Gaming has weird ups and downs. It started with a bunch of computer scientists tinkering around with their new hardware to make fun little diversions. After a while, people start making games for kids, with computers and game consoles becoming the new toy. The industry saw a huge surge in interest and suddenly it became huge business. Publishers stepped in to help promote, package and distribute games for various studios, trying to differentiate their product from the hundreds flooding the market.
So anyway, Vista has been out for quite a while. Drivers are stabilizing and DX10 games are coming. So is everything rosy for M$?
Currently Bioshock, a DX10 game, has garnered fantastic reviews from many game journalists. Among the 9.9 and 10 out of 10s however, is one review that stood out from the rest. A review from Gamespot. It gave Bioshock a 9 out of 10. Not too shabby? The one problem they faced was stuttering frame rates after a few straight hours of play. There you have it. DIRECT X 10 IS STILL NOT FULLY OPTIMIZED. A friend of mine is currently playing the game and says that the graphics are nice, but nothing groundbreaking. The real test for DX10, Vista and DX10 cards still lie ahead, in the form of Crysis.
The Xbox360 however, has a healthy number of games right now. Compared to the current generation consoles, I think that the 360 has the most extensive and impressive line-up of games across nearly all genres at the time of writing. The PS3 has an impressive arsenal of games coming out in 2008 (and maybe 2009 too), while M$ has built a pretty amazing defensive wall with solid foundation. The Wii on the other hand continues to exist on another planet. It has recently outsold the Xbox360 in overall sales with a cool 10.57 million consoles sold to M$'s 1.56 million. Ninty's game catalogue right now however is hardly impressive. Launch title Twilight Princess, quirky RPG-Platformer Paper Mario, weird and admittedly uninspired mini-game collection WarioWare, and GC remake Resident Evil 4. Makes me wonder what those 10 million Wii users are playing now. Probably Wii sports.
On the handheld front, Sony attempts to spice things up with the sexy new PSP Slim and unlocked processor speed of 333MHz. DS still reigns king.
I had thought of building a new desktop for Bioshock and Crysis the same way I built one for Half-Life 2 back in 2003. The DX10 cards fail to warrant a purchase though... the technology is still young and immature. Which makes me wonder: Will PC games make another breakthrough the same way Half-life 2 (and Half-life) did back then? It's already 2007 folks. We need something that could blow our socks off. Sure, Bioshock is fantastic and might become Game of the Year or Best Game of All Time on GameRankings.com, but it just refines and doesn't revolutionize anything in particular. Here's hoping Crysis will be the one.
I'm sure for many of you old gamers out there, game music has mostly been in the form of annoying beeps that repeat over and over again as you try, for the umpteenth time, to clear a level.
Well, that was then.
We have since overcome the technological limits of the 8-bit and 16-bit generation. Most games have audio in 5.1 surround sound now to immerse the player in an alternate world. Creative Technologies and their numerous versions of EAX has lent a hand in the evolution of sound quality over the years. Even so, developers still never fail to amaze us with incredibly lousy sound effects and repetitive music that is just plain annoying. The first game that comes to my mind would be Pokemon (my sister is playing Pokemon Diamond on the DS Lite as I type...). The music isn't too bad, but it's kinda repetitive. This is a problem with most RPGs though. It would be inconsistent if a town has many different tunes to it, but a player would start to get irritated if he hears the same tune again as he returns to town for the 1384th time to sell some drops.
Anyway, bad music aside, lets talk about the good ones.
One of the earliest, and most recognizable, game tune would be Mario. The catchy little tunes worked those 8-bit consoles to their limit! The several tunes for each Mario level all became instant classics in the gaming world. No self-respecting video game music concert would be without the "Super Mario Medley". Along with other memorable classics such as Zelda, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy, these tunes set the standard for all game music composers to follow.
Here's a video of Martin Leung, a video game pianist for the Video Games Live series of concerts, performing "Super Mario Medley":
On the PC front, sound cards from Creative Technology made computers a "talking device". Did you know Michael Jackson visited Sim Wong Hoo's Comdex Fall booth in Las Vegas back in 1989 for 30 minutes because he was so captivated by the Sound Blaster card? The Sound Blaster went on to be the De Facto audio card standard, selling 100 million units in 10 years. At that time, it was games like Final Fantasy VII that changed the video game music scene. It wasn't so much about clarity or quality of the audio, it was purely just musical creativity and production quality. Compared to the consoles at that time, music in games for PCs weren't that big a deal. That was because computers could already play close to studio-quality audio. FF7 on the other hand had midi music. However, like its PlayStation counterpart, pieces of compositions like One Winged Angel became classics. It was compositions like these that make people start to feel that video games took music seriously. Unlike the music you hear on the radio and MTV, video game music (along with original movie scores) are like classical music; Timeless pieces of work that retain their popularity for years/decades/centuries. Composer Harry Gregson-Williams primarily composes for Hollywood movies like Shrek and Narnia, but he also composed the opening theme for the Metal Gear Solid series, showing how the production values of video game music is continually going up.
Here's a video of Eminence Symphony Orchestra, a video game symphony, performing Final Fantasy classic "One Winged Angel". This piece is almost always played as a final or encore piece at ANY video game music concert:
Following the birth of better sound cards for the PC and consoles (5.1 surround sound support for the Xbox), game creators were given alot more horsepower in the audio department than they knew what to do with. High quality surround sound audio? Check. So where do we go next from here? There can only be that many 'birds chirping' and 'trees swaying' audio layers. They decided to take in-game music a step further to match Hollywood quality. As you can see, the main difference between movies and games were that games were interactive. Players could speed up or slow down the action depending on whether they wanted to attack head-on or sneak pass enemies. To make the atmospheric music suit the action like a glove, game audio designers programme their music to change on the go. I'm not a music expert nor an ace programmer so I shan't go into the specifics, but basically that means shifting tempos and whatnot to suit whatever action the player throws at the game. One game that makes use of this technology/technique is Halo. The music rises and fades effortlessly as you take out the Convenant horde (not so effortlessly). It was a great game not just for its gameplay, but also for its story and overall atmosphere, undoubtedly bolstered by a fantastic score (and 'interactive music'). In fact, its so popular that 4 million copies of Halo 3 has been pre-ordered in the US ahead of its September 25th release date.
So what have we learned? A good game requires good music. That's for sure.
Here's a video of a group of students performing Halo's theme song for a school talent show, proving once and for all that nerds can be musicians and musicians can be nerds:
And good music requires soundtrack CDs and concerts. That's right. Concerts. Music from the Final Fantasy was ripe for orchestras and choirs, and the fans were aching to hear One Winged Angel performed with a full orchestra, so Dear Friends was born. A series of concerts held in the US from 2004 to 2005 for Final Fantasy fans and it was a great success. It wasn't exactly a world first (Sydney's Eminence Symphony Orchestra started in 2003, with their 1st concert featuring Final Fantasy music), but it was one of the most prolific concert series due to guest appearances by Nobou Uematsu, long-time composer of Final Fantasy music. Here in Singapore, part of Eminence (2 violinists, 1 pianist, 1 guitarist and 1 percussionist) and Yasunori Mitsuda performed at the Victoria Concert Hall on 23 December 2006 to the tunes of various games and anime. This was just an appetizer for what was to come in 2007. As part of the Singapore Arts Festival, PLAY! A Video Game Symphony will be performing to a sold-out crowd on 15 and 16 June at the Esplanade. Just read Net Crawl: The First for links and more details about this concert. Expect the works of Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls), Harry Gregson-Williams (Metal Gear Solid) and Nobou Uematsu (Final Fantasy) in an unforgettable night, produced by the same people who did Dear Friends.
Here's a 6 minute behind-the-scenes look at PLAY!:
I'll be there for the 16 June, 7.30pm show. Can't wait~!
Ahh... back to my gaming roots. I'm not going to talk about retro games in the post now (that would be saved for Retro! features). Instead, I shall talk about how I am now getting back into gaming and how I got out of it in the first place...
Until recently, I had been gaming quite a lot, whether its on the PC, Xbox or on an emulator. Even during my A Level examinations, I was playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (averaging about 2 to 3 hours a day on that game). And then after my examinations, I sort of became really bored of gaming. Why? My PC has just hit 3 and my Xbox controller is starting to become a little wonky. Even emulated and casual/indie games began to seem boring. I tried to get back into gaming by playing C&C Generals, but I got bored of it after just 3 days. It was only 2 days ago that I suddenly realise what was wrong...
I had been depending too much on game guides. Yes folks, I'm a cheat. Every secret passage and hidden ending is known to me even before it happens. This took a lot of the fun exploration factor out of many games. Every major plot twist is known and bosses became too simple. Gameplay was punctuated by my frequent checks on GameFAQS. To cut this long story short, I began trying to enjoy games as it is meant to be played. With the help of Final Fantasy 6 (released as FF3 on the SNES to the US), I can now proudly say that I'm a gamer again. Games like this make me feel that there IS some hope in this industry filled with copies and unimaginative games. Too many games look like clones of each other, with the same style, gameplay and controls (the only difference being visual). Thankfully there's the Nintendo and SquareEnix to depend on for occasional surprises and constant quality.
With this flame re-ignited, I downloaded the demo for Supreme Commander the very moment it was available on FileAxis, and boy does it blow my mind! When I read articles and previews of this game, I couldn't really understand what was the big deal. The trailer (with the 10 or so nukes firing at the same time and gigantic experimental units roaming the beautifully destructible environment) made me more interested. The demo brought me to an orgasm. Seriously, you have to try it to feel the sense of scale and destruction for yourself. Play it. And be blown away by it. (www.fileaxis.com)
I've just seen Gamespot's On the Spot video (2 November) . Firstly, let me say that I'm all for better gameplay even if some graphical quality has to be sacrificed... With that out of the way...
Gears of War (X360) looks wicked!
And Ridge Racer 7 (PS3) is simply stunning! Graphics aside, both games seem to play really well; Ridge Racer with its arcade-style of crazy drift racing and Gears of War's 3rd-person shaky-camera shooter.
Gears of War really got me thinking: Will Halo 3 still be the Xbox360 system-seller that M$ claims it to be? After all, as quoted from Bill Gates himself, Halo 3's launch was supposed to coincide with the PS3 launch in a bid to draw attention away from their rival's console. Now that Gears of War is going to be out instead, does M$ see it as a replacement to Halo 3? Will Bungie continue to get huge funding and support from M$ if it doesn't meet expectations? The bar has been raised by Gears, and Halo might not be able to reach it. Brace yourself for some disappointment. Although, if Halo 3 DOES make it through, Sony is going to have a hard time fighting off both M$ and Nintendo.
