4 those who see(k) the art in games
Music
Rock Revolution [GT Review]
0Lolz… an interesting debate to be had here on how important originality is vs mass reach/refinement… to think they started it. Still… wow, quite high standards tell me the music genre is biiiiig :D
PS: took me quite a while to figure out where i know the starting song from so well :P
Golden Axe: Beast Rider – sound
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Not thrilled about the music I hear, the voice acting seems pretty nice (though probably ultra linear, thereby reducing my chances of ever going back to it like they say they aim). As for the level artwork: not thrilled with it’s look or polish but based on the concepts it might be at least an okay artwork. Still, if it’s just going to involve killing a kazillion monsters my fingers hurt just thinking about it. Also, as they seem to be aware themselves, this is a new team and i wouldn’t be surprised if their second title showed a much improved workflow. I dare hope this game will have the potential of Drakan… but it may turn out to be yet another kill-everything bland thing too: still, it’s set in a fantasy world so I’ll probably one day give it a try, but so far they haven’t really made me drool.
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Fable 2, music & sound
0That’s pretty cool. The idea i find most fascinating is painting the ambient music on the maps… like say you have a forrest and it’s scarry but then you reach a sunny clearing with a magical tree (anybody else played Quest for Glory 2 ? :P ) and gradually the music fades from scary into calm and peaceful.
Music in Gaming, part 1 [Bonus Round]
0Found this to be quite interesting. Besides a pulse of the recording industry I was curious and impressed to see a composer working on two such such wildly different games and companies which afaik have no relation. I think that’s great news…
ps3 ingame personal playlist!!!
0chatting with friends while playing… well, yes, i guess… but that’s nothing to me compared to the joy of having my own music while playing a biiiig game. I love immersive worlds… but due to material limitations they usually can’t put in there a playlist long enough (or good enough?) to keep me 30+ h … i quite dislike repetition. So this is great news to me… for when i’ll get a ps3 :P for now i’m still sticking to my ps2 + secondary set of speakers plugged into my mp3 player :P
PS: and read that in like 5 days they’re also gonna launch the dualshock 3 in europe :D great news. Now all i’m waiting for is some serious price dropping and the bundling of the dualshock 3 :D I ain’t askin’ for much, right? :))
Unreal Soundtrack
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I simply have no words enough or powerful enough to describe the impact this soundtrack (the original Unreal game soundtrack) has made on my life. I find it imensely powerful, and mixed with the moments when it appears in the game it simply makes my heart shiver. First time you get out of the opressive wreck fearing for your life and you see the alien sun, the openness, the discovery, seeing the Spire climbing to the sky, walking through the cloud city large streets, traversing caverns with shimmering crystals… all are fixed strongly in my mind due to the powerful emotions expressed through this music. For years afterwards i listened to it day and night, for many lights i’d leave it on while i sleep hoping that somehow it would burn into my brain and I would be able to myself create a fraction of the beauty that the guys at Straylight Productions put in there.
Later on I realized that several other soundtracks that I liked were made by the same people (Crusader, Jazz the Jackrabbit, Unreal Tournament…). Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, Andrew Sega (Necros) and Dan Gardopée will forever remain my musical heroes, to me more precious than most of the big band/singer names which everybody has heard of. I wish I could tell everybody at the top of my lungs of them and see the recognition in their eyes like they do for some well known bands.
I was all the more impressed by their magic after Marius showed me how they were actually modules, how they had managed to create such amazing music, trully high quality, and yet put it in a restrictive format that managed to have a low CPU footprint and with songs taking a fraction of even compressed audio like mp3. Mindblowing. Seeing all the channels that they used to create panning shifts or echoes & reverbs, loops and audio gradients… aaaamazing!
I have just discovered you can actually listen to (part of?) the soundtracks online… trully amazing! Meeting any of these guys even through a email or message board is a lifelong dream of mine… maybe someday…
As I’m writing this the music is running and even after so many years and so many hundreds of listenings I’m amazed how my eyes tremble on the virge of tears of joy and how my mind is alive with visual imagery & emotional snapshots of the moments they described in the games… WOW! And the way they can so seamlessly transition from meditational and contemplative to the adrenaline that makes one feel so alive with the need to respond urgently… WOOOOW.
Some of my favorite songs (though it’s so hard to name) would have to be “All hallows sunset”, “Chizra”, “Dusk Horizon”, “Surfacing”, “Isotoxin”, “Vortex rikers”… sorry… i may find myself naming them all. The Unreal Tournament soundtrack I also found very fit for the adrenaline gameplay, though I can’t say it moved me quite so much. Still, it had some songs like “Razorback” which really rock my world and made me feel amazingly alive, and they were all pretty much what kept you going when you had reached the repetition and familiarity…
Big biiiig shout out for Straylight Productions and all their friends!!!
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Quake 2 – adrenaline music
1Now I wish I could say Quake 2 is an art masterpiece, but to be honest I played it more as a fps experience & a technology breakthrough… i love the immersion that 1st person brings… but there is one BIG thing that made my play a FANTASTIC ride, and that is the amazing music. It blew me away and set my standards for many years to come of what great adrenaline music can be… for years I would ask everybody if they know of anything like this, and though it’s been many years I don’t think I have ever found anything as energetic and yet without the clutter of words (unfortunatelly music like this is usually accompanied by screeming people, which tend to bring more negative feelings while this brings pure “I’m doing something exciting” feeling). Also very cool: because it was audio tracks I could take my Quake 2 cd to friends and listen on their cd players: everybody was blown away.
Btw, if you wanna hear the real sounds to the video (the game intro) it’s here (there too my favorite moments are when the music purrs with the drama of the crash after the excitment of the great attack).
PS: I was still marked more by the Unreal soundtrack, but the story of my reverence for Straylight productions and their mastery of tracking is a story for another post…
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Using a Live Orchestra in Game Soundtracks
0Here’s an interesting article with a lot of insider’s details.
The only reason to use a live orchestra in a game soundtrack would be to make the game better than if you had not used an orchestra; to make the game more immersive, more engaging, more fun than if it didn’t include the orchestra. And on the business side, it would be helpful if you could sell enough units to pay for it.
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3492/using_a_live_orchestra_in_game_.php
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Russian muzak
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I’m a big fan of GTA’s tradition of offering cool & funny audio content through it’s in-game radio stations, probably much more so than I’m a fan of the games… and here’s another reason to be so: happy people across the globe are getting closer through mixes of culture. I wonder if it’s a fair portrayal… but hoping that as years pass all the major cultures in the world will have some note-worthy games so everybody across the globe can learn more and get enriched and more tolerant and actually not just tolerant, much more: admiring of other cultures.
PS: forgot to say, didn’t i? I’m talking about hte fact that Rockstar is starting to drip info of it’s new in-game radio stations in GTA IV