I've really been on a Dragon Warrior kick lately, so why not share this singular musical track from the first Dragon Warrior? To the unbiased ear, the early NES sounds from DW may be somewhat grating, really not the best MIDI, and the compositions, in general, may not seem like anything to write home about. However, each song has a special place in my heart, and none more so than the battle theme. I love it because it leads me to ask: "What the heck is going on with this theme?" It's so odd! So delightfully strange. It's only the bridge at the end that sort of ties the thing together. Instead of using speed and heavy rhythm to generate excitement and create a sense of danger, the composer chooses to use a bizarre melody. And it works, the much calmer sounds of the overworld map are very relaxing by comparison. So yeah, big kudos to Koichi Sugiyama and Takenori Yamamori for this unequaled track among video game battle music. -D
Time to go to the land of Obscure, at least obscure from my point of view as I have only seen the NES game Jackal out in the wild in one place and I have never seen the arcade cabinet either. This is a game that I played and borrowed form Delaños frequently, but due to my not great video gaming ability, I was unable to finish the game, or at least I remember being unable to finish the beast.
Since the soundtrack to Jackal is somewhat limited (clocking in at a second or two over four minutes), let us start off with the music from the first stage, title "Stage 1 & 4."
"Stage 1 & 4," as you could surmise from the title is the music that you hear in the first stage of the game. For me, even the chugging bass line at 0:07 seconds reminds me of a not-s0-well carburetored engine. The music is even timed to line up with the arrival of the jeep, which I find brilliant considering this is a straight up action run-and-gun that came out on the NES in 1988 (arcade cabinet was released in 1986). What is interesting is that in the arcade version, the same music is still present, although it sounds very subdued and unlike the NES version, the chugging does not line up with the arrival of the jeep.
As for the melody, I cannot place it as being reminiscent of anything in particular, although it suits the game and action perfectly. And what perfection those 32 seconds of music make! Yes, this main theme from stages one and four lasts only 32 seconds, which probably should not come as a surprise, again considering this was 1988.
"Stage 2 & 5" is the longest track from this unreleased soundtrack, clocking in at around 1:26. And this was not Shinya Sakamoto's first foray into military run-and-guns mind you, having worked with Konami in 1985 on Rush'N Attack (aka: Green Berets), which is why the music to "Stage 2 & 5" might have conjured up the memories from the first stage in that game; well, at least for myself it does.
By now you may have noticed the similar "bum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum" beat running through each of the previous two songs, as it will in the third, even though the melodies are all different from one another. Again, possibly reminiscent of the sound of the jeeps, but this beat, I feel, keeps the player in the game, having a consistent and familiar beat running throughout the game.
Finally, "Stage 3 & 6." There is that beat again! Like "Stage 1 & 3," this track is only about 32 seconds long and personally, the least interesting of the three songs used for the six stages in this game. There is not one thing that I do not like about it, I just find the main melody to be not quite as catchy as that from the first two tracks. It could also be that since the songs are broken up as 1 & 4, 2 & 5 and 3 & 6, that I heard the first two songs more frequently than I did the final track, probably never or at least rarely making it to the sixth and final stage.
So, more-0r-less, that is the main score to Jackal, although there are also the tracks for the boss battles, the prologue, the credits and game over, but for a game that centers around drive-and-gun, the music for the stages has to be interesting enough to keep the player playing through similarly designed stages, breaking up the monotony and tension of not being killed.
Good music does that and Shinya Sakamoto's score is exactly what Jackal needed.
P.S. And for anyone wondering, "Jackal" refers to the type of vehicle used in the game Jackal, although fighting with the ferocity of a jackal is also perfectly valid.
P.P.S. Just to note, this article started out as a MIDI Week Singles post, focusing on the music from "Stage 1 & 4" but while writing, I realized that the rest of the score was equally important and for the most part, just as catchy and nostalgic. Half way through I decided that this would have to be turned into a "Game Scores" post instead.
If any song is going to put me in the mood to kill vampires and other associated forms of undead or supernatural abominations, this song does it for me every time. Sure there are a lot of other songs from the Castlevania series that I could have chosen today, but I had to go with what I feel is a quintessential song from such a long running series.
Satoe Terashima has done a phenomenal job with three tones creating a song 28 years old that still resonates with modern audiences. I do not know if I would put this song up with with the "BackGround Music" from Super Mario Bros. or the "Overworld" theme from The Legend of Zelda, but for me it is equally recognizable and just as important.
I know that in later Castlevania games, especially on the DS, the "Vampire Killer" theme is used sparingly, typically near the end of the game and I am perfectly fine with that. I take it as a reminder of where the game originated and is congratulating/thanking the player for playing through the new installment. I have yet to finish any of the newer reboot games so I cannot comment if "Vampire Killer" is used by Óscar Araujo (the composer for the reboot series), but I would not be surprised to hear its motif used later in the game.
In-game time was 3h22m. Play time was 7 hours, but I played about an hour of the first chapter again to show Emilie what the game was like.
I actually finished Deadlight about a month ago, shortly after posting my First Impressions, but have now finally gotten around to writing up everything that I want to say about the game.
STORY
Deadlight follows the character of Randall Wayne, a Canadian forest worker who is attempting to survive a zombie-like apocalyptic world set in 1986's Seattle, WA. Raul Rubio, the CEO of Tequila Works, the company behind Deadlight, was quoted as saying that 1986 was specifically chosen because "if you think about it, 1986 was the year that had a lot of lunar events. And if you put that with movies like First Blood and Day of the Dead, it's a strange mix and you can get a unique visual." Other notable events that saw the light of day from 1986 was the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in January (which was mentioned in the game), Stephen King's IT was published, Halley's Comet is visible, the USSR launches the Mir space station, one of the reactors at Chernobyl "explodes," Dragon Quest(Dragon Warrior) is released in Japan, Pan Am flight 73 is hijacked by terrorists, a 7.5 earthquake strikes El Salvador and kills 1500. You get the idea, a lot of shit was happening which probably helped to "set the tone" for the game. All of that aside, I didn't find the story overly original. Randall is with a group of survivors and is searching for his missing/lost wife and daughter. Don't get me wrong though, I was throughly engaged throughout the game, albeit a little confused at times as to how Randall knew where to go, but that is all explained by the end of the game. The story is broken up into four chapters, the first is where most of the game mechanics and story elements are introduced. It plays like a great traditional platformer. The second chapter feels very different as it introduces a lot of puzzle elements that play a bit like Portal, but less fun. This second chapter was where my fun level/interest took a bit of a dip as I was afraid that I was going to be playing this type of game the rest of the time, which I didn't want as I so much enjoyed the first chapter. The third and forth chapters play more like the first chapter with some additional "actiony" elements as well as a lot of story elements that filled in blanks from earlier in the game. One story element that I felt could have been done differently was Randall's journal. When you start the game, you have Randall's journal which is a somewhat daunting 60 page book with some missing/torn out pages. Throughout the game, you can find missing pages which don't seem to add too much in the way of critical character building information. And the journal as a whole is, as previously stated, a bit daunting. Each time I played, I would read a couple of pages then play the game. I would have liked this element better if pages became readable throughout the course of the game either by letting Randall actually look at them (maybe because they were too emotionally difficult for him to read in the earlier stages) or by finding them as he finds the already missing/torn out pages. Ultimately, I really enjoyed the story that was being told here. While not entirely original as far as concepts go, the execution is what kept me engaged.
GAMEPLAY
As previously stated, Deadlight plays like a traditional platformer with an Xbox360 controller. The left joystick moves you, the A button jumps, the X button attacks, and so on and so forth. All of the actions are fairly intuitive, but the game does go through brief context sensitive moments when you first learn to use those specific buttons, such as sprinting or diving through walls while sprinting.
As is the case with most games, the one difficulty I had was the jumping from wall-to-wall maneuver, which is something that I've had problems with since the days of Super Metroid. Something about jumping from one wall to another and pressing the control pad in the opposite direction then jumping again at the right moment has never been one of my strong suits. Another difficulty I had at two areas in the game was timing my jumps from the ground to a fence, flipping over and jumping off, all while being shot at or avoiding falling debris. This happened at the end of Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 3. Failing at said tasks would always lead to dying, which is something that you will have to become very comfortable with as it will happen often; not quite as often as in Altaïr's Chronicles, but it will be fairly often.
GRAPHICS The graphics for Deadlight are what sealed my interest with the game. A zombie apocalypse platformer set in 1986 Seattle about a man searching for his wife and daughter aren't the things that initially grab my interest senses, but these kinds of visuals:
Running through a building with Shadows approaching from the background.
Leaping from a platform over a barbed wire fence to land on an adjacent roof.
Walking through a park in downtown Seattle, WA.
The graphics are gorgeous. Randall is backlit for the majority of the game although there are some details that peek through when he is closer to the camera/foreground. There were a couple of instances, two come to mind, where I was unsure as to what I was supposed to be doing because I could not recognize certain elements in the environment. In both instances, I was supposed to grab on to a piece of ceiling in order to climb to the platform above my character. While I did realize that jumping was the key, I did not know that I, for example, had to knock something loose in order to make the platform accessible, or something similar. In one of these events I resorted to looking on youtube to find out how to access the next platform/area. I could probably just blame myself as needing to take a break and over thinking either the game mechanics or the puzzle itself. SOUND & MUSIC The music for Deadlight was composed by David García Díaz and is very somewhat minimalistic, in that I cannot recall any memorable thematic elements. There weren't any John Williams or Nobuo Uematsu type themes running through the game, so you're probably not going to be humming the music and you walk down the street. Those themes are not for this kind of a game, even one set in 1986. In another game, you might have bits of music from that era playing in the background or out of stereos or cassette decks. The music in Deadlight is there to help set and maintain the mood of the world. I didn't find the music obtrusive, even when the music became more dynamic when Randall was being attacked by Shadows. The themes that are present in the game though are haunting and beautiful, but not heavy handed. You can get a sense of both the hope that Randall will be successful in his quest and yet there is also the despair that he will find what it is that he fears most. It's just well composed music that you might expect to find from a big budget movie studio that knows how to do a zombie apocalypse film. FINAL THOUGHTS In the end, I spent a total of six hours with the game although it only took me a total of three hours and twenty minutes, if you do not take into account all the dying and the three times I had to restart Chapter 3 because the game crashed (fell through the world), I turned the game off before reaching a mid-level checkpoint and my final run though. After a single playthrough, achievement-wise, I completed 74% of the game, which I find is a testament to how much of the game I was able to complete/experience without (much) assistance. There were only a couple of spots that I found to be difficult, but every game is going to have moments like that. I did like that there were no bosses because that's not the kind of game this is trying to be. I know some people will scoff at the short play time, but that's just the kind of game this is and if you also take into account that it's the first game from this studio, it's a damn fine game. One last little tough, was that as you make your way through the game, you unlock artwork from both pre and post production. Basically just a bunch of little tid-bits that I love about DVDs and something that I wish more video games would do for their audience. There are even a couple documentaries that I have yet to watch, but there are a handful. These are the little things that I really appreciate.
P.S. Sorry I do not have any really actiony shots as I was too busy playing the game and Conklederp wasn't around to act as camerawoman while I was playing. Just go and watch the trailer that sold the game to me and you'll get the idea. I can also promise that everything in the trailer is actual game footage (except the blurbs from various gaming sites), even the occasional bits where the action slows down while you're jumping/falling.
Deadlight is a game that I bought last December during Steam's Winter non-denomination-take-all-my-money-Sale partly because it was on sale but mainly because I liked what the trailer was promising. True, I am a sucker for a good zombie/post-apocalyptic video game and even though the title conjures up images of spiders attacking elementary school kids, but what is contained within is something far more enjoyable and beautiful.
Deadlight is currently the only game developed by Tequila Works and was originally available over the Xbox Live Arcade back in 2012 and, surprise-surprise, I had not heard about it until I saw it on Steam during their aforementioned December Sale. So one night last week, I decided that I wanted to play a game that contained zombies since I had just watched Zombieland earlier in the evening.
Okay, so Deadlight is, in it's purest form a platformer. There are puzzle elements, such as how to get from point A to point B with a mass of writhing live wires separating you from point C. And there are zombies, called "Shadows" here, frequently chasing after you or lurking in the background and approaching the foreground. The game is presented in 2D, with elements in the distance that you cannot interact with, but frequently you will see Shadows "wake up" and walk towards you and then become interactable once they reach your position in the foreground. How is that description not confusing?
With the game being a platformer, I would recommend using a controller to play. The game is set up for both controller or keyboard, but I do not think that keyboards are the best especially when it comes to running, jumping and semi-precise movements in a 2D side scrolling level. To note, I have not tried using the keyboard so I am just making the assumption that the game would be rather difficult and frustrating, but that's just my unscientific opinion.
The setting for the game is something else that piqued my interest. First, it takes place in Seattle, WA, which I am able to relate to regionally. Secondly, the game takes place in 1986. That's right, 28 years ago. I have yet to find out if the year is an integral part to the storyline or if it was simply chosen because it is an unconventional thing for a zombie apocalypse game created in the two-aught-tens. During the first chapter, there is nothing that screams Reaganomics in the same way that Gone Home screamed TGIF, The X-Files and jr. high for me.
The voice acting is pretty decent in that some lines are delivered well while others sound like they are being read straight off of the page. The music is pretty atmospheric and provides the perfect amount of creepiness while not trying to overpower the player with themes, at least that I have noticed. There are times when the music becomes more dramatic, but to me that is just good composing as it is appropriate for what is happening in the game.
Lastly, I really like the different art styles used througout game. For in-game, you have beautiful scenes of desolation as you run horizontally through the ruins of Seattle. Occasionally you are treated to a flashback where the bleak "present" is contrasted with the colorful green and living world of the past. Then for the interspersed cut scenes, you are treated to still images that look like they could have been taken out of a minimally colored issue of The Walking Dead.
After playing Deadlight for roughly two hours, I am really enjoying everything about the game. The platforming action is just enough that while I sometimes die, I can usually figure out what it is that I am supposed to do. In one section I had to look up what to do on youtube because I was an idiot and forgot that I could jump over traps (yes, there are traps, but their existence in the game world makes sense). The challenge is the perfect level that the game remains to be a lot of fun while not being so easy that I feel that there is no challenge.
I do not see this game lasting more than 10 hours, even with copious amounts of dying and restarting from checkpoints and that would be the perfect amount of time that I would want to spend in this world. Of course I say that now, but come the end of the game, I may just want to return for a second round to collect slips of paper, trinkets from the past and other story elements that I may have missed the first time through.
