Playstation 3 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: Prime #4507 (Echochrome II)

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Taro Omiya

This week’s #WeeklyGameMusic may sound like generic elevator music, but is actually a world record holder. That’s right, we’re talking about the single longest video game track ever composed (as of this writing, year 2020, according to Guinness World Records), Prime #4507. This whopping 75-minutes long piece was composed by Hideki Sakamoto for the mind-bending puzzler, Echochrome II; a game developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Japan Studio.

Echochrome II is a puzzle game where one uses the motion controls to move the light source and create a shadow path from a bizarrely arranged array of toy blocks for the artist mannequin, cast, to travel across. Depending on the angle, some blocks reveal interactive puzzle elements, including springs, holes, tunnels, and of course, the goal of the level. Much like the predecessor, the player has little control over how the cast moves, aside from making it stop and change directions; instead, much of the puzzle solving comes from the cast’s environment.

Echochrome II was released on the PlayStation 3. No other ports exists, as of this writing; though presumably, it can be purchased online from the Sony online store like other past Playstation titles for the modern console. As a complete aside, number 4507 is, indeed, a prime number.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Skate Park Shuffle (Create)

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Taro Omiya

Regulars of #WeeklyGameMusic know I often find some rather obscure game music pretty often. Here’s one from a little-known sandbox game called Create, developed by EA Bright Light. That’s right, we’re checking out Electronic Arts game music this week! Ian Livingstone’s piece, Skate Park Shuffle, is a bit corporate at the beginning, but soon mellows out to a rather calming (and more interesting) conclusion.

A bit like the The Incredible Machine, the most game-like aspect of Create involves the player to use the items and tools available in the pre-made levels to push, nudge, and navigate an object from point A to point B. Much of these levels take place in the 2D plane to provide a simpler interface, though lanes of depth can be added like LittleBigPlanet. And of course, much like LittleBigPlanet, Create allowed players to create and share levels online, though as of this writing, the servers has long been shut down.

Create was released on PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. As far as this writer can tell, there does not appear to be a way to purchase the game online easily, but the official game page is available here: ea.com/games/create

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Servants of the Mountain (Final Fantasy X HD Remaster)

Posted on October 26, 2020 by Taro Omiya

In a bit of a twist, we visit this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic to a rearrangement of a mainline Final Fantasy game that wasn’t originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Servants of the Mountain, originally composed by Masashi Hamauzu, is perhaps an underrated gem that doesn’t get called out very often. This remix also gets a helping hand from Junya Nakano to give Final Fantasy X HD Remaster the fresh coat of pain it needs for modern hardware.

Final Fantasy X story is…rather confusing. It begins with the sports star, Tidus, heading out to a thrilling match of Blitzball, only to be swept up by a gigantic monster named Sin (…subtle). From there, he gets thrown with a group of aquatic scavengers to pick out some machine parts, then gets swept up again to the calm Besaid island. Thoroughly disoriented, he gets laughed at by the locals when he claims he’s from Zanarkland, as according to them, that civilization has perished a long time ago and only exists in folklore. In the midst of all this craziness, he’s invited by Yuna, the local’s summoner, to join her pilgrimage. He agrees, given he really doesn’t have much better to do, and Besaid was giving him a depression pretty quickly, anyway.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy X uses a turn-based combat that doesn’t utilize time like past entries. Instead, the player decides what moves to make to all party members during one turn: in doing so, an indicator regularly updates who will make which attack first. Naturally, all moves, both by players and enemies, are executed accordingly. This allows the player to easily swap out their party members in the middle of any turn, given each character specializes in exploiting a specific enemy weakness. Otherwise, exploration is the usual Final Fantasy fare: find keys, open doors, activate switches, trade items, etc.

Final Fantasy X was originally released on the Playstation 2. It’s HD Remaster was bundled together with its sequel, and is available on Windows via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 3 and 4.

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