Category: #WeeklyGameMusic

A weekly blog post series, where a video game music or fan remix is highlighted, bringing focus to the music and game alike. A Youtube playlist of most of the selections is available here.

#WeeklyGameMusic: Sync (Fez)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Do you feel the beat? Yes, that one. Careful, don’t skip that one. You don’t want to fall off of those disappearing platforms! Great, now keep the rhythm. Now we’re all in Sync, a piece by Disasterpeace from the mind-bending game, Fez.

Fez is a fairly simple puzzle-platformer with a simple story. Gomez, the lead character, lives a rather sheltered but still peaceful village whose knowledge and experience ends in 2D. Yet as a chosen one, Gomez obtains a magical fez from the village elder that allows him to travel in semi-3D. Abusing this power, however, causes the one thing that keeps the world together to break apart, and defrag across different worlds. It also crashes the game. Stuck in a progressively degrading world, it’s up to Gomez to fix his mistake.

The gameplay of Fez, as mentioned earlier, is about traveling in a bizarrely 3D way. More accurately, the fez allows Gomez to rotate the world on its vertical axis by 90 degrees. But since Gomez operates in 2D physics, the depth of the level collapses after every rotation, allowing him to make platforms align properly. While most puzzles rely on understanding how this physics system works, another set of puzzles rely on deciphering codes. When one finds a Fez code, they can input the button combination the code represents, unlocking some fun collectables. Overall, it’s a delightfully colorful platformer that isn’t very punishing, but has some nasty difficult codes to decipher.

Fez was originally released for Xbox 360 as a downloadable. It is now available for Playstation 3 & 4, and on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Dawn of a New Day (The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Remix)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, let’s take a break at one of the greatest Zelda remixes of all time: Theophany’s Dawn of a New Day. This game needs no introduction: in the Nintendo cult-classic Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, you have three days. Three days before the moon falls, and obliterates everything in its path. Three scant, emotionally draining days to save the world. Where Disney have dabbled into the darkness of death in Bambi and Up, this Nintendo game has death starring at you where ever you go. With its cold, unforgiving clock chiming away every second of life you have left.

It’s actually quite natural that the internet’s classic ghost story, Ben Drowned, utilizes this game for its horror. For a company so well-known for its child-friendly games, this game’s level of darkness and maturity is unprecedented for the company. And to this day, it stands tall and proud as one of the most innovative game in gaming history. While like any Legend of Zelda game, this entry has dungeons and explorations, the game shines brightest when you realize all characters in the game follow a consistent, 3-day schedule. Understanding this game’s clockwork — at what hour is each character standing, and what are they doing — is the most critical element in making the most out of this game.

Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was originally developed for the Nintendo 64. It’s downloadable on Wii and Wii U for Virtual Console, and a port is available on the Nintendo 3DS. Also: its the blogger’s favorite game.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: It’s Kill or Be Killed Mix (No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

“No more heroes, it’s kill or be killed” describes No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle pretty darn well in this red hot chili pepper theme music. Indeed, Yoshioka Taku Squad’s remix of Masafumi Takada’s original composition does an excellent job satirizing the excitement of violent medium…when the same actions replicated in real life is so revolting. Much like the music, Suda51’s sequel to a Wii cult classic makes yet another careful observation of violence in media, criticizing their effects to sick minds.

Remember Viewtiful Joe? In that game, Joe was a loser that gets put in a world that makes him awesome. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle takes a different approach: Travis Touchdown is a loser nerd who assassinates people in an otherwise boring world to make himself feel awesome. So no surprise then, when a completely forgettable character in the first game, Travis’ best friend Bishop Shidux, gets killed and have his head delivered through Travis’ window. Utterly shocked, Travis pounces on the assassination top ranking, starting at position 51, on a revenge mission against the top-ranked assassin and Bishop’s murderer.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is a rare breed of video games called magical realism, where spouts of assassination missions and boss battles are divided by mundane and pixelated day jobs. Day jobs help Travis make money to enter himself to the next ranking mission, while the heart of the game lies in the boss battles. Using his trusty beam katanas, Travis can unleash long combos and occasional special attack in a beat ’em up control style. Every once in a while, the katanas losses its power, requiring Travis to recharge them by shaking its handle. It’s a subtle symbolism when this happens, as Travis looks like he’s beating off to regain his energy to take on the intense, on-going battle.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and its prequel, No More Heroes 2 were originally developed for the Wii. While the prequel has a Playstation 3 port, the sequel does not.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Snowy Valak Mountain / Night (Xenoblade Chronicles)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

A bit late, but this week’s (last week’s?) music plays on Valak Mountain during night in the cult classic Xenoblade Chronicles. ACE+’s composition is simple, calming, almost silent tune that fittingly brings awe to a snowy mountain lit by glowing crystals. It’s one of the many beautiful pieces cleverly placed in the game that can be described as Nintendo’s answer to Skyrim.

In a very unique premise, Xenoblade Chronicles‘s world is actually two massive giants that stands still after a long battle eons ago. In the present, the denizens of one giant, the Hums and Bionis respectively, is defending against the Mechons from the other giant, Mechonis. While the majority of the Hums cuddle at the back of the leg of Bionis for safety, the bookworm Shulk discovers how to utilize the magical sword, Monado. Not only are Mechons weak against the Monado, it also doesn’t physically harm Hums, and even provides the user the power to see the future. Feeling powerful, Shulk and his best friend, Reyn, attempts to defend their colony from a surprise Mechon attack. Naturally, by JRPG logic, this causes their next-door neighbor/girlfriend(?) to die, leaving the two in grief. Thus, the duo to go on a long journey in a revenge mission against the Mechons.

Exploration is the highlight of this real-time action JRPG where taking on over 700 side quests, fighting area-specific enemies, or even just walking up to a check point gives you experience points. In battle mode, standing close to an enemy causes your character to automatically attack them in regular intervals. More important are the magic system: every playable character can use their magic as much as they want, as they don’t have an MP gauge, but every magic suffers from a cooldown where they are rendered unusable. This allows for a surprising amount of magic combos your party can dish out. For example, Reyn uses a lot of defensive and attention-seeking magic that causes the enemies to focus on him, while Shulk has a lot of position-based magic that are more effective on the sides or backs of enemies. Certain status effects, such as stuns, require a certain sequence of moves to be executed as well, requiring one to carefully configure their party for optimal use.

Xenoblade Chronicles was originally developed for the Wii. There is a port available for the 3DS, and a Switch remake is in the works.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Temple of Rain (Guacamelee!)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

This week’s music, Temple of Rain, is mucho Mexican composition by Rom Di Prisco. It’s a bueno piece that makes you excitado for the majesty that is temple número uno. ¿I mean, what were you expecting, señor luchador? ¡This! ¡is! ¡The pun-filled! ¡Guacamelee!

Guacamelee! is a metroidvania beat ’em up starring lone farmer Juan Aguacate in a pursuit to save El Presidente’s Daughter (the game reveals her name only after completing it; I’m unfortunately not that bueno). He also gets killed by the skeleton Carlos Calaca within the first cinco minutos. ¡Ay! Fortunately for Juan, he is sent to the parallel universe where the dead lives, and finds a legendario luchador mask that lets him travel between the living and the dead. With his newfound powers, he heads straight towards Carlos’ base to beat him once and for all. But first, he needs to break that Choozo statue. ¡It’s importante!

Unlike the common metroidvania tropes, Juan doesn’t use weapons to fight against enemies. Like a true luchador, he fights with fists and kicks, leading to some surprisingly deep combat system. Each power he gains can be used not only to smack harder on his enemies, but can also increase his combo and reach to higher and/or farther ledges. A huge amount of focus in the game is in teeth-gritting hard platforming and gauntlets, and boy is it satisfying to get through this game’s many challenges. Combined with lots of universe-hopping, genuinely useful dodges, and a grapple & throw move that adds more to both puzzles and combat, and we have a winner.

Guacamelee! was originally developed as a downloadable for Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita. It is also available of Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, and Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Sunny Side Up (Toki Tori 2+)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Wait, a simple, jolly music in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic? What is this madness!? Yup, it’s time to enjoy an easy-on-the-ears music called Sunny Side Up, composed by SonicPicnic and featuring the Royal Eggbert Choir. I’m glad relaxing tunes and cute graphics define Toki Tori 2+‘s presentation, because the game’s puzzles are incredibly difficult. Gah! You thought those later levels in Candy Crush Saga are hard? You’ve seen nothing.

Toki Tori 2+ tells a simple tale: dark, evil matter encompasses the world, and you have to save your flightless friends and bring back peace to the world. What, were you expecting something more than that? Hey, I like this simple story structure, and how the game actually narrates through gameplay instead of giving you huge chunks of text. Anyway, Toki Tori 2+ uses a simple platformer-like control scheme: arrow keys to move, a button to sing, and another to stomp. The latter two are critical for solving puzzles, as they have various effects in the environment. Singing for example, attracts platform crabs, while stomping repels them. Using this simple system, Tori has to navigate through complex platformer puzzle without jumping once. And it’s insanely good at making your head scramble. I highly recommend it for puzzle lovers.

Toki Tori 2+ was originally released on the Wii U. It is also available on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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