MIDI Week Singles: Lockjaw's Saga - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)

Today's musical selection comes to us from the SNES of 1995.  That year we saw the release of Chrono Trigger, Earthbound and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.  1995 also saw the second installment in the Donkey Kong Country franchise headed by Rare and Nintendo.

So now, down to the tune.

"Lockjaw's Saga*" from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1995).

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: The Original Soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country 2

Game Developer: Rare

Music Composed by: David Wise

From the first time I heard this music in the "Lockjaw's Locker" (Level 1-4), I fell in love with the song, and for me personally, it is one of the highlights on the entire soundtrack.  The epicness of the music is on a much higher scale that what is actually going on in the level, even with the sounds of water sloshing against the side of wherever this song was recorded. (Yes, I know it's digital music created in computer and not really recorded on a pirate ship overrun by a crew of anamorphic crocodiles).  I do imagine the drums in the song being someone pounding on hollow wooden crates in the bilge of massive schooner in order to create that reverberating sound.

Another thing I love about this track, is that it is named after a minor minion named Lockjaw.  Lockjaw is an orange fish somewhat reminiscent of an Angler Fish and it is not even a single one-off fish, but a type of enemy that appears frequently in underwater stages.  Lockjaw is not even a boss nor is there a larger boss version.  But damn it, Lockjaw has its own saga* apparently and this is the music to said saga*.  Very appropriate I think.

Actually, I love this soundtrack as a whole and will probably do a much needed Game Scores article about it on either Friday or Monday.  God damn this is great music!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'll Say These Final Words My Friend.


*Since this game, song and soundtrack came out 17 years before Candy Crush Saga was a twinkle in the pot, King can take their saga-sueing due to saga-copyright infringe-saga-ment and shove it.

"Here's How You Can Play That Game Better."

I've heard this for a while and it crops up every now and then: "If you don't build your character a certain way, you won't have a chance at beating the game" or "To get the most out of Game X, make sure to do this when creating a character."  I can't really be more specific than that as I always avoid reading these articles as I do not agree with them.  I would like to think/believe that a game can be enjoyed and beaten without the need to follow an unofficial ruleset.

I of course say all this after my failed attempt at Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light and I gave advice as to how to not fail as bad as I had done.

Does this make me a hypocrite?  Sure, why not!?

I bring this up now because I am playing (or at least started back in January) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and someone I was talking to (either in the real world or at work) asked if I was careful in how I created my character, because apparently if you do not do it correctly, you can ruin your chances of being able to finish the game.

I first heard about this "phenomenon" from a former housemate who told me about how to build a mage that wouldn't suck in Diablo II.  This roommate, whom we will call The Sauce, suggested that I build an Ice Mage and put my all of skill points into Ice Magic.  He followed this advice up with recounting how he had known people who had ruined their characters by accidentally putting skill points in the "wrong" skill tree and had to discard high level characters.  This idea that you could ruin a character on accident and have to start over from the beginning frightened me.  I should also point out that this was only 3 years ago.  I'm sure the same could be said for Torchlight I or II and I'm positive that there are at least a couple (hundred?) people would tell me that I have not created my Mage in Torchlight II correctly as I have my skill points spread out between a number Ice spells, a Fire spell and some passive buffing abilities.

I also read a similar article/post over on this internet thing regarding Breath of Death VII.  I was looking for hints about how to defeat a particular boss and two separate posts I read stated that if you put leveling attributes for particular characters in "the wrong" areas, that you would have a very hard time with the game.  And I am currently having a very hard time against a particular boss four hours in.

I do not like this.  Not one bit.  How is the normal gamer supposed to find this out on their own?  I think that's my feelings towards beating video games in general, that there should not be one specific way to beat a game.  To kill Boss A, you shouldn't need to perform specific attacks and defenses in a specific order otherwise you're not playing the game correctly.

I think this is one of the reasons why I could never beat Advance Wars: World of Ruin.  I just became stuck with a certain series of battles and had to resort to Gamefaqs to make my way through them.  It is frustrating to me that a written document could tell me how to beat a multi-faceted enemy, that there is a preordained order that the computer performs its actions so that a victory can be achieved over and over again.  Eventually I gave up because I had reached a stalemate about 20 minutes into a battle and didn't want to go through reading an article and having my hand held through the remainder of the battle.  Additionally, if I had to have my hand held through the last number of battles, I would most likely need to be directed through the rest of the game as it would only prove to be more-and-more difficult.

So that's my two bits about games where people feel that you need to create characters in a certain/specific way in order for the game to be enjoyed (i.e.: beaten).  I'll play the game however the damn hell I please.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
You Can't Change Fate, But Don't Feel So Bad


P.S.  In a similar, but not related train of thought, this idea about following an obscure plan in order to get something from a game happened to me in Final Fantasy XII when I first heard about the Zodiac Spear.  The article I read said that you could not have opened any of the treasure chests in a couple of specific areas  and that the Zodiac Spear could be in one of two chests in a particular dungeon.  I say "could" because even if you did open one of the chests you weren't supposed to open, it could still be there, but there would be something like a 90% chance that it wouldn't.  Now how in the hell is the regular player supposed to figure this out if there was nothing in the game that hinted about this?  

A Thought About Horror Games

Now, I don't intend to either diagnose or cure what I think the issue/trouble/problem with video games that fall into the survival horror genre, I just want to talk about them, partly because of two of the games that I'm playing right now are Cry of Fear and Dead Space.

The first game I played that fell within the survival horror genre, probably along with a lot of other gamers was Resident Evil on the PS1 when I lived with Dr. Potts, The Jestre and handful of others in a pseudo-stereotypical 1st College Apartment-type setting back in 1999.  It was an amazing game and very different than most games I had played up to that point.  (I was able to get the ending where you don't fight Tyrant and thought that was an absolutely brilliant ending to such a tension filled game; very anti-climactic but such a departure from stereotypical/Hollywood ending.  This was before I found out there were multiple endings).

Now, rather than go through a history of all the survival-horror, fps-horror, adventure-horror, et cetera games that I've played, I want to get down to brass tacks.  I have found, for myself at least, that horror games run a pretty high risk of becoming frustrating, annoying boxes of frustration.  There have been games that I love that have dipped into the pool of frustration.  Take Resident Evil 4 (A game I enjoyed but didn't love mind you) and the knife fight with Krauser.  That battle was all about reaction time and not much else.  There was some muscle memory involved, but which button to press changed between a couple options with each playthrough.  One misstep and you had to start over.  I appreciate boss fights, but this fight alone took me out of the horror atmosphere from everything that came before.

More recently in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, in the second area where you're wading through water and on boxes, attempting to avoid an invisible creature who's stalking you, I very quickly became frustrated.  Most due to the fact that I had run out of oil for the lamp (which was it's own frustration throughout the game) and I couldn't tell if I was backtracking through the area or if I was heading in the correct direction.

I get it though.  Video games are supposed to be challenging, that is why difficulty levels exist, but not in all games.  Often times, harder difficulty levels means that you will find less ammunition and the enemies take more damage.  In Resident Evil 2, if you play on Easy, you start off with a sub-machine gun with infinite ammunition.  Infinite ammunition in any Resident Evil game immediately takes away any sense of fear that the creatures are trying to have the gamer experience.  At the moment, in Dead Space, I am playing the game on Medium, which I feel is about the average person would play the game on.  I could easily see how Hard difficulty would obviously make the game harder, but for myself, it would also mean having to restart frequently and conserving my ammunition to the point where I would reload if I miss-fire because I am wasting a much needed resource.  I don't want to play that kind of game and have that mentality when playing.  No, I do not want to be spoon fed bullets so that I don't fear like I'm constantly running out, but I also do not want to play a game where there is an allotment of bullets for specific enemies.

In Doom 3, I played through the game on Marine, which is one above Recruit and then below Veteran and Nightmare.  I was able to play the game very successfully (without the flashlight attachment) on Marine with the exception of the fight between either between two Hell Knights or the Guadrian, I can't remember which.  After many attempts, I handed the game over to Vorlynx, who has much more FPS experience than I.  It was something that brought my enjoyment of the game to a standstill, but I thankfully had someone who knew their shit and could get me through to the other side.  The rest of the game went well.

One game that I had to give up on due to missing an "optional" weapon that turns out is pretty damn important, was Dementium: The Ward for the DS.  In Chapter 12: The Cleaver's Return, there's an area where it is beyond beneficial to have the buzz saw.  There are multiple banshees flying at you and the buzz saw is necessary if you don't want to die, which I kind of don't.  I had to give up on that game (at least for the time being) as backtracking is not an option.

The last game I want to bring up is Slender: The Eight Pages. It's a simple game that is pretty difficult to complete, but I can only play it two or three times before giving up.  Not because I get so frustrated and only being able to find four or five pages, but because after a couple of plays, the fear of being spotted by the Slender Man wears off, and I don't want to play the game if I'm no longer afraid.  The game loses what makes it fun to play.

In these games, there always feels like there is a point when the horror becomes routine and not scary anymore.  For me, this happens when the game become so difficult that I'm not experiencing a scary and intense story, but playing a difficult video game.  Playing a game on Hard/Insane/Nightmare/Jedi, as I can see it, doesn't make the game scarier, but only serves to give bragging rights, which I guess makes achievements and trophies so desirable.

So give me a horror game and I'll play it, partly because I enjoy being scared without the fear of actually having my body quartered and partly because I enjoy the "fear of the unknown."

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Filth of Mankind

http://www.precursorgames.com/shadowoftheeternals/

"More like a toy than a game."

I have a confession. I am 24 years old and I still play with dolls.  I build them elaborate houses, spend hours on their hairstyles and outfits, and keep track of their family tree. They have spouses, jobs, skill sets, and pets.
That's right guys, I'm talking about The Sims.
While reading the wikipedia article (because what else am I going to do tonight?) I came across a quote that says that The Sims has been described as "more like a toy than a game," and a light bulb went off. Growing up, I was all about playing with Barbies. I loved making them outfits out of scraps, and I somehow always seemed to come up with an elaborate backstory (I think my Barbie became the manager for the Beatles once. Yeah). It was around the time that I was getting "too old" for dolls that a friend introduced me to the Sims. Suddenly it was okay for me to keep making up silly stories and although the outfits were limited I couldn't complain.

Yes, she will do just fine.

From there, it was just... man. I bought every. single. expansion. for that game. At like $20 each, it meant that almost all birthday and Christmas money went straight to Maxis. I had Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed (you could get pets! come on!), Superstar, and the slightly lame Makin' Magic.  I even downloaded custom content. And then, The Sims 2 came out. My reaction :

Initial excitement, followed by "Wait, what. NO."

 Because guess what? It was definitely not backwards compatible. Which means all the money I had spent on The Sims 1 was essentially wasted if I bought the newer, much cooler looking Sims 2. I vowed that although I would buy the basic game, I would limit myself to one, maybe two expansion packs. You can guess how that went.

...Actually pretty well. 

I purchased the University expansion pack, since in The Sims 1, sims did not age at all; and in The Sims 2 the aging process went like this : infant->toddler->teen->adult->elder. Note the conspicuous gap between teen and adult. Having a sim go to college and go through a "young adult" phase was interesting and novel to me. Aside from being given the Seasons expansion pack by a friend, I only had the University expansion for The Sims 2. Sure enough, The Sims 3 came out a few years ago and is, in my opinion, much more interesting than The Sims 2. 

Which brings me to today. Now that I have more of a disposable income (or at least I did, until I went back to school), $20 doesn't seem like the astronomical sum it used to. However, I have become pickier about which expansions I buy. The most recent one, Showtime, seems like a rehashed version of a previous expansion but with Katy Perry weirdly tacked on, so I didn't buy it. World Adventures, on the other hand, takes the game from being a passive sandbox-style game to a sort of RPG-lite, with puzzles, quests, and mini-games. Definitely worth the money.

So on that note, I'm signing out. I got Sims to create!

-Conklederp