Tag: Xbox One

#WeeklyGameMusic: Shinshu Fields (Okami)

Posted on 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: A Song for Eternal Story (Phantasy Star Online)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Following up with a SEGA music from last week, we’re moving right along to their lesser known IP, the Phantasy Star series. More specifically, the first online-connected entry in the long-running JRPG sci-fi franchise, Phantasy Star Online (PSO). Fans of this game from the Dreamcast and Gamecube era could probably immediately guess which track I’ll be introducing for this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic: the iconic title music, A Song for Eternal Story, by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani.

Phantasy Star Online begins with a start of a new hope. With the home planet ravaged and inhospitable, your civilization journeys across space in an effort to discover a new planet to call home. When one of these colony-carrying spaceships, Pioneer 2, receives a message from Pioneer 1 of an excellent candidate they dub, “Ragol,” the former immediately beelines to the new destination. By the time they arrive, however, communication with Pioneer 1 — which up to this point has been regular with updates on their progress colonizing Ragol — suddenly ceases. Readings on the planet indicates a sudden large explosion occurred on the newly built city just before Pioneer 1 went silent. Suspicions high, the Pioneer 2 government asks for highly qualified soldiers, “Hunters,” to scout the planet and discover what dangers might lurk in this lush, unexplored land.

As a Diablo-inspired action-JRPG, Phantasy Star Online greatly diverges from past entries’ turn-based roots. A typical play session involves taking the following steps:

  1. Form a party of a maximum of four real players in Pioneer 2, which acts as the lobby.
  2. The leader of the party picks a quest from the quest counter. This prompts the game to procedurally generate a dungeon, themed under the environment the quest takes place in.
  3. All party members meet at the Ragol teleporter (after making preparations, of course) to start the dungeon-crawling adventure.

Combat in PSO is in real-time, where the player can customize their button inputs on what attack or spell to execute when pressed. The weapon the player equips dictates what action they can assign to their input pallet (weapons can be quick-swapped with a simple menu). Finally, the player’s class — chosen during the character creation screen — determines what weapons they can equip, thereby limiting what actions they can take. Given the game was originally designed with dial-up internet connection in mind, some technical limitations were enforced in the game that appear archaic to online games today. For example, players walk very slowly, and are unable to jump in PSO, making melee-heavy characters incapable of hitting flying enemies, and forcing them to rely on their gun-trotting or magic-wielding allies to handle the job.

Phantasy Star Online was originally released on Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PC. While official servers for the game has been put offline for quite a while now, the fan-supported PSO: Blue Burst Ultima Server is still online as of this writing. Of course, the other route is simply to check out the game’s free-to-play spiritual sequel, Phantasy Star Online 2, available on Xbox One and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store; which after 8 years since release, is still getting content updates as of this writing.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 (Sonic Mania)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Time to go old-new school, with retro-new game, Sonic Mania, developed by Christian Whitehead, Headcannon, and PagodaWest Games! OK, if I’m not making too much sense, here’s a simpler way of phrasing it: let’s enjoy this remix of Chemical Plant Zone theme by Tee Lopes, the track originally featured in Sonic 2. The new track, Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, is just as bopping as the original was on the old SEGA Genesis game!

Dr. Eggman (…or Robotnik, for purist) is at it again! After detecting strong signals from Angel Island, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles investigate to find the mad scientists and his robot army steal the Phantom Ruby gems. In an attempt to retrieve them back, the games suddenly activates, warping all the involved characters to past levels. You know…the usual Sonic plot…

Of course, the meat of Sonic Mania is it’s faithfulness to past 2D Sonic titles. Created by fans, for fans, Sonic Mania combines some of the best parts from each past entries. This includes adding unique twists to the momentum-based platformer, such as new power-ups, remixed boss battles, new environment hazards, and more. Played a 2D Sonic game before? You’ll be right at home here!

Sonic Mania is released on Playstation 4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, Microsoft Store, and Origin.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: A Quick Break (Cuphead)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Ready for a hard-to-find tune in a hard-to-play game? This week’s WeeklyGameMusic has you covered with A Quick Break by Kristofer Maddigan from the indie game classic, Cuphead. This acapella piece from Studio MDHR Entertainment Inc.’s debut title encourages the player to…put the game down. Huh. Interesting.

Cuphead‘s story takes the 30’s animation approach of starting awfully dark. Our titular character, Cuphead, and his brother, Mugman, goes off one day to do what all kids love to do: gamble. Well, OK, neither kids nor adults should gamble, and to really drive home that lesson, the devil himself raised a deal with the pair that should they lose the next game, he’ll be taking their souls. Not being the brightest lightbulb in the Christmas tree, Cuphead gleefully accepts this deal, and promptly finds himself losing the very next game. Begging for forgiveness, the pair makes a deal with the Devil (which, again, this blog does not endorse doing) where they need to collect all the soul contracts out there on Inkwell Isles before the end of the day.

Cuphead is a action-platformer in the same vein as the Megaman series. Both Cuphead and Mugman runs, jumps, and fires bullets from their fingers to fight against a wide cast of bosses and levels. Unique to this game is the counter mechanic: an aerial attack that defuses projectiles of a specific color, and regenerates the pair’s special-attack. That said, much of the accolade this game has revolves around it’s animation quality, and its utterly-uncompromising difficulty.

Cuphead was released for Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC, and Mac via Steam.

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

Posted on 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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#WeeklyGameMusic: Song of the Ancients ~ Fate (NieR)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

In celebration of the upcoming NieR remake coming up…albeit, the Japan-only version instead of the better-liked Western one, this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic celebrates the game’s most memorable boss battle theme, the Song of the Ancients, Fate variation (this game also features an adoptive soundtrack). Composed by Keiichi Okabe, Kakeru Ishihama, Keigo Hoashi, and Takafumi Nishimura, this track from now-defunct Cavia classic fits well with the tragic undertone behind this Drakengard spin-off series.

In a future only a couple decades from now, Japan is totaled by the constant snow, lasting well past the summer. In addition to the uncomfortably consistent weather, humans has been haunted by a growing and deadly population of ethereal creatures, shades. In this mess, begins the survivalist journey between a man and his daughter…or brother and sister, depending on which version you’re playing (Gestalt and Replicant respectively). Unfortunately for our hero, the daughter seems to be suffering an incurable disease.

Oh, wait, nevermind: the actual game takes place a full millennium past modern times. And, uh, apparently magic exists? Huh, that’s weir-*shuffles notes*…no, the plots still the same. Our hero, Nier is still trying to keep his sickly daughter/sister, Yonah, alive. Shades still haunts the town Nier lives in. The world is in a constant state of decline. So, uh, how did they survive for so long? Are they amnesic? Why are we suddenly in a fantasy town setting? This…this is still Japan, right? And why is the opening dialogue filled near-back-to-back with slurs?

NieR is an action JRPG renowned for its innovative narrative techniques. At first blush, the game appears like a simple hack-and-slash. Those who’ve played the highly acclaimed NieR: Automata knows, however, the game rapidly changes gameplay, with an eccentric set of party members following along your bizarre adventure. In addition, the series’ trademark multiple endings, each providing a new perspective in the main story, is here as well. Much like how the gameplay changes perspective frequently, so to will the player’s understanding of the overall plot.

NieR was originally released in the US on the Xbox 360 exclusively. It’s remake, NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… will be released soon for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

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