MIDI Week Singles: "My Heaven" - Silent Hill (PSX)

"My Heaven" from Silent Hill on the Playstation (1999)
Silent Hill Original Soundtrack
Composed By: Akira Yamaoka
Record Label: Konami
Game Developer: Konami

Confession time.  I have not played Silent Hill yet.  I have the game on my PSP, but I would really like to play the game in a darkened room with headphones and I haven't had too many times available that would not make me look/seem like a creep.  But I did acquire the soundtrack awesomely enough from a Silent Hill community website.

So not having played the game, I have no emotional or nostalgic attachment to any of the songs, which was somewhat nice when I first listened through the soundtrack.  The song "My Heaven" stuck out to me among all the other great styled songs that you would be happy to find on any well crafted horror soundtrack.  I think what it was for me was the static/white noise/drone that ran through the song while rusted metallic drums were frantically drummed in the back/foreground. 

I could probably analyze this song and infer meaning where there isn't, especially not having played the game.  And then there's the obvious contrast between the sounds in the song with the title.  I just think it's a great, unsettling song.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
All I Heard Was An Unearthly Silence

MIDI Week Singles: "Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" - Chrono Cross (PSX)

"Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" from Chrono Cross on the Playstation (1999)

Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda

Record Label: Digicube SSCX-10040

Game Developer: Squaresoft

This song came up earlier while procrastinating from doing my homework and I thought, "Why have I not written a post about this song yet?"  I had no good answer, you y'all're getting to listen to this today!

Despite the fact that I don't feel that Chrono Cross was a particularly good sequel to Chrono Trigger, it was a good game that had a great soundtrack.  This track is used as the overworld theme once Serge crosses over to the "Other Aruni."  It's beautiful as a stand alone piece, yet has that special something that allows it to be played over-and-over as theme while your characters traverse the world.  I also really enjoy the simplicity of track, that it is performed by five voices: violin, piano, guitar, bass and a voice; especially during a time when I felt a lot of music from video games were trying to layer too many voice because the hardware at the time allowed more than limited number previously on the 8 and 16 bit consoles.

In the end, if you ended up having a negative view of Chrono Cross, at least give the soundtrack a try, great tracks like "Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" fill the entirety of the album.  You might be missing out otherwise.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Reached The Shore And Saw It Come

Emulator Hour: Xenogears (PS1)

Seems like a sufficiently villainous goal

You know, in my endless pursuit of nostalgia, I've come to the conclusion that the Playstation 1 actually had a lot of really great games.  Back in the great CD Burn-off of '01, I acquired quite a few excellent RPGs from Square.  In fact, I think the rate of US release for Square really increased around that time.  'Only in Japan' was no longer a phrase to frustrate the RPGphile.

Xenogears - it's been twelve years since I played through the first disc, but I still remember it like yesterday.  Would I do it again?  Maybe.  I think I'll just read a plot summary instead.   This is a very good plot summary, full of love and criticism.   You know, I played this game yesterday for barely an hour, and I've had its image in the back of my mind all day today.  I think this may be due to the sheer number of hours I put into it twelve years ago.  This  game is long-  50 hours on one disc!  (of two)

Playing Xenogears is like watching 300 episodes of some Shonen Anime.  You know - the kind whose story just keeps getting bigger and bigger, new twists, bigger bad guys, greater powers.  Xenogears is epic, sweeping, daring and strange.  The music is good, the environments have character, the battle system is fun.  All in all, a great jRPG from 1998.  

 But, there's no getting around it:   Xenogears starts to drag after while.  Then it proceeds to drag on for a very long time.  After a point, it's hard to say what is dragging the most, the story or the gameplay.  You start to notice the encounter rate is maybe a bit too high.  Or that the story simply takes too long to reveal things that it has been hinting at for a long time.  On the one hand, I like that the game takes its time with the story.  On the other hand, when two things are dragging at once, it really takes its toll.  This game is in dire need of an editor.

And yet... I would still consider playing it through again.  Or at least trying.  Boy it would be nice if I shorten some of the gameplay though.  It feels weird to say so, like some kind of betrayal of my young self, who loved long games.  But it's true, and I don't think it's just me being old. I think that Zeboyd games were onto something when they made monster encounters manual.  Or Chrono Trigger with the encounters being featured on the screen, sometimes avoidable, sometimes predictable, but not hyper-persistent and random.   There are so many times when I'd like to explore a little-- hell, even hear some more of the music play out, but I know I'm going to hit a random encounter every five seconds.  In an already long game, this is just too much. 

So, ultimately I'd say Xenogears:  play at your own risk.  If you like jRPGs, particularly 90s era RPGs, Xenogears is a great game.  Compelling, unique and mysterious.  But it takes like 50 hours to get through the first disc, and it can really drag.

It's really tough to encapsulate Xenogears in just a pic or two.  But here's a cast shot.

 
P.S.  I decided to read through the Let's Play Xenogears article rather than play through the second disc.  It was enjoyable and entertaining, with music links for each scene, and a pretty funny sense of humor.  I can only recommend it as a cop-out for those of us unwilling to dump another 20 hours into this game.  

P.P.S.  Xenogears gets a lot of criticism - the same criticism I also levied against it.  So here's an article from Joystiq coming to its defense.  It really is a great game!   Mostly.

Emulator Hour preview: Resident Evil 2

Okay, so, I decided I had to play Resident Evil 2 again.  I guess it was when I was midway through watching 'night of the creeps' that I came to this conclusion.  Well, my playstation is only a memory now, drifting somewhere out in the world, so I decided to turn to the world of emulation.  With a bit of work, I've gotten it working, and I'm going to play Resident Evil 2.

But I haven't actually started yet.  I think I'm going to play as Claire, since the other time I played RE 2 I played as Leon.  I got to the end of the game, too, but I had six handgun bullets and a knife.  Suffice it to say, I didn't win.

The game is super-sweet though.  RE 2 was the first game in the series I played.  I missed RE 1, but I did play the game cube revision.  Because it was the first, I'll always have special affection for RE 2.  Something about a zombie infested police station that is a nice spin on the zombie infested theme.  Sort of like how Dawn of the Dead takes place in a shopping mall.  Actually, come to think of it, Dawn of the Dead might be my favorite Zombie movie.  Either one, take your pick.

In terms of it being a sequel, I'm not sure that RE2 really upgrades the game play in any significant way.  But in this case I don't really mind, again, because it was the first one I played.  Also, the gameplay of Resident Evil was so unprecedented, I was thrilled to have more than one.  It wasn't until RE3 that i started to think things were waning a bit.  Really those first three games are like clones of one another.  Awesome, terrifying clones.

I'll spare everyone and not talk about RE4 and beyond.  Even if it was the triumphant return of Leon.  Alright, well, this is sort of a non-post, but I'm excited to play Resident Evil 2!  Woot!

-D

This is just some examples of the dramatic camera angles from this game.  10 to 1 some fucking crows appeared on the way out of this room, and scared the bejeezus out of me even though I knew they were coming

But First, Introductions

My first thought was to jump right into games.  Specifically video games.

But first, introductions.

My name's Jack, JWfW, JDub or Jaconian.  All depending where I am on the internet.

I've been playing video games since the ripe young age of I don't remember when.  My first memory of playing video games of any kind was either on Dr. Potts' Atari 2600 or on the Intellivision down in Lake Arrowhead at a house my grandparent's rented for the first half of my life.  The first time I played on a Nintendo Entertainment System was probably sometime around 1986 or 1987 at a neighbors house up the street.  The following Christmas, my sisters and I received the "deluxe" packaging NES that came with the Power Pad (because when my Mom sent my Dad out to buy it, he naturally bought the biggest available version; a bit ironic since my Dad doesn't play video games on any level).

So my childhood and teenage years was during the height of the Console Wars of which I was on the side of Nintendo.  NES, SNES, Gameboy (original and Play It Loud series), Gameboy Advance, N64, Gamecube, DS lite.  All Nintendo.  I did buy a PS2 from Dr. Potts after he won it in one of those Coke bottle cap contests and I did buy a PSP from my friend Chreekat (since we're using aliases here) before he moved out to go adventuring.  These I bought so I could play Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, on their respective systems.  I have played some PC games, but until recently as 2003, I never owned what one might call a "gaming computer," and even then, the computer I had still wasn't very powerful (80 gig hard drive, Pentium III processor, 256 Mb or RAM).

I tend to play mostly role-playing games although I do also love and play other types as well.  The one big exception is rhythm and music games.  Sure I've played Guitar Hero and Rock Band and I've even gotten on a DDR pad a couple of times, but they're just not my pint of beer.  There's a wall that I definitely hit right after the "Easy" stage that I can't get past without hours of practicing, which doesn't happen since I don't own any of the games.  Figures.

Now to close with a short story.  In elementary school, our school decided to have a dance.  It was the first dance the school had ever had (that's what we were told, maybe they lied) and it was going to be on Valentines Day.  A lot of kids went either because they wanted to go to a dance before going to Jr. High, or because of the novelty of our school having a dance.  I on the other had was very not enthused about the prospect of a dance.  Plus I had recently rented Captain Skyhawk for the NES and was most likely trying to get passed the second stage.  A number of my friends had asked if I was going to go and felt bad/guilty that I didn't want to go because I'd rather sit at home and play a video game.  Whatever, I'm all the better because of it.  And I never beat the game either.

~Jack/JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Copying People More Famous Than I.