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!
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.
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."
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".
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.
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 Hamauzudid 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 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.
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!
