Category Archives: Gaming

Bioshock Review

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This game was the most fun I’ve had hunting down odd crashes in old abandoned forums in a long time. The numerous loading screens which accompany the startup are as memorable as the amazingly detailed graphics that one might be privileged to see if they can figure out how to get past the first elevator.

The game has remarkable replay value, as you will be required to replay several sections of many levels after a poorly timed crash causes you to return to your last save point.

The controls are a little clunky, especially in the heat of battle, but since most of the time you won’t have any ammo or eve, switching weapons or abilities really won’t be much of a problem. Fortunately, the only penalty for dying is losing everything that you used up during your last life, and there is nothing quite so fun as repeatedly jumping out of a vita chamber in an attempt to beat down a Big Daddy with wrench.

Overall it is well worth your money, especially if you don’t plan to finish it.

Saving Zelda: an article

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I recently read this article about Zelda. Overall I really like what he had to say, although I don’t fully agree with everything he wrote.

Link to article: Saving Zelda

He did a really good job of putting many of my thoughts, possibly even subconsciously, to words. The enemies in Zelda almost seem to be a side thought. A little annoyance that slows me down. Back in the older Zeldas, before Ocarina of Time, you actually had to fight. Now you just do the same puzzle a bunch of times.

Within the article he says that “Zelda didn’t use to be this way” when referring to the puzzles. He talks about how good Zelda was when it was just an adventure. But by saying this, I get the feeling he’s inferring that the first two, maybe three Zelda games were ‘real’ and defined what a Zelda game should be, while the 12(?) games that followed have strayed.

My argument might be a bit more semantic than anything else, but the fact that MOST Zelda games have been the same tool = key to unlock puzzle repeat would indicate to me that the first few Zelda games were the anomalies that don’t fit the genre.

That said, I agree with him. The item is just a key. Everything is a locked door. The temple design is mediocre and it gets boring fast. It get tedious. Games are all about “overcoming unnecessary obstacles” but the gamer needs to do that voluntarily, and if the obstacles are too unnecessary or obnoxious, I don’t want to do them. That’s why I never finished Wind Waker.

The ‘point’ that really drove things home for me was about Link’s sword. The combat in Zelda is lacking. Tremendously. In Skyward Sword I was absolutely thrilled when I saw the waves of enemies coming at me near the final boss. But when I tried to do a spin move and take them all out, I could only attack the one or two who were actively engaging me. My attack never touched the rest of them.

I know he states many flaws with Ocarina of Time, but I feel that OoT was the last real Zelda game to give an open world to explore. Sure, they blocked off a lot of places unless you got certain items or glitched your way though. But compare that to Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword where whole areas were completely inaccessible until you had progressed far enough in the story.

At any rate. I feel he made some really good points and Zelda definitely in need of a rethink, or at very least, a tune up.

It’s not just Nostalgia

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Playing through Skyward Sword has inspired me to take a closer look at the other Zelda games that I hold in such high esteem. Friends and strangers alike meet my praises of A Link to the Past with polite smiles, nods, and reminders that nostalgia is a powerful force. So I decided it’s time I take a careful look at the game and see how it holds up against my complaints against Skyward Sword.

Upon starting a new game one of the first things I noticed was that I could quickly advance the storyline text and I didn’t have to read everything if I didn’t want to.

Now, I’ve played the game several times, so I know exactly where to go and what to do, at least for these initial stages. But even my first time playing, I was able to pick on this pretty quickly. (You know, back when I was 11…)

After taking the stairs down to rescue the princess, my brother and I were immediately amazed at the fantastic game design. A design one would expect more from Valve than from Nintendo, if the recent Zelda games are any indication.

The first challenge you encounter is a locked door. The room contains a bad guy (which you may have some experience with at this point, or you may not). Either way you need to kill him. The room also contains a chest. By this point you have had two opportunities to open different chests, so you should probably be familiar with the concept, but now we learn that maps are items you can get from chests.

 

The next room gives you a taste for what it’s like to fall off the edge and provides a small indication that you can throw pots as weapons. Standard dungeon behaviors.

The next room provides a new learning puzzle. Once you enter, the doors lock, leaving you face to face with a guard. Killing the guard opens the door. This will be helpful to know later.

The room to the right contains another guard, who drops a key when killed, and a chest. The chest contains the second big item in the game. The boomerang. Unlike the new “modern” Zelda games, the instructions for the boomerang are extremely succinct.

“You got the Boomerang!
Give it a try! (To select an
item, press the Start Button.)”

(That’s why I love this game.)

Heading down a few more flights of stairs, we reach the first enemy of any importance. After a little careful fighting (or throwing two of the three provided pots) you kill the guard and get the big key and can rescue Zelda.

…a few minutes later…

You find yourself in the throne room. One of the few times Zelda stops you to give you advice, she tells you which way to push the ornamental shelf.

The next room help you to realize your ability to light torches with your lantern and show you how it uses up magic power. (Note, at this point we have not had to earn, gain, or achieve magic power, we have it from the start.)

The next few rooms are pretty standard. The baddies make it a slight challenge by running into you and taking health. The puzzles are typical find a key, door, or both.

Several rooms later, we encounter two new things we have not seen before. The first is cracks in the wall on the left. We can’t do anything about them at this point, but now we know that maybe we should come back at some later point. The second obstacle is a set of four stone blocks. Simply push the one in the middle and you can walk right through, but now we know about block moving challenges.

Head up the stairs, through another room and come to the final challenge. Again Zelda stops you (I think for only the third time) and tells you which lever to pull. If you pull the wrong one, snakes fall from the ceiling. If you obey, the door opens and you finish the initiation task.

 

Here we find out a little bit more of the story line, but again it’s skippable if desired, and you can claim your heart as a reward.

That finishes up the inaugural mission of a Link to the Past.

So What Did We Learn?
1. We learned how to open locked doors by finding keys, either in chests or by killing foes.
2. We learned killing all the enemies in a room can open a door if it’s not locked by a key.
3. We (optionally) learned to use a boomerang and found out it freezes some enemies, and we can grab things with it.
4. We learned about magic powder.
5. We learned about torches.
6. We learned about pushing blocks.
7. We learned about lever pulling.
8. We learned who Zelda is, what she looks like, and where we can find her later in the game.

This is how games *should* work. You shouldn’t need multiple text boxes, alerts, popups, conversations, and cutscenes about every new little detail and operation. If the game is laid out properly, the gamer will learn to play as they go along. If a player doesn’t care about the story line, they should be allowed to skip it.

I blame the complicated controls. If Nintendo wasn’t making each new controller more convoluted than the last, we wouldn’t need to read a manual every time we get a new weapon. But hey, that’s just me. Maybe you like to read your video games.

(Special thanks to Ian Albert for the Zelda Map Dumps.)

12 Egregious Sins of Skyward Sword.

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Skyward Sword was a roller coaster for me. There were times when I would blow away an enemy my brother had trouble with using a series of rapid blows that even surprised myself. Other times the game would conspire against me, ensuring that the timing of Groose’s canon be such that a single missed shot at the beginning was enough for me to hopelessly lose against the Imprisoned. I’ll provide my complete thoughts on the game in a few days after I have time to consider things, but for now, here are 12 of what I consider to be the most grievous annoyances with Zelda: Skyward Sword.

1. Arbitrary Jump Points
In all of Skytown, there are only specific points where you can jump off the edge and call your bird. Most of them are marked with a wooden dock. So what you’re telling me is that Link is unable to call his own bird to save his life, if he accidentally falls or lets go of an edge he was clinging to? That’s just stupid.

2. The Auto Parachute
At the very beginning of the game your illustrious companion teaches you to use the sail cloth to break your fall when falling to the ground. The first time this happens you are SPECIFICALLY TOLD that they are auto activating the sail cloth for you this time, but in the future, you have to do it yourself. The game then proceeds to auto sail cloth for you at all but two or three points. (I can name two where you don’t auto sail cloth.)

I liked the idea of the sail cloth to break your fall. Right away I was trying to hit the button at the last possible second to see how close I could get, but I always felt that it was deploying a split second before I hit the button. So I stopped hitting the button and I automatically continued to use the sail cloth to break my fall, at every given opportunity. This is just lame.

3. Over emphasized and under emphasized goals
There are numerous points in the game where you eves drop on a conversation via a cut scene. The cut scene has a number of HIGHLIGHTED WORDS which INDICATE what your NEXT STEPS should be if you want to PROGRESS your QUEST any further. Immediately after these cut scenes Fi takes several more minutes of your PRECIOUS TIME to REITERATE the things that you heard in the FIRST conversation. Just in case you were not LISTENING CAREFULLY the first time.

Along those same lines, there are several puzzles where the next steps are not initially OBVIOUS. At these points Fi is strangely SILENT and when pressed for help or HINTS will respond with CANNED DIALOG about doing backflips or fighting techniques. Now I would totally understand and possibly ENDORSE this strategy, if they only used it for the WHOLE game. The fact that they flip flop back and forth only makes me think they didn’t know what level of gamer they wanted to play this game.

4. Beeping Buttons
Whenever something new is added to the dowsing options, you are shown it being added to the screen. That’s a nice feature and mostly helpful. What’s not helpful is how the C button flashes and beeps at you until you go and look at it. You just showed me the new dowsing option, I know it’s there. It doesn’t make sense for me to use it until I get to the location where I will need it. So don’t beep at me while I’m still up in Skytown!

5. Low Hearts
In every Zelda game I have ever played, when your hearts get low an annoying (and sometimes helpful) beeping will occur and the heart meter will flash to indicate that you are low on health and should be cautious. I also take this as an indication to find more health. Skyward Sword does this too, which is good. What I find annoying is that Fi will also begin to flash and beep at you during this time. When you call her for advice, she says you are low on health and should consider finding some at the earliest convenience. Thanks Fi. I hadn’t noticed.

6. Text. Is. Too. slow.
Oh. Wow. The. Text. Is. Typed. Onto. The. Screen. At. The. Speed. Of. A. Dead. Rabbit. Yes, I know, you can hold the ‘A’ button and the text will go a little faster. But then you have to let go of the ‘A’ button and push it again to progress to the next set of text. I found the whole process tedious. Now, I understand. Zelda has had slow typing text in all it’s games. But even OoT and LttP had some decent options for skipping text if you really wanted to, or at least making it faster.

7. Repeated dialog boxes for repeat items.
I just don’t get this at all. Twilight Princess had a similar “bug” which I found very annoying. If I get an amber droplet, I get a dialog box telling me what it is along with an animation of it going into my inventory. This is fine the first time I find an item. It’s not fine the time I find the 30th item.

The dialog/animation combo appears for the first of each item you find, per play period. So you get the message when you find an item. The next time you find one you just pick it up, without the fanfare… unless, you shut the wii off. In which case the next time you get an item, you get the fanfare again.

The same goes for areas like the final boss, where I am told I can’t return unless I beat him. But I have to go through the same dialog box and choose “Yes” every time I play.

8. Bug selling interface.
What. The. Heck. Nintendo. The interface for selling bugs might be the worst possible interface I have seen in my entire life. To start, he only buys three different types of bugs each night, completely randomized. When choosing which bugs you want to sell, you have no way of knowing which ones you have, unless you check your inventory ahead of time and can remember each bugs name. When you actually sell them you have to choose how many you want to sell: 1, 5, or All of them. Whoever came up with this system needs to be fired. Like yesterday.

9. Ghirahim
I’m almost at a loss of words here. (Not really.) To me, Ghirahim came across as one of the worst characterized baddies in any Zelda I have ever played. He talked like Captain Kirk with a faltering, over dramatic, super paused speech. The first fight started off with him telling you he was having a bad day and was going to just toy with you and wasn’t going to kill you.

I don’t know about you, but if I was attempting world domination, or any sort of evil plot, and there was anyone who might possibly or even theoretically be able to stop me, I would not just beat him within inches of his life. I would eliminate him. If he’s able to grab my sword with his fingers, why would he not kill me. Or at least take my sword and throw it into the sea.

Ghirahim never had malice or even the motive for me to think of him as a bad guy. I spent the whole game thinking of him as a moron.

10. Wii Controls
I will gladly admit to A) not being the best gamer on the planet and B) not really being a fan of motion controls. That said, I feel that Skyward Sword had decent motion when trying to aim different slices, swipes, and strikes.

However, that does not excuse the fact that in many instances the Wiimote just isn’t up to par with real life. When the Wiimote was cooperating, we got along well. When it wasn’t I had miss swings, I had to shake the controls up and down like a rattle for 5 seconds before I could do a finishing move, shield bashing was not an option in a rapid fire sword battle, etc. They just were not responsive enough for my liking or ability.

Now I’ve seen some blog posts and forum discussions where people have claimed that they have never had any problems with their Wiimote and never had to recalibrate it. That’s good for you. I’m glad you didn’t go through the torture I had to. But I did have problems.

Several times I would be flying my beetle or my bird and suddenly at the last second, it would veer off in the wrong direction.

Also, this is a small thing, but it bugged me the whole game. When switching to an item like the bow, the direction you faced was based off the camera direction, not the direction Link was facing. Over and over again, I maneuvered Link so he was facing the direction I wanted to shoot, but I would forget to hit the ‘Z’ button. When I took out the bow I would be facing the opposite direction I wanted to face, because the camera was still facing that way, even though Link was facing the other way.

(Side note: I’m convinced that the only reason the game had “Are You Sure” dialog boxes [which I also found very obnoxious] is because the Wii motion controls are so fickle that they didn’t want people accidentally choosing options because the Wiimote didn’t work correctly.)

11. Seamless Menus
Along those same lines, the seamless menus were not at all helpful. The fact that you could still run around while changing which weapon is equipped is neat, until you are frantically trying to grab a health potion while an enemy is attacking you and you are trying to run away while selecting the right item on the screen.

The control scheme was also inconsistent. Selected items from the pouch used ‘A’, making it so you couldn’t run with items equipped. Items from the other item menu (does it have a name?) used ‘B’ to use… unless it used flailing the Wiimote… or some that used the ‘A’ button. The ‘B’ button was used to take it out and put it away, but the ‘A’ button used it. I never got use to the controls.

12. Item loss when “continuing” after death
This is one of my biggest gripes in a lot of different games. I have three health potions and full hearts. I go into a boss, fight him, and lose. Given the option to quit or continue, I choose continue and quickly find myself with only 7 hearts and three empty bottles, standing right outside the boss door, where I had saved, just minutes before.

“Continue” means “assume you fought that battle and lost, now you miraculously and inexplicably have a second chance, go do it.” What “Continue” should mean is “you died, but lets go back to the point before you died and try again.” In this later option, you would have the same inventory you did before you went into battle the first time.

I don’t understand why games do this. Final Fantasy did it too. In order to fight Demise properly, every time he beat me (which was a lot) I had to quit to the main menu or if I hit continue, I had to use the Wii menu to reset the game so I could go back to my save point when I had all my health. This became almost as tedious as the final boss fight.

Bonus:
I didn’t feel right adding every little annoyance to my list, but I felt I should mention two other things I noticed which seem either silly or out of place to me.

1. Lava butt animation
It felt really out of place to me. Not very Zelda-ish, more Mario-ish. Like Super Mario 64, except you could actually use that to your advantage. In Skyward Sword is was just stupid.

2. Heart piece progress
Did anyone else notice that the heart piece progress is all text? It shows you on the menu, but the dialog about each new piece says “Three to go” or “one more to go” without any visuals. A LttP actually had a visual of your current heart piece progress in the dialog box. That was cool.

EPILOGUE
I’ll be posting more thoughts on the game in the next few days as I have time to mull things over. The things I’ve mentioned here are only mentioned because I found them annoying and distracting. I’m not saying that other games (Zelda or not) don’t do this, I’m saying I don’t like the fact they did this here.

If you think I’m out of line, or you had a similar experience, please share it with me in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts.

Reality is Broken

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I just finished reading “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal.

The book was really quite good. I enjoyed the insight it provided into the nature of video games, why we play them, and why we play games in general. But also how to incorporate more game like activities into our everyday lives.

I learned quite a few things from this book.

First, games have a set of definable characteristics. We don’t always notice them while we play, but they are there anyway. They help to define any good game. If we apply these criteria to any activity, we can make it a game.

Second, games have really taken up our time. The stats for world of warcraft are amazing. World of Warcraft players have collectively logged 5.93 million years of playtime. That’s just over 50 billion hours, and the game only launched in 2004.

The number of hours children spend playing games before age 18 is staggering, and potentially useful in the future, since all these young children are master gamers by the time they reach adulthood.

Third, building games is hard work, yet game designers take things very seriously. Halo 3 contains 54,000 pieces of audio and 40,000 lines of dialogue. 2,700 of those audio bites are footfalls. Depending on who is stepping on what. That is impressive.

Finally, people who are against video games don’t understand the benefits that games provide. It’s not just about wasting or not wasting time. It’s not that gamers are looking for escape from the real world. These people are looking for a challenge, fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment that our day to day lives just doesn’t provide for us. It’s not that our daily lives can’t provide this, it’s just that they don’t. (Yet.)

The solutions outlined in the book are very broad and can be applied in many ways to many fields, which is exactly what we need to do. Have a lot of people start to apply these “fixes” to reality so that we can begin to have more fulfilling lives without needing to virtually enhance our existence.

If you are at all into video games, or want to look for ways to better engage people in the real world, this book comes highly recommended from me. This book might also be helpful for anyone headed into game design, though the main focus of the book is not how to design games.

You can check it out on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850

I read the Kindle version.

Also, McGonigal’s TED Talk can be found here: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Skyward Sword Soundtrack

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For the most part I have been very impressed with the Skyward Sword soundtrack. While it contains many Zelda-esque sounds and themes some themes and melodies remind me of Super Smash Brothers and even Final Fantasy.

Here, listen to Ghirahim’s Theme. (Slight Spoiler Alert.)

The first time I heard his theme played I couldn’t help but think it sounded a lot like this other theme I once heard.

This second song is a bit more foreboding and arguably more epic. If you don’t recognize it, it’s from Final Fantasy 7 and it’s called “Those Chosen by the Planet”, though it might better be remembered as Sephiroth’s Theme.

While the two pieces do offer some definite similarities, Ghirahim’s theme is also reminiscent of Ganon’s Castle theme from Ocarina of Time.

Again, a side by side comparison shows the two are certainly not copies, but a lot of the same feeling and style is there.

As soon as Ghirahim’s Theme switches from the foreboding beginning to the melody at around 13 seconds in, I can’t help but hear Final Fantasy 7 there as well. It’s maybe not so much in the notes as it is in the style. I can’t find any tracks to back up my claim here, but that’s what think of when I hear it.

I really enjoy the changes that the Skyward Sword soundtrack brings. The classic House theme is still abundant and the secret unlocked jingle is (over) used. The fact that the music doesn’t sound like a midi mix down is a huge improvement over other games such as OOT.

EPILOGUE
In my small amount of research for this post I ran across a few things of interest. First is that the Zelda Overworld/Hyrule Theme has really evolved over the past 25 years. I hope to put together a side by side comparison of the songs as soon as I have a chance.

Also, the Stolen Materia theme from Final Fantasy 7 is very Pikmin-esque, at least at the beginning. I attribute it to the staccato nature of the instrumentation.

More Accurate Dialogue

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I’m thoroughly enjoying Skyward Sword right now, though my personal dialogue and the game’s dialogue tends to be rather different. Almost need to do a riff track for the game.

Kukiel’s Mother: My daughter is missing! Can you help me find her?

Link: Good news and bad news. Good news is, I found your daughter, hiding out with the town monster. Bad news is that I may have stabbed her in the face with my sword… Only once though… And it wasn’t entirely on purpose… You know what? Actually, I’m going to tell you that the monster did it. Because now that I think about it, it’s probably better for me to tell you that someone else is responsible and I really don’t want to take blame on this one.

10 Problems in Mario Kart Wii

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I love Mario Kart. (I really love Mario Kart Double Dash.) But every time I play Mario Kart Wii I find myself severely disappointed. I yell at Nintendo. I threaten my console. I unclip the stupid safety harness from my wrist and whip my WiiMote at large plate glass windows. Here are ten reasons Mario Kart Wii can make my blood boil.

1. Poor track selection. I felt the tracks in the game were only mediocre. I liked the inclusion of tracks from older games, but they left out some of the best tracks. They also missed out on a huge opportunity to have downloadable content, where they could add more tracks.

2. No HD. Welcome to the future.

3. Restrictive item selections. You’re current race rank limits the items you are able to get, and the effectiveness of the item.

4. No chat options for multi-player. I know Nintendo want’s to be child friendly. I know Mario Kart brings out the worst in people, it’s a competitive game. But when I’m playing I really want to be able to communicate with the other people racing. “Nice trap!” “Great placement!” “Take this!” “Not this stage again!” I don’t even care if we could only use canned responses, the multiplayer needs communication.

5. Multiplayer Track Selection is terrible. Everyone votes and the selection is random. Seems fair, until you play the same track 3 times in a row. There are some tracks that never get played on. Why can’t the tracks just be cycled through so you can play on all of them? (Oh, you don’t want to play on all of them? See point #1.)

6. Multiplayer Setup is final. If you want to play multiplayer you need to choose a character and a kart before joining up. You want to change kart? You have to quit and rejoin. Want to change character? You have to quit and rejoin. Want to switch from Manual to Automatic mode? You have to quit and rejoin. Also, see point #7 & 8.

7. Character/Kart set up is timed. You have a limited time to choose your character and setup. I don’t know what the time limit is, but it’s like 30 seconds. If you don’t choose in time, it chooses what you have currently selected. What’s worse, after the setup is complete, you often have to watch the end of another race while you wait to join. I couldn’t choose my character while I wait for the other race to end?

8. The home button is disabled in multiplayer mode. You want to quit multiplayer mode? You have to finish a race and select “Quit”. At any other time there is no way for you to pause or back out. Need to leave the room for something? Don’t like the stage your on? Feel like quitting? Turn off your system.

9. Auto disconnect for AFK (AFC?) players (even if one player is playing). I understand, if a player is AFK, they don’t need to be taking up a slot on the race track. But what if I’m playing with a friend and he leaves to use the bathroom, or make a sandvich, or take a nap? Halfway through lap 1 both of us are disconnected. Why not just kick the person who is away and let me keep playing? Also, why do I have to back out to the menu to switch from one player to two player mode for online play? (Hint: see points #6 & 8.)

10. The rating system is fickle and unintuitive. I can understand that if you drive “better” you get a better rating, but isn’t that what the gold, silver and bronze trophies are for? What constitutes “better” driving? What if I get hit by lightning during a jump and fall in the lava? Does that count against me, even though I can’t control when another person uses their items? Do I get more points or less points if I hit other people? I can’t play the game if you don’t tell me the rules. (Disclaimer: I love the card game Mau, but the goal of that game is to discover the rules.) To make matters worse the rating system consists of three stars, two stars, one star and then letter grades. Why have letter grades at all? Why not just have a one-five star rating system? Or why bother with stars, why not have A-F for grades? I don’t get it!

All together my endeavor for good wholesome fun is completely thwarted by Nintendo and their poor decisions. I’ve been angry at video games before. (Donkey Kong Country, Team Fortress 2, Other M…) But I never remember being frustrated by a video game MENU, at least, not until I played Mario Kart Wii.

That’s my story. What has Nintendo done to ruin your life?

User Experiences on XBox Live

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[Begin Rant]

My Brother once had an xBox live account but let it slide due to budget restraints and wanting to buy some totally awesome things that may or may not include a seven foot long sword.

Anyway, over the holidays our foreign exchange student suggested that he, my brother, my cousin, and myself play some Halo. So we try to start up a firefight match. All of us log in and after getting everything set up, we are informed that we have too many people to play firefight. So we play some multiplayer instead. But this isn’t good enough for four gamer buddies on vacation.

Now my cousin does have xBox live, and he also happens to have a promo code for two free days of xBox live Gold. So he brings his xbox and sets it up in one room while my brother signs into his account, enters the promo code and then downloads a whole years worth of updates for his system.

Some time later we are ready to begin. My cousin sets up a match, I join as a guest on his box while my brother and exchange student try on my brother’s box. The second a guest a logged in on my brothers trial account they get kicked out of the game. For some stupid reason a two day xBox Live Gold trial doesn’t provide 100% of the functionality of a Live Gold account. (Great way to test it out and see if it’s worth your money, right?)

Having no choice but to get an actual account, the foreign exchange student offers to pay and heads upstairs to get an xBox Live account for my brother. Since he was paying he decided to add it to his profile, and after putting in all his information, he realizes that he doesn’t have a postal zip code and xBox Live won’t let him sign up.

Again denied from our gaming ambition, I offer to put my credit card in. So I put in my credentials, unknowingly, into the foreign exchange students account. Upon finishing all the entry I am told by Microsoft that his account is not eligible for xBox Live. (I’m not sure why, they didn’t say. It might have been his age.) Also, Microsoft won’t let me take my credit card info out of his account via the xBox.

You’d think. You just might think that they could have told the account wasn’t eligible before they had me enter ALL MY DATA IN. You’d think.

By this time my brother has finally grabbed a USB keyboard to help with data entry and after logging into his account I am able to put all my info into Microsofts system again and purchase three months of xBox Live for $9.99.

Overall this was one of the most time consuming and painful consumer experiences I have had in quite some time. Not to mention that I now have to get two people to log in to the Microsoft xBox Live account and remove my credit card info. (Sorry, Microsoft, it’s not that I don’t trust you (though I don’t, [You can thank Sony for that]), it’s that I don’t need my younger brother and a Chinese exchange kid to have my credit card on file.)

Would it kill these companies to make this process any less painful? It’s killing me.

Video Game Music

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I listen to a lot of video game music. My iTunes library consists of 7000+ video game songs (11 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes, and six seconds)* including OSTs, Remixes, OCRemixes, ZREO Orchestrations, and more. Most of the music is from games I have played and enjoyed, some is from games I have never even heard of (until I found their soundtrack). I enjoy the music in part because it is mostly without lyrics (a musical feature I find distracting during certain activities like writing.)

One thing I enjoy is listening to the different styles for each game. It’s almost like a fingerprint. I consider myself a meager video game music connoisseur and my bother and I sometimes play games where we need to guess which game the music is from. MegaMan has a very distinct musical style, much different than Zelda. Metroid, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Halo, Final Fantasy, the list goes on, are fairly easy to distinguish between musically.

Of course some of the games are similar in music as well. Some remixes blend and shift the musical style and make it hard to pinpoint. Other times a single song from a game will have qualities that point towards a different game all together.

Take Nayru’s Song for example: (This version is from ZREO Music.)

Often when I listen I am not looking at the song information and when I first heard this song I assumed that it was either from Metroid Prime or one of the sequels. Only recently did I notice that the song was from Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons.

Originally I thought the music was somewhere from Metroid Prime 2′s Light Temple, since I had distinct imagery in my head when I heard the piece, but upon further investigation it appeared I was wrong.

MP2 Light Temple:

Out of curiosity I hunted out other potential doppelgangers for the song.

MP Chozo Temple: 

MP2 Sky Temple Gateway: 

MP Phendrana Drifts Chozo Temple: 

None of the songs were quite as close as I had originally expected, but there are definitely some similarities. Many of the Metroid songs have high pitched flowing melodies. with deeper undertones and harmonies. The only thing that the Zelda piece is missing is a strong beat, and perhaps using voices to sing or chant the lower parts.

Part of the confusion might come from the re-orchestration provided by the ZREO team, because when I went back to listen to the original it wasn’t quite as Metroid-y.

Still it is very interesting how different games present themselves musically and have a specific audio branding.

*Notes:
1 – I only have about 9609 songs in my entire library, if that gives you an perspective on my listening habits.
2 – I use to have more video game music but I recently deleted a few soundtracks I was beginning to find annoying, such as the mario golf and mario tennis songs.

*EDIT:* Due to conflict between the MediaElement.js plugin and the Jetpack plugin the audio tracks were not showing up when I first wrote this post. Before publishing I disabled MediaElement and went with the Jetpack version, but that only uses flash and doesn’t have an HTML fallback. Today I had some time for research and discovered an alternative tag I could use with MediaElement.js and now the audio here should be playable on all devices, including iOS. Just thought you’d like to know.

Apathetic Dictionary: Fanboy

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Fanboy, noun: an enthusiastic devotee who is continually irritated about inconsequential changes.

Examples:
Gamer: I see they are coming up with a new Final Fantasy game.
Fanboy: I know! It’s going to be awesome, but they changed they changed the name of my favorite character and now all the hair styles are the same, which is SUPER irritating.

Gamer: I hear they are remaking an old Final Fantasy game.
Fanboy: Oh, I just can’t wait for it to come out. The only problem is that they upgraded the graphics so it’s not going to have the retro feel, so it’s almost like ‘why even bother?’

Gamer: So they are bringing an old Final Fantasy game to a new platform, complete with all the old graphics and everything!
Fanboy: Yeah it should be pretty good. Except they are using the American version and not the Japanese version, which is pretty much the same, but some of the characters have different colored hats. And I heard they are fixing all the typos from the original, which I’m sure is totally going to ruin the experience. That and it would be cool if they upgraded the graphics to HD.

See Also: Nintendo Fanboy

Nintendo Fanboy, noun: an enthusiastic devotee of Nintendo products and owner of at least 8 copies of The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.