A Sane Man of an Insane World

The days of the bleeps and bloops of the video game ancients of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris and Space Invaders have long since passed. Technology has now reached the creativity of composers, and while it is a rarity that you will get compositions that equal their patriots in the film industry, there are always a few glimpses of true art with video game music. I had the privledge on Saturday to go with a certain blogger named Chris Knight to "PLAY! A Videogame symphony", a 2 hour long compiliation of various video game music suites written specifically to be played by a live orchestra. As a lover of not only symphonic music, but also video games, I went there with great enthusiasm. But first, I'll link you to Chris Knight's post, just so that you can get an idea of how a much more casual music lover's tastes are. Oh, and just to give the man some much needed publicity. Back to the symphony! I met Chris at the Palladium Cinemas at 5:00, and soon we were off to one heck of a road trip. I was under the impression that we would be heading straight to where the symphony was taking place, but Chris had more than a few trips up his sleeve. We took a pit stop at "Hyper Mind", a hobby store that Chris is more than attached with. As someone who was quite new to the RPG hobby, I was quite excited to be in a gaming store for the first time ever. Of course, just my luck they had no RPGs that I was currently acquiring. It was still a very fun expierence for me to have. Of course, when I told Chris my semi-dissapointment, he turned to me and said in a loud voice that made me glad we were alone in the car "You want RPGs? I'll give you RPGs! We're going to Sci-Fi Genre!" A good twenty minutes later, we turned into a small six car max parking lot, and before us stood Sci-Fi Genre, a store that I was more than acquainted with. I had almost bought a set of Q Workshop's Cthulhu Dice for my friend Peter's birthday back in April from them. It didn't take me long for me to find their shelves full of RPG books, and just a tad longer me for to find their old RPG shelf. I had almost bought their copy of "Fading Suns", but not after I realized it was the First Edition, and not the Second Edition that I was on the hunt for. Anyways, Chris bought his figurines for Warhammer 40,000 (Chaos Space Marines! Death to the False Emperor!), and we were off. We arrived there at about, oh I'd say 7:00-ish. We found some nice seats on the lawn in front of the playing platform, and at 8:30 the music was on! They began with SUPER MARIO BROS. Well, it was quite expected to be honest. After all, where else would you start any sort of dedication to video games than with something regearding that big, fat, Italian plumber? It was a mixture of suites of the main theme, the undergound, that underwater theme, and Bowser's castle theme. BATTLEFIELD 1942 came next. Now to be honest, I never quite remembered that game's music havins such a Jazz-like feeling to it. Of course, we have to be honest here, I don't remember that much about the game, so I'll allow that to pass. We were then subjected to an electric guitar edition of the SILENT HILL games. Personally, I thought this was the weakest part of the whole occasion. Silent Hill does NOT work very well with rock instruments. It was designed to give a sense of corruption and supernatural horror and the way it was used here did not evoke that atmosphere at all. Listen to this, and then I am sure you will be in agreements with me. One of my most favorite parts of the symphony came next - CASTLEVANIA! I was in estatics the whole way through. Sure, they didn't have any of the themes from Lament of Innocence play, but come on! This was Castlevania! How could you not be excited just by the fact that they had some Castlevania music playing? I was satisfied for the entire performance right then and there. KINGDOM HEARTS came next. It was a nice arrangement of the music - and thank God, no pop songs in sight - but the overly ecstatic applause made me frown. Only because of Kingdom Heart's association with Final Fantasy makes it such a huge hit. Otherwise, it is just a purely average game. The music is charming, sure! But it is not worth all of the love it is getting. Oh, wait, I'm going into rant mode again. Let's move on. They finished the first part with a wide variety of music from THE LEGEND OF ZELDA games. Of course, with 12+ games, there is no way in hell you could accurately give a musical suite with such a vast variety of musical cues in just 7 minutes. But whoever did the arrangement gave it their damned best attempt, and what music was heard was quite good. After the break we listened to some jolly music from SIM CITY 4. It was the light hearted fun you could expect from a game where you can build your own cities and destroy it any way you could desire. As much as I hate the Elder Scrolls games (or heck, anything from that hack studio known as Bethesda Softworks), the musical cues for the fourth entry in the series, OBLIVION, was quite good. It gave a good sense of the fantasy setting, of the mysteries of the ruins, to the despair that was given by the hordes of Oblivion that was invading the land. I quite enjoyed the choral cues. Some music from CHRONO CROSS and CHRONO TRIGGER was played. Surprisingly, I remember nothing from this portion of the performance. This is when the biggest shock occured - it rained. And not just a drizzle, no sir. It rained cats and dogs and some mice for good measure. Chris and I ran for them hills and got some nice cover and stayed to listen to the music from the HALO trilogy. Now, you guys probably know that I think the HALO games are good mindless fun, but to be honest, are pretty average. The music on the other hand... woo boy, now there is some music. Great fun to be had, especially by that HALO geek Chris Knight. Then one game came up I was never expecting - WARHAMMER ONLINE. As a one time player, it was great to have that music play. And of course, then came one game that everyone knew would come up - WORLD OF WARCRAFT. A great set of music to be sure. Thinking that it was done, Chris and I made our way to the parking lot when, all of a sudden, we heard something. Like mad men, we raced back to the stadium, and I heard the final boss music from FINAL FANTASY VII, "One Winged Angel". I thought the choirs were too soft and slow myself. And then, they were done. For real. And it was a great experience. Should it ever come North Carolina's way again, I will certainly be dragging everyone I can by their ears to this. Good fun to be head by all.

There are few games in the field of videogames that divides players as much as this one does. One end, it is horribly glitchy, has some of the worst combat you could ever see in an RPG, and the character models aside, it is not at all a good looking game. On the other side of the spectrum, you have some of the most finely written dialogue you could ever hope to see in any medium, its characters are so well written that they seem real life human beings, and it has a wide range of options in handling the objectives in the game. You could persuade your way past the guards, suck their blood like that Vampire you are, or sneak past them like you are the next Solid Snake. There is a lot of hate, let me tell you. But man, for someone who loves his options and his stories like I do, there is so much to love that you have to wonder why bother hating it at all? Let me give you all one good reason why you should grab this game from your nearest torrent site. This right here is the Haunted Hotel at Santa Monica beach. You think you have seen scary in a video game. You probably thought you had seen it all. "Pfft!" You will think when you are given the task to retrieve the pendant from inside the Hotel that control the ghost that haunts it. "I've seen Horror movies. I saw Alien and didn't even flinch! I'm a new age man. I watch SAW and I can handle this pussy Hotel ghost like it was nuthin'!" You will be wrong. My hand was shaking the whole time. I couldn't even keep my mouse steady. My palms were sweaty. It was like Niagara Falls all over my Microsoft Sidewinder (the new spiffy black one, not the one that looks like a boomerang). I had to wash my hands for a whole minute, soap bar and all, before I was convinced I was clean enough to continue gaming. People, that scene is pure atmospheric brilliance. Saw what you will about that sewer level, where all us persuasive characters are forced to run for our (un)lives from those Death-on-Legs because we were too busy investing our points into Persuasion and Seduction rather than "I'm Gonna Woop Yo' Ass!". The Hotel Mansion alone made Vampire Bloodlines one for the record books. And that wasn't even the best scene. There is this one scene where you are confronted with a Cannabilistic Vampire, and this is where the game throws some moral-philosophical head spinners our way. See, this vampire wanted us to send some poor chap that had seen her doing her stuff down to her lair so she can make sure the guy doesn't tell a soul about her. You will do it. It will make perfect sense in all of the world for you to do it, even for those extremelly moralistic individuals. You will do it because she presents the case - and quite well, I might add - that you are no different from her. You suck blood, the life force of humans. She eats them. They are both horrid, damnable acts. What makes what you do so much better than heracts of survival? None of it does. So that is why you do it. And that is why I love this game. Because it is more than a game. It is about things, stuff that you need to think about, to ponder about, to debate with yourself. That is a sign of good storytelling folks, not how much fanart is dedicated to your game on DeviantArt.com. I'm not even finished with it yet. If it weren't for the fact that The Witcher and Arcanum and Planescape: Torment are patiently waiting for me to finish them, I'd do a second play through as either the butt kicking Gangrel or those crazy I'm-gonna-debate-with-a-stop-sign Malkavians.

It is this.

Say what? The biggest file sharing site in the world is going legit? Now that's something you never would of expected in a million life times.

“This was the time when the Oscars actually meant something”. So commented Skac01 7 months ago to a YouTube video of Jerry Goldsmith winning his one – and unfortunately, only – Oscar for his score to The Omen – and what a score that was!

But I’m not going to write about that fantastic score. I’d much rather talk about that comment, what it meant, and why it rings so true… or at least to me.

The Oscars first came about in 1929. That was when movies were still young. They were fresh and exciting! Sure, we didn’t have CGI, or Computer Generated movies, or even color. Now that I think about it, we didn’t even have sound. But we did have stories. We did have images that moved. That was something new. After millions of years of just being content with having pictures that stayed perfectly still, they could now be animated.

It was something new, something exciting.

And the Oscars were supposed to award those that were truly great.

With that in mind, a question should be raised. Is the reason the Oscars no longer mean anything is because movies no longer mean anything.

I’d wager a yes.

More and more, I am seeing a trend in our general media. The mass audience go for the cool things. Big shiny robots, cool explosions, a simple good against evil plot. Things that are nice to stare at and say “Oooooo” for 90 or so minutes, but beyond that, not much more.

We have our cool special effects, the awesome fight scenes, the copy cat romantic comedies, and one has to wonder, why even bother anymore? If all of the movies are cookie cutter duplicates, with minimal difference in characters and plot, why should we even care?

And the answer is we shouldn’t.

So, Academy, if you want to make the Awards worth something, allow me to give you a big hint. Nudge those Studios to make movies that are worth something. Then you will see people flocking to their televisions to watch the Academy Awards again.

Just a hint.

By saying that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is way too long at 2 and 1/2 hours, has way too many juvenile jokes, and had what I'd like to call the "Car Car Binks" twins. But it had awesome action scenes and Meghan Fox, so all is well. With all due apologies to those (2) faithful readers. I will return to posting more melodramatic insights on philosophy, politics, and RPGs soon, I assure you.