On with the show!

Max Payne 1-2

This successfully melody accompanied by the Piano as the main star reflects the melodramatic serious noir crime drama that has identified Max Payne. It gives the image of the dark alleyway full of drug addicts on the midnight street. 


Max Payne 2 uses a different selection of instruments using the same melody. The solo Violin with the high pitched tone stands out, while the lower string instruments hum in the background to support it. What this ends up is the tragic romantic theme of the tragic film noir love story that Max Payne 2 is. I think it's going to be hard for Rockstar to live up to not only the gameplay and story elements of Max Payne, but also the musical artistry. Not that the Rockstar guys are bad in their musical direction, far from it. But because the musical direction in Max Payne from Remedy has been so elegently fitting to the two different directions the game has gone through, while still feeling familiar.

Mirror's Edge

With over a million views on this peice, the Mirror's Edge theme certainly has done something right (dispite the bad choice to name your song.) I think from the very first trailer of Mirror's Edge, other than the comments about the unique gameplay, all I heard after that is "Where can I get this song?". This theme reflects truly what the feel of Mirror's Edge is all about. The high octaves of the piano keys are the real star, giving the image of the crisp cool breeze of simply running quickly through the air. A true hit, and EA took no time to take advantage of the early sucess, but in a good way that ended up with several great remixes like this one.

Morrowind

Maybe it's the fact that Morrowind doesn't have a diverse soundtrack in the 200 hours I have played it, or maybe it's the fact that Jeremy Sole doesn't really know how to do anything different than what he does. But none the less this is probebly one of the most memorable songs in my modern gaming collection. Simply, it's a great melody with the orchesteral score that reflects on the vast and epic scale of this game quite well.

Beyond Good and Evil

Other than BEING ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES THAT YOU GUYS DID NOT BUY! Beyond Good and Evil boasted a wonderful soundtrack with tons of memorable scores apart from it's main theme. But the main theme has an amazing piano solo, with the strings in the background to help support it. It's a relaxing score that has a very "zen" nature, which accurately reflects most of what the game is.

I think 5 games is enough for now. Be sure to add any songs you would like in the comments that you find memorable gaming music in the modern era.

This is primarily  a response to something the Listen Up podcast said 3 weeks ago that most of today's games do not feature original music, or music that is particularly memorable, saying it's all just mood these days. I wanna prove that memorable themes are very much alive today, and there all around us, so I'm going to post up a list of video game themes of games that came out after the year 2000 that I find totally memorable (In no particular order). You guys can go ahead and post up other themes to other games, the only criteria is for games that SERIES originate after the year 2000. So games like Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess do not count as their series originate further than 2000. Let's begin!

Call of Duty

The trumpets of this song reflect the patriotism and pride that goes into soldiers during a time of war, while the violins apt on the feeling of brothers in arms between the soldiers. All this while a memorable melody plays throughout the theme.

Call of Duty 4

Maybe it's the number of hours spent in this menu screen looking for servers in multilayer, but I find the Call of Duty 4 theme to be perfectly memorable. Infinity Wards 180 turn is evident even in the music. Flying in the face of the patriotic and heroic trumpets, we have a low bass line and a synthesized music to reflect on the high-stakes the game represents and gives it a cold feeling, while the violins play the melody, taking center stage without being too dramatic like it's predecessor.

 Medal of Honor

Infinity Ward's WW2 Call of Duty wasn't really the game that kick started the whole WW2 shooter craze. Medal of Honor was noted as probably the closest thing you could get to Goldeneye on the PS1 those days, but the series went on to be something bigger in scope than that. It's also where most of Infinity Ward's team got their bearings in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But throghout the PS1 era, all the way to the Xbox 360 era the theme of this game has changed very little, and I think that's because It's so superb in many ways. I think you can blame the fact that Medal of Honor has always been one-sided in the conflict of WW2, showing only the patrotic American hero, but that's what also makes this theme so great. Unlike Call of Duty which has to contend with several nations, Medal of Honor only needs to deliver the American patrotism and focus on it. So the song mostly focuses on very heroic sounds that are attributed to American heroism, such as the trumpets, marching drums, cymbols, and higher pitched string instruments. All of which is not lost in translation in this wonderful melody.

But the theme ended up being a lot more versitle than one would expect. Video Games Live wanted to show something a little more serious to show that video game music is very artistic in nature, and can be used in something as serious as war footage and come off as tasteful. An operatic element was added in, as well as lower pitched strings, giving it a much more somber tone, and sucessfully reflects on the challange of taking the losses and the horrors of war sucessfully.

Edit: I just realized that the series originated pre-2000, oh well. The basis of the philosophy is the myth that modern gaming music with all the options of a symphony orchestra forgot how to do memorable themes. Medal of Honor had all the materials to create any sort of "moody" music they wanted to, but created a memorable theme when there was no actual need to.

Battlefield theme (Huh, maybe there is an order here.)

Where the Medal of Honor theme and the Call of Duty theme may reflect on the sort of patrotism and the nationality of a country during a time of war, Battlefields theme is primarly all out action. And like the Medal of Honor theme, it hasn't changed that much over the years, showing that this theme has a lot going for it. The theme represents effectively the varied elements of warefare the game represents, the drums reflect on the marching and running soldiers of the battlefield, while the solo trumpet gives the image of the fighters in the blue sky.


I'm kinda tired, so this will be a small part series. Feel free to add whatever you feel like is memorable music in today's modern gaming history.

I recently played Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and found the game nothing short than anything who desires games with well written and well constructed stories, and I'll probably be writing a review of it. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. What I'm here to talk about is the design of a game and the level of required skill and ability of the player that is expected out of a player.

*Spoilers to a puzzle of Dreamfall*

So to make things clear, I got into an argument with my brother about this particular puzzle in Dreamfall. Your in this cave and monsters are between you and the end of this level. You can fight the monsters and a particular melody will play in the background, but at the end of the level you have to remember what that melody was and play that melody in order to solve the puzzle. Mind you this is about 15-20 minutes from the time you can fight these monsters and the time you can solve the puzzle, with absolutely no indication and no mention to the music in the background. So when I got there I couldn't figure out what to do, and my brother next to me was cringing going like "It's so OBVIOUS!", then I basically give up and ask him what do I do after backtracking and listing to the music in the background as to no avail. He obviously said that the melody is played when you kill the monsters and the monsters also hum this melody. I justified my stance of not being able to solve the puzzle that the developers and the music director should have pointed out the sound in some particular way in order for me to solve the puzzle, and to add that I couldn't have access to the melody after which I hit the puzzle and the last save was about 1 hour back. In short I was screwed because I couldn't figure out the melody.



So after which we got into an argument of what is expected out of a player. I said that a played should be assumed by the developer that he has no background knowledge and has to be supplied with all the information and all the training necessary to pass the level. That is one of the reasons why Valve has been so renound for it's design because if you read the developer commentary, they are absolute geniuses in  their game design of teaching you without telling you. However my brother said that it would be too easy and too obvious if they told you or informed you of the melody.

So what is expected out of a player when he plays the game? How much hand holding do you give the player until you cut him lose to figure things out on his own?

I absolutely hate people using modifiers when  talking and evaluating games. What are modifiers? It's something at the end of an evaluatory sentence which helps create a more accurate meaning of what you are exactly saying.

Unmodified: That game looks graphically good
Modified: That game looks graphically good for a wii game.

I really wish people would stop using this because ANY kind of game or ANYTHING does not exist in a vacuum that only certain things or nothing can it be compared with.


A game should just look good, I don't care if it looks good on a particular platform, it has to look good. A crappy game on the Fairchild Channel F is still a crappy game.


So please, if a game looks bad gameplay wise or graphically, just say it's bad. Don't try to justify it by excluding other games to make it look better. And in return, if a game looks good, just say it looks good.

First the bad news. My local Blockbuster did not have the shipment of Street Fighter 4 today, So I guess i'm enjoying the rest of my day with GTA 4 Lost and Damned. That being said, she commented on how many calls she got this morning about it being in stock. So apparently people in my neighborhood are stoaked about Street Fighter 4, which is a good sign that it might do pretty well sales wise.