor.  I know at some point I'll find a decent gig, and I wait in eager anticipation of that day.  Until then I just push ahead, one day at a time, and try to do something to make myself better. 

Some Thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII-2

 I don't often buy games the day they are released.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is money; it's hard for me to justify a $60 purchase that doesn't involve it passing through my digestive tract.  Number two: I like to give the game time to elicit a reaction among gamers and the various review sites.  I mean, if I'm tracking a game by it's release date, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna play it, no matter what the reviews say, but it's good to know what kind of vibe a game is giving off.  All that to say, I bought Final Fantasy XIII the day it came out.  I don't think there has been a game released in the last five years that has generated the widely differing opinions that this one does.  Now, I do not intend to tread that well-worn ground here.  All I will say is that I liked the game a lot, despite it's flaws, and I don't believe it's the worst game ever made squareenix sux die remake ff vii (fart). 

I was pretty excited when word started flowing down the pipes about a straight sequel to FF XIII.  I thought there were a lot of places you could go after the ending of the first game.  Square Enix has been hard at work, because at E3 this year (2011), they showed off a playable demo that seems to address a lot of the criticisms that the first game garnered.  In no apparent order:

• Lightning is back, although in what manner is still unclear
• Serah plays a major role, but this time as a walking human, not a crystal
• The old NORA gang is back
• There appear to be towns with actual NPC's to chat with
• Best of all, the linear "tube" appears to be gone.

That last bullet was perhaps the biggest gripe of the game, and although it didn't bother me that much, it rubbed A LOT of folks the wrong way.  Regardless, I'm glad to see them incorporating new ideas and listening to what the fans had to say.  BioWare does a good job of that.  Really, any good developer has to take time to listen to the people who drop their hard-earned cash on these games. But back to the main point.  The battle system remains relatively unchanged, which in my opinion is good.  I liked the strategy the Paradigm Shift system makes you use and I'm glad to see it return.  While the battle system remains the same, the character-enemy interaction is slightly different.  The team has implemented a system where when you find an enemy in the field, there is a gauge that changes color from green to yellow to red.  Hit the enemy at green, and you start with a Pre-Emptive Strike and a bonus.  Yellow and red have decreased benefits to penalties.  I thought that was an interesting addition, because honestly, it was kind of a pain in the ass to sneak up on a lot of the baddies in the first game.

So yes!  I am excited for this game.  It looks like my holiday shopping list is already made out.  With Elder Scrolls: Skyrim coming in November, Final Fantasy XIII-2 supposed to hit the beginning of 2012 in the US, and Mass Effect 3 (!!) dropping in April, I've got a lot of saving to do.  Anyone out there hiring?  I need a job!

I'd be remiss not to include some music on my post, so I'll leave you with my favorite battle theme from Final Fantasy XIII.  ALL of the battle themes are great, but this one is my favorite.  It's a very percussive tune.  The strings all play in a very percussive style, and even give the lead over to the percussion at some points.  It's a very intense back-and-forth between the two sections.  Enjoy!

As Cool as the Other Side of the Mushroom

Well, I 'm back.  Posting has been kind of a low priority lately, due to a killer bout of the shingles.  And no, I don't mean the kind on top of your house.  Google it.  Or, you know, just click back <------ there.  I'm not all the way over it, but at least I can wear a shirt now without wanting to kill myself. 

Anyhoo,  I was listening to some stuff from my iTunes library the other day to take my mind off the thousands of little knives being poked into my skin, and I came across a choice tune called "Super Buck Jazz OC Remix".  Now I kind of have a "THING" for jazz remixes of Mario tunes, so I was all over this one.  Plus, it features the melody from Super Mario Bros 2, a criminally underrated entry in the Mario canon, IMHO.  I loved that game for its quirkiness.  I mean, you threw vegetables at the bad guys, the Princess could float, even Luigi was useful!  I don't know what it was about the second entries in the Mario and Zelda series, but they were both pretty big departures from the established formula.  They just so happen to be some of the most challenging and fun games in the series to me.

I Heard You Liked Portal 2...

Hey guys!  Guess what?!  Evidently, the Portal 2 OST is available for FREE right HERE!

Also.....if you have a smart phone, you NEED to go there and get some ultra-sweet ringtones for your phone (iPhone and Android only).  Otherwise, I don't think we can be friends anymore. 

What's that?  You don't like Portal?

/slams door in face

Anyway, for those of you who haven't clicked the link yet (and why haven't you, exactly?  You're testing the limits of my friendship), the OST is....awesome I'm sure.  I haven't actually listened to it yet.  I was so excited I had to blog about it first.  I just finished adding it to my iTunes, so what are you waiting for?  Go get it!

Lair of the Shadow Broke-er

I recently finished my 4th play-through of Mass Effect 2.  That's right.  Four.  And I'm not done yet.  Apparently you can play Shepard as a female *snicker*, and I would be remiss in not experiencing how the other half lives.  But more to the main point, after I was back on the Normandy SR2, I headed right over to Illium to complete perhaps the single best piece of DLC known to mankind, "Lair of the Shadow Broker".

Hyperbole you say?  HOW DARE YOU, SIR?!

/clears throat

Ahem.  I kid you not.  While its length is standard fare for DLC (about 2 hrs or so), the quality of those hours is like it came off the game disk itself.  If you're not familiar with LOTSB, the mission is fairly self-explanatory.  Cerberus has found the location of the Shadow Broker's base, and your ex-teammate Liara has a date with revenge.  I won't spoil anything, but the mission itself is fantastic, plus it gives those Shepards who pursued a relationship with Liara to continue and kind of confirm that relationship (although how this transfers into ME3 is unknown to me). Plus, she'll totally bust you if you allowed another teammate to complicate things!

One thing that I was really impressed with in addition to all of the above, was the inclusion of newly composed music.  Rather than recycle the tunes from the main story, for the most part we get farm fresh selections from a dude named Chris Lennertz.

(checks iMDB)

Well I can't say I agree with scoring movies such as "Disaster Movie" and "Meet the Spartans", but a guy's gotta feed his jelly bean habit somehow, amiright?  All that aside, I thought he did an admirable job on the soundtrack to LOTSB.  So much so that I impulse bought it on iTunes.  I can attribute only part of this to the quality of the score.  The rest belongs to this voice inside my head that compels me to let BioWare turn my money into the finest Canadian currency.  The track that stands out the most to me is called "Agent Combat" and I have embedded it for you below.  My only complaint is its length.  It's barely over a minute long, and could easily be triple that.

(Walks off stage to applause)

Chrono Trippin'

If you still have a Wii that's not collecting dust or being used as a place for your stupid cat to nap, you might want to turn it on next Monday.  Chrono Trigger is being released on the Wii Virtual Console!

From everything I've read over the past week, Chrono Trigger is widely regarded as one of the best RPG's of the 16-bit era.  NAY, of all time, according to those in-the-know.  Now, having gone through video-game puberty myself with the Super Nintendo, and being a fan of RPG and JRPG's, I should know this game like the backseat of your mom's car.  Alas I do not.  Go ahead.  Revoke my gamer card!  I deserve it.  In my defense I have played a small portion of the game.  I got right up to the point where (spoiler alert?) the crew gets warped through time somewhere.  For some reason I never played it again.

But before you start throwing stones, I present a peace offering.  The main theme of the 16-bit masterpiece.  Not the orchestrated version.  No!  I give you the main theme as you would hear it if you snapped in the cartridge yourself and pushed up on the fat, purple power switch (or, you know, just turned on your Wii and waggled around to where the game is....then clicked on it).

I did try to find an orchestrated version of this, but they all seemed to have lost something in translation, so to speak.  But maybe I just couldn't find the right recording.  Generally I'm not a big fan of the computerized beeps and boops of older game music, but this one seems to hit it just right.  The best game music is something you're humming hours after you finish playing.  A melody that stands on its own.  I'll leave you with a quote from the composer, Yasunori Mitsuda.  I wish all game composers approached their compositions in this manner.

"I think [game music] is something that should last with the player. It's interesting because it can't just be some random music, but something that can make its way into the player's heart. In that sense, this not only applies to game music, but I feel very strongly about composing songs that will leave a lasting impression...What I must not forget is that it must be entertaining to those who are listening. I don't think there's much else to it, to be honest. I don't do anything too audacious, so as long as the listeners like it, or feel that it's a really great song, then I've done my job."

Random Thoughts

Time for everybody's (*nobody's) favorite topic, random thoughts from me!

• It really bothers me that you can't repair Garrus' armor in Mass Effect 2.  I guess I could always buy the Appearance Pack, but I'd rather use that money on peanut butter crackers.
• I played the demo for Dragon Age 2 because BioWare owns me, and I wasn't impressed.  I still want to play it though.  It's probably a bananas game.  Why does the demo suck?  
• If I have to wait any longer for Skyward Sword to get here, I might...just...have to keep waiting.
• Labs!

 

 

• I (hopefully) will be getting my hands on some sweet Portal 2 action soon!  Maybe I'll review it, but it's not like you won't know whether you want to buy it or not.
• I've always had difficulty remembering the different spellings of "weather" and "whether".  
• Also, this made me laugh.  Garrus!  You so crazy!

Mario Finds His Inner Beethoven

So last night while my wife was in the other room watching sparkly vampires not make out, I was actually using my Wii to play games.  "Wah? LOL Wii sux...", you say.  Yeah, yeah, I could devote an entire post to the sorry state of the Wii in relation to the hardcore gamer, but that would just be beating a dead horse at this point.  Usually it's just a glorified Netflix streaming box, but last night I was rocking out on some Super Mario Galaxy 2.  Mario and I have been through a lot together. The NES original was the first game I ever beat, the second game was charming in its drastic departure from the original, the third is an all-time classic.....blah...blah.  You get it.  I don't need to explain Mario's place in gaming history to YOU. 

Anyway, the Galaxy series is fantastic.  Music included.  Now, tunes from Mario games are known to be generally good, so pointing one out as such should come as no surprise.  I loved the approach in this series, moving to a fully orchestrated soundtrack as opposed to using MIDI.  It's amazing the depth and sense of quality a good score played by a real orchestra can bring to a game.  Here's the track that really stood out to me:

This theme really does a great job of separating the boss levels from the normal kind.  There is a sense of foreboding that the regular level themes don't have, but it's not so dark that you forget you're playing a Mario game, and darn it, it's supposed to be fun. 

This is a highly entertaining game.  The level design, music, and boss battles are all challenging and fun.  I finished the final level last night, but still need to go back to get all 120 stars.  Good tunes like this will make it fun to do so.

Why Should Council Spectres Have All The Good Music?

Hi!

I'm currently working on a way to pull clips out of longer tunes that I want you to hear.  Then I can post 20-30 sec bits instead of full tunes, which can tend to get rather long.  It's all about making life easier for you, the internet browsing community.

All that to say, I had planned on a nice little post yesterday on a tune from Mass Effect 2, a game that OWNS MY BRAIN.  Unfortunately, my ISP decided to quit providing my area with cable and internet service for most of the afternoon.  How thoughtful!   So instead you get a tune from Mass Effect 1 called "Spectre Induction".  This plays after Shepard kicks enough ass to become a Council Spectre.  It's a nice little moment in the first hours of the game.

/Stands at attention
//Salutes American flag

I love how this piece has a regal feel to it, while working in the main theme of the game at the same time.  The main theme actually pops up all over the soundtrack, which gives it a very cohesive feel.  I like when a game composer does that.  Masashi Hamauzu did that with the Final Fantasy XIII OST, with amazing results.  That, my friends, is a soundtrack worth talking about.

But I digress.

Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, and Richard Jacques worked on this one.  The Mass Effect OST was a collaborative effort by these three, with Jack Wall composing the second game by his lonesome. 

You know how iTunes will let you listen to 30-60 second samples of tunes before you buy them?  I have to confess I did not care for this soundtrack after just listening to the sample clips.  But one day I broke down and bought it, mainly because I already had the Mass Effect 2 OST, and felt anal about not having the first one to go with it.  I was very pleasantly surprised.

Mega Man 2: Still Golden Over 20 Years Later

Mega Man 2 was one of the first games I fell in love with as a kid.  I remember getting it for Christmas when I was 9 or 10 years old.  It didn't take long for that game to completely take me over.  The freedom to fight the bosses in whatever order you want?  NICE.  Numerous improvements over the first Mega Man?  NICER.  Unique level music for each boss?  NICEST.

Now, most games have different music for different levels, this was nothing revolutionary.  But these tunes were different somehow.  They were insanely infectious.  I would have them stuck in my head for hours after I had stopped playing. 

Quick Man is a good one.  Love the scale run at about the :24 sec mark!

The one I'd really like to highlight, however, isn't one that seems to get a lot of attention.  Metal Man's Theme, Quick Man's Theme, and especially Dr. Wiley Stage 1 get a lot of praise, and rightly so.  They're great themes!  But I love the Bubble Man theme.  One thing that sets this tune apart is has a rather long build-up before you get to the meat of the theme.  You're about :22 sec in before you hear the very vibrato-laden melody.  I love how the vibrato in the NES-era games was so overdone.  So endearing.

The Mega Man series has always been one of my favorites, despite its sometime crushing difficulty.  If you were too young to have played the early games (II-IV were really good), there are two new Mega Mans?  Men? on XBOX Live Arcade that are faithful to these early titles, music and all.

I've got Mega Man 9 on my console at home and it just sits there.  Taunting me in the fact that I can't beat it.  On second thought, that Mega Man is kind of a jerk.

Welcome!

Hello there.

Nice to meet you.

I would like to dedicate my first post to explain the nature and content of this blog, and what you can come to expect.  This blog is about music.  Not just any music, but music from video games.  This combines two things that I love and have a great appreciation for.  So what I'll be trying to do is listen to and discuss some of my favorite (or not!) pieces of music from video games. I realize there are probably several of these types of blogs out there already, but that's okay.  I'm trying to find a way to work my love of these things into something viable for me.  The writing part is helpful as well.  I'm trying to find my voice, where I fit, that sort of thing.

Now I am no music expert, but here's a little background on me.  I played an instrument in the school band from 6th - 12th grade, then again for two years in college band.  I was a music education major for two years as well.  So while I probably couldn't teach a Form and Analysis class, I'm familiar with the basic constructs of music.

Oh, and I've played video games consistently for about 23 years. 

Now I'm still trying to iron out some of the kinks in regards to the format and layout of this here blog, so don't yell at me too much as I work things out.  Hopefully I'll settle on something I like fairly quickly. 

I welcome feedback, but please don't be a h8ter.... you might make me cry.

I should have something of substance ready to go soon, so stay tuned!