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June 2009 Archives

A night for Moonwalkere

Last night seemed a fit­ting time to pick up one of my fa­vorite old games, Michael Jack­son's Moon­walker.

The game­play it­self is noth­ing spe­cial (typ­i­cal iso­met­ric beat-em-up), but the graph­ics, sounds, and (un­in­ten­tional?) in­nu­endo is hi­lar­i­ous. Play this with a group of friends and you'll all be bust­ing up through the en­tire thing.

Zenimax Media buys id Software

Zen­i­max Media, par­ent com­pany of Bethesda (The Elder Scrolls, Obliv­ion, Fall­out), has bought id Soft­ware. I'm not re­ally sure if I should be ex­cited or afraid, but Bethesda makes some pretty awe­some games so hope­fully id will be able to bor­row some of their writ­ers and make a come back with a kick-ass game with an in­volved story.

Still wait­ing on Wolfen­stein, Rage, and Doom 4!

Prototype!

Most games start you off pretty wimpy, let­ting you up­grade or grow into new pow­ers as you move along. In the final lev­els, you're play­ing a re­ally fun char­ac­ter full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. But then it ends.

Pro­to­type be­gins where these games end. You start the story cranked to 10, play­ing a mas­sively pow­er­ful crea­ture who can down a small army with­out much thought. Then the up­grades come and you turn the knob up to 15, be­com­ing even more of a badass. And just when you think you've got all it can give you, in comes more up­grades. Pro­to­type is what hap­pens when you take GTA's city, mix in As­sas­sin's Creed's game­play, and add the vis­ceral de­struc­tion of Ram­page.

Un­usual for a zom­bie story, it doesn't try to be hor­ror or sur­vival. You aren't or clean­ing up after the in­fec­tion or try­ing to pre­vent it from start­ing. You play an am­ne­sia-stricken in­fected in search of the truth -- who he is, what he is, and what hap­pened to New York City. You're put smack dab in the mid­dle of a mostly pris­tine city and get to watch as the en­tire thing be­comes more and more in­fected as you progress through the game.

Nearly every mis­sion has you doing some­thing new, keep­ing the game­play sur­pris­ingly fresh all the way until the end. Some­times you help the in­fected, some­times you help the mil­i­tary. Usu­ally you're fight­ing one or even both at the same time. When not on a mis­sion you're able to roam the city, caus­ing may­hem to your heart's con­tent.

My only wish is that free roam was a bit more chal­leng­ing—in GTA, the tough­ness of en­e­mies slowly builds up until you can't take it any­more. Lack­ing this build-up, Pro­to­type only has two lev­els of tough­ness: first the en­e­mies be­come aware of you, then they call in a strike team. A pack of he­li­copters, strike teams are ini­tially pretty hard but be­come very easy once you learn how to fight them. Even­tu­ally they de­volve to the point where you call them on pur­pose, think­ing "hey, free he­li­copter!".

Free roam aside, I'd rec­om­mend this game to any­one for the ever-chang­ing and some­times very chal­leng­ing story. After spend­ing a cou­ple days try­ing to beat the ridicu­lously hard final boss, I fi­nally fin­ished the game this morn­ing.

BSG Season 4 Soundtrack details

Bear Mc­Creary has an­nounced track list­ings and cover art for the dual-disc BSG Sea­son 4 Sound­track. The first disc in­cludes the haunt­ing "Gaeta’s Lament" sung by none other than Alessan­dro Ju­liani (Felix Gaeta) him­self, two tracks from my fa­vorite episodes of the sea­son "The Oath" and "Blood on the scales", and the sec­ond disc is the in­cred­i­ble en­tire score of the two-hour fi­nale "Day­break".

I can't wait!

One Epic Battlestar Concert

The first of the pre­vi­ously men­tioned Bat­tlestar con­certs oc­curred this last week­end in down­town LA. Truly an amaz­ing show, I don't think I've ever been as mu­si­cally sat­is­fied as I was in those three hours. I met a friend and his fam­ily there and we all had a blast!

BrEn­dAn's Band opened the night with four songs, in­clud­ing the rock­ing "Ain't We Fa­mous" which can be heard on the Ter­mi­na­tor: The Sarah Con­nor Chron­i­cles sound­track, and "When Will the Work Be Done" which can be heard on the Bat­tlestar fi­nale "Day­break".

A night of firsts! We were the first to see per­for­mances of "Gaeta’s Lament", "Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1", and "Pre­lude to War". "Gaeta's Lament" is the song that Gaeta sings near the end of sea­son 4. It will be the first track of the sea­son 4 sound­track. "Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1" is a piano piece we hear from Star­buck's fa­ther in the show, but never get to hear the full thing. Fi­nally, "Pre­lude to War" is a in­cred­i­ble ac­tion piece from sea­son 2 that Bear thought was too com­plex to per­form in con­cert, but mas­saged it into some­thing that would work. The vi­o­lins were in­fused with metal, a very no­tice­able dif­fer­ence from the song on the sound­track—but not a bad one.

The night ended with a sur­prise ap­pear­ance, with Katee Sack­hoff mak­ing a very stealthy cameo on the piano to lead us into the fi­nale, "All Along the Watch­tower". Just like she did in the show.

The open­ing act:

• "Ain't We Fa­mous"
• "United States"
• "Light Years"
• "I Got Love"
• "When Will the Work Be Done"

And fi­nally the set list:

• "A Dis­tant Sad­ness"
• "Precipice"
• "Fight Night"
• "Gina Es­capes"
• "Caprica"
• "Gaeta's Lament"
• "Roslin and Adama"
• "Wan­der My Friends"
• "Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1"
• "Bal­tar’s Dream"
• "Dirty Hands"
• "Lords of Kobol"
• "Pre­lude to War"
• "Kara Re­mem­bers" / "Heed­ing the Call" / "All Along the Watch­tower"
• "Black Mar­ket"(En­core)

Videos thanks to Films in Focus. You can find a lot more in­for­ma­tion and pic­tures on Bear's blog.

Check out this cool pic!

That's me on the right, Bear in front of me, friend from Quake "ShakaUVM" in the back, and his fam­ily on the left.

Left 4 Dead…2?

Se­ri­ously—what the fuck?

De­spite promises to make enough new con­tent to make Left 4 Dead worth the $50 we paid for it, 8 months later it is still with­out con­tent, buggy as hell, full of map ex­ploits, and with ter­ri­ble match­mak­ing. Poor game de­sign has made being on a los­ing team in­cred­i­bly frus­trat­ing, mak­ing it so the only re­ward you get for win­ning is half or more of the other team ruins your game, ei­ther by quit­ting or by child­ishly killing them­selves to ruin your in­fected round— every sin­gle time.

Valve stopped car­ing about Left 4 Dead a while ago, and now we know why—Left 4 Dead 2 is com­ing out with all the con­tent that was promised for the first one. I don't think I'll be giv­ing them any money for this one.

Composers, everywhere!

I went to a sign­ing event yes­ter­day, with 15 or so big name com­posers. I talked with a lot of cool peo­ple: Michael Gi­acchino (Lost, Star Trek movie, Up), Stu Phillips (Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, Knight Rider), Ron Jones (Su­per­man, Star Trek: TNG, Fam­ily Guy), and John Mur­phy (28 Days Later), that I can think of. Prob­a­bly one or two I can't re­mem­ber right now (I've been awake for a long time). I'm ashamed to admit if there wasn't info dis­played for them, I would not have known who most of these guys were.

The whole rea­son I came, though, was to meet Bear Mc­Creary—com­poser of the mod­ern Bat­tlestar Galat­ica. It was a real treat to meet him, and as a sur­prise his beau­ti­ful wife to be Raya Yarbrough (who can be heard on some BSG tracks) was there too.

While I was there I picked up an ad­vance copy of the Caprica sound­track and got it signed. I'm re­ally en­joy­ing this album—it feels like BSG, yet at the same time some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Like the show, BSG's music was very char­ac­ter-dri­ven. Nearly every­one had their own theme, and what you'd hear on scene would ei­ther be a vari­ant of a theme or ac­tion music. Caprica's music feels much more scene-dri­ven. You can feel drama and emo­tion in them, often times pic­tur­ing a scene to go along with it. It is more sus­pense­ful, more sor­row­ful, more ad­ven­tur­ous.

It was also much softer than oth­ers. The TT Dy­namic Range Meter av­er­aged around 12, with some tracks going as high as 19—com­pare this to the new Green Day album which man­ages a measly 6. Re­play­Gain ac­tu­ally wanted to raise the vol­ume—some­thing I haven't seen in a long while! This is re­ally cool to lis­ten to on good head­phones :)

Now, on to the con­certs.