Action Game Archives

#WeeklyGameMusic: Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~ (Tales of Symphonia)

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Taro Omiya

Whoops, a little late on this #WeeklyGameMusic. We’ve got an old classic, Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~, by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura. This lavish variation of the dungeon-crawling music comes from the old-school JRPG, Tales of Symphonia: a seemingly innocent-looking Namco Tales Studio game that has a dark and twisted story discussing politics, religion, prejudice, and class struggle.

Welcome to Sylvarant, a fantasy world in decline. In a land where mana — the fundamental element in this universe — is rapidly depleting, humans are dealing with poverty, monsters, and Desians, a group of half-elves that enslaves humans into slave camps. But in a small village of Iselia, there’s hope: the chosen one, Collette, along with her guardians, Raine and Kratos, have just begun the journey of Regeneration. In said journey, the trio will break the five seals in the world to unlock the Tree of Mana, a renewable source of mana to bring prosper to Sylvarant and give humans a winning edge over Desians. Despite this setting, Tales of Symphonia actually follows an outsider, Lloyd, and his friend, Genis, who joins Collette’s party after the two banished from Iselia due to disrupting a neighboring Desian human ranch (and breach the two org’s peace treaty). The duo initially follows the party given they’re already familiar with its members (Lloyd is good friends with Collette, and Raine is Genis’ sister). But as the journey continues, they uncover terrifying secrets that forces them to question everything the party knew.

Tales of Symphonia is a JRPG that uses an (admittedly antiquated) real-time battle system called Linear Motion Battle System. Upon touching a generic monster in the overworld, up to four party members are teleported in battle mode. The playable characters moves towards or away from a monster, similar to 2D fighting games. Attacks are executed similar to Super Smash Bros., i.e. inputting a controller direction and button press at the same time. Naturally, each character specializes in a type of attack (e.g. ground-melee, anti-aerial, offensive magic, support magic, etc.) that enemies are weak to, so having a well-rounded party is important to success. Otherwise, the game’s exploration mode is relatively similar to most JRPG affair: in villages, talk to people; in overworld, just move from point A to point B; and in temples, use items to solve puzzles.

Tales of Symphonia was originally released for the Nintendo Gamecube. It’s been ported to PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Shinshu Fields (Okami)

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Taro Omiya

For some more optimistic and energizing #WeeklyGameMusic, why not enjoy the fabulous track, Shinshu Fields, composed by Masami Ueda? If you couldn’t guess from the very Japanese instrumentals, this tune is indeed from the cult-hit Clover game, Okami, an epic tale of how the goddess of the sun saves feudal Japan from great evil.

Okami wastes almost no time, with the story immediately starting with the seal of great evil Orochi being broken by an unknown troublemaker. Almost instantly, Nippon (“Japan” in Japanese) gets enveloped by a swarm of monsters and evil spirits. With the country in peril, the guardian spirits summon the sun goddess, Amaterasu, to fight against the darkness. Taking on a form of a white wolf with awesome red highlights, Amaterasu immediately springs to action…by taking a nap. Deflated and out of energy, the guardian spirits expires, literally leaving the fate of the world to one lazy female dog. Thus begins a parody retelling of many Japanese folkstories — including Issun-Boushi, Hato no Ongaeshi, Hanasaku Jiisan, and more — all uncomfortably mashed together into a single world.

True to Platinum’s spirit (a game studio which many of the main players from the now-defunct Clover Studio founded), Okami is an action-adventure game not unlike the Legend of Zelda series, but with a much tighter action component. Like any JRPG, battles takes place in an enclosed space, though in real-time with button-timing playing a critical role in stringing combos. In the midst of battle, Amaterasu can use her brush power to literally pause the game and draw over it, thus conjuring up spells to aid in battle. The genius of this combat gimmick is that it also works outside of combat, as a way to solve puzzles in dungeons.

Okami was originally developed for the Playstation 2. It was ported on the Nintendo Wii and Switch, Playstation 3 and 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: To Catch an Owl (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

Posted on December 21, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Welp, this writer didn’t have a festive tune in their backlog of video game music, but this #WeeklyGameMusic, composed by James Hannigan comes close enough. To Catch an Owl is a video-game-original track for the book-to-movie-to-game adaptation, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, developed by EA UK. It’s a magical and celebratory tune fitting of the upcoming holidays, and manages to capture the movie soundtrack’s spirit.

Note: this writer does acknowledge the author of the Harry Potter series is notoriously transphobic. While the composer of this track is completely unrelated to J.K. Rowling, it should be stated that transphobia is immoral and wrong. This writer does not intend to promote such a position.

Within a few chapters of the fifth entry in the seven book (or eight movie) series, titular character Harry Potter and his non-magical cousin Dudley get attacked by the depression-inducing Dementors, well outside of the wizarding realm and within our realistic one. Thus setting the tone for what’s going to be a dark entry amongst the series, Harry uses magical spells Dudley can’t perceive to ward off the Dementors in self-defense. The problem? It’s illegal for an underage wizard student (which Harry himself is just into the fifth year of a seven year long career) to use magic in front of muggles, or normies by wizard lingo. This immediately kicks off a number of lawsuits Harry is forced to navigate, and while the ruling manages to fall into his favor, puts Harry into a legally precarious position as he enters Hogwarts wizarding school for the fifth year.

While story-wise, the video game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix doesn’t stray from this story, it’s gameplay takes a much more interesting approach to the politically oppressive atmosphere the book presents. In short, Order of the Phoenix is an open-world game where players utilizes gestures on the right-stick of the controller to cast various spells. Said spells are used to handle various tasks given by minigames, or simple environmental puzzles to unlock new secrets in the labyrinthine Hogwarts. Exploration is key to both progressing the story and unlocking new abilities and upgrade to our hero as he navigates this magically dangerous place.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released for the (wait for it…) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, PC, and Mac (phew!)

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#WeeklyGameMusic: A Floral Creation (El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron)

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Need a little bit of mystery and whimsy in your day? This week’s #WeeklyGameMusic has you covered with this track from…an action game? A Floral Creation by Masato Kouda and Kento Hasegawa starts cute and innocent, but gradually builds to a more tense composition. A fittingly bizarre track to an equally strange but visually stunning game, El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron.

Roughly (one might say, poorly) retelling the Hebrew Book of Enoch, El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron stars the scribe Enoch, tasked by God to punish seven fallen angels for taking a liking of humans and transforming Earth to their own image. To aid with Enoch’s travels, Lucifel — yes, that Lucifel, although in this case prior to him betraying God — also follows along, primarily acting as a save point by keeping God up-to-date with Enoch’s progress via a handy flip-phone. The two heroes travel to lands with wildly different, and absolutely gorgeous visuals, going from what appears to be a serene but mostly monochromatic world, to one that’s vibrant and neon colored like Vegas, to even one that’s clearly inspired by cyberpunk.

As an action game, El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron involves Enoch hacking-and-slashing fallen angel goons, first by literally stealing their weapon, then purifying it to be used against them. There are three weapons to master, and interestingly enough, each provide not only different controls in combat, but also a unique utility when it comes to light platforming. Highlight of the game, of course, are the bosses, which each use their own tricky combos to challenge the player’s reaction.

El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron was released on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. No other ports exist.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Opala (Two Worlds)

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Sometimes, this #WeeklyGameMusic post series likes to look into tracks from unexpected places. Take, for example, Two Worlds by Reality Pump: a game touted as the Oblivion/Skyrim-killer…then fall into complete obscurity as rapidly as it came in. It once returned back to fame in 2016’s Summer Games Done Quick…where a speedrunner beats it in less than 3 minutes. Well, surprise, surprise, the game has a really beautiful soundtrack! Opala, in particular is a stand-out composition from Harold Faltemeyer.

(Psst! You can buy the soundtrack on iTunes! music.apple.com/at/album/two-worlds/699269326)

Two Worlds opens with the hero’s sister getting kidnapped and held for ransom. It turns out the kidnappers are planning nefariously to unseal Aziraal, the god of fire, from its tomb. It’s up to you to rescue your beloved family member…by taking on a huge number of quests factions give you.

As one would expect of a game dubbed Oblivion-killer, Two Worlds is an open-world WRPG. Customization and freedom is the key goal of the game, as the hero’s individual attributes and skills can be incremented per level-up in any way the player pleases. Naturally, the player can gain favors from the game’s 7 factions by taking on quests each one gives, thus changing their alliances. And of course, if you really want to, you can outright kill villagers if you so desire. Normally a bad choice, but said mechanic can be taken advantage of…such as the aforementioned 3-minute-long speed run.

Two Worlds was released on Xbox 360 and PC. A sequel for the game was released as well, this time on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and Mac OSX.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Marionette Theater (_iCEY._)

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Taro Omiya

The stage is set. Below this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic post is a character named _iCEY._. She doesn’t have much memory available to her, aside from probably the dark action track Marionette Theater, composed by Ziqi Liu, Jiapeng Chen, and Xiao Xu Music. But aside from enjoying the banger game soundtrack, she knows she needs to do one thing: kill him. She wakes up…

Press A to wake up

Uh, _iCEY._? Are you still there? Is the A button even working? Geez, I thought I fixed this FantaBlade Network’s game. Hmm, maybe I need to change this to a link. Yeah, that might work.

Click here to wake up

Hello? Are you working? Grr, fine I give up. Might as well rant a little bit.

*Ahem.* In a world faaaaar, far into the future…mankind has been taken over by the evil robot overlord, Judith. With little time left, rebel scientists rapidly worked on developing awesome cyborg ninjas to dispose of Judith and his minions. Alas, none of them made it in time, leaving _iCEY._, their latest prototype with no memories, as humanity’s last hope.

Awesome story, right? Yeah, I worked really hard on that. Even setup this Chinese, side-scrolling action game about slicing and dicing evil robots with a fancy laser katana to go along with that narrative. But, no, _iCEY._ ain’t waking up any time soon. I hope you like watching sleeping robots, because this huge epic isn’t going anywhere without her! Gosh, it’s like…like…she’s mocking me or something. Like, she can actually hear me typing, and resents me more than Judith…

But naw, that’s not possible. Besides, if you really want to wake _iCEY._ up, why not grab it on Steam for Windows or Mac OSX? It’s also on Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and the iOS, if anyone is into that. As for me, I’m going to wait until the darn playable character wakes up.

Any time now…

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