My favorite gaming music #18: Chilling with music

More gaming music articles.

So, I wanted to share some tracks that I love in the games I have played. One of my favorite music genres is soundtracks actually. At work, I listen to various streaming websites that play gaming music 24/7. And in this series on my blog, I pay tribute to my favorite tracks. The rules are simple. In each article, I’m allowed to talk about only one track per franchise and I only talk about the original track that you can hear in-game. Oh, feel free to post a comment when you see me posting a song twice. In any case, feel free to also post a comment with your favorite music and/or your opinion on my chosen tracks for this article. So, enough introduction. It’s time to talk about some new music tracks! The theme of this article will be clear very soon. Ready? Go!

Pokémon Gold / Silver / Crystal (GBC) ~ VS. Lance

My review

So, back in 1999, you are sitting in your most comfy gaming spot. With a new pair of batteries in your Gameboy Color and with your favorite drink and snack beside you. You prepare for a big event in your Pokémon Journey since you have beaten the 8 gym leaders. Then you go and fight the Elite Four. After a tough fight, you finally end up at the Champion. After you chat with Lance, the battle animation starts. You slide in from the right, and Lance slides in from the left.

This is the final challenge of your amazing journey through the Johto region. The intro of the song gets you ready for a tense fight. But after a few notes, the song gets more intense. You try to focus on the battle and meanwhile, the song playing in the background is making the battle even more memorable.

Your young brain is so focused and drawn into this fight thanks to the atmosphere this track brings. Even when you notice that this track has some repetition in it, you ignore it and you get drawn into the fight more and more. When you defeated Lance, you continue your journey.

Then almost ten years later, when the remakes of these games come on the market, you do the whole journey again. But when you hit the fight with Lance, you get that strange feeling. Nostalgia. The remade track is all too familiar. You start to tear up thinking back of all the memories this game, the remake, the journey and the experience brought you. Well, that’s how it went for me at least.

The Legend Of Zelda – Skyward Sword (Wii) ~ Zelda’s Lullaby

First impression

I always played games on the latest Nintendo Gameboy or I played games on the PC. I fell in love with one series. The Legend Of Zelda series. I remember it well, I was in a big convenience store. I was in the games section and I saw the GBA port of the first Legend Of Zelda game.

I heard rumors about a game series that took the player on an adventure. An adventure to slay evil creatures and rescue the princess. They said it had a big open world full of secrets and dungeons.

The game was on sale. I begged my mom to buy it for me and after I went home, I didn’t play any other game until I had beaten that Zelda game. After that, I tried to collect all the Zelda games. Let’s skip ahead a few years until my graduation from high school. As a present, I got my very first console, the Nintendo Wii. I wanted to buy it since I was extremely hyped for the Zelda games that were coming out for it. I pre-ordered Skyward Sword, and admittedly; I didn’t regret it. I enjoyed myself a whole lot but something happened. When Zelda’s Lullaby started playing in that amazing orchestral version, not only my nostalgic bone got hit… My emotions as well. All the joy & memories I got from the Zelda series got to me. I placed the Wii remote in front of me and I just started at the scene. Tears coming up my eyes. That moment is one of the most memorable moments I got with the Zelda series.

Mirror’s Edge (PC) ~ Edge and Flight

Games I wished I finished (2013)

I bought this game a long time after it has been released. I bought it for almost three years after release. I was in college studying Computer Science. During a break, I went into the city together with a few students. When we went into a toy and games store, we saw three copies of this game for 5€. We decided to buy it.

One of the students is actually still one of my best friends. His name is MiseryLC. Well, his nickname at least. We both played this game in school during breaks on our school laptops. They were just strong enough. While we felt that the laptop was clearly overheating, we didn’t care. We played this game.

MiseryLC is pretty good when it comes to parkour in games. I’m a complete failure when it comes to pretty complex gaming puzzles. But strangely, this game drew me in. I started to get better at parkours. The game got it hooks in me. But then, I started to encounter the more graphics-heavy sections and my laptop started to struggle to run the game. So, I set the game aside.

But this year, I bought the sequel to this game. Called Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. So, I think it’s time to play through both games again. Just to get to complete Mirror’s Edge experience. It still surprises me that I play a game where the main mechanic is platforming and parkouring around. So, to honor this game because I like it a whole lot, I selected one of my favorite tracks from the soundtrack! Thank you EA & Dice for this excellent series.

Wrapping up

Thank you for reading this article. If you haven’t already guessed it, in this article I selected three tracks that mean a lot to me. Three tracks that have some history to me.

These three aren’t the only ones that have some history to me. But, the other tracks are for another article. I’m curious, what tracks have a personal meaning for you and why? Feel free to leave that in a comment too.

In any case, thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog, but until then; take care and have a great rest of your day!

Advertisement

Review: The Sims 2 (GBA) ~ Showtime!

The Sims Wikia entry

When I was young, I wasn’t allowed to spend too much time on the computer. So, that’s why I actually played a lot of handheld games. When I heard that the Sims got popular, I got myself the Sims 2 on my Game Boy Advance. While the early Sims adaptations weren’t the same as the original game, I did enjoy myself with this title quite a lot. But, there is a catch. Now that I’m older I can take a better look at it. Is it really as good as I remember? Or is it actually a terrible game? Well, it’s time to take a look at a Sims game from my childhood. Are you ready? I hope so! Also, feel free to leave a comment down in the comment section about the content of this article and or this game. I reply to every comment. It’s also creating a big happy feeling for me, so feel free to comment away. 

Story… In a Sims game?!?

I couldn’t believe it myself at first. A sandbox game with a story. Well, to make this game fun they wrote a story, and it’s quite interesting. You are in a TV-show but nobody of the citizens of the town know of it. While you complete the story, you have to try to make an entertaining TV-series.

The story might be cheesy and forced, but it’s a good move of EA. I don’t think the Game Boy Advance would have been a great platform to port a Sims 2 game on. The actually tried to make something creative.

Actually, to be honest, the story is quite decent. It isn’t the best that you have seen from EA, but when I’m able to recall parts of the story, some characters and such, then the story has done its job.

But, this is actually extremely risky. Thanks to the story, this game isn’t very well received by Sims fans. I can honestly understand why. This game just has some Sims elements, but that makes it far from an actual Sims game. The fans just had other expectations than this.

Showtime

So, in between episodes, you are able to upgrade your skills. This makes the game quite interesting. Since you need to decide which skills you are going to work on. If you don’t work on the right skills, you might not be able to advance in the next episode.

Talking about episodes, let me get one thing clear. A big flaw in this game is that, in order to see the epilogue episode, you have to connect with another Sims 2 GBA game. This has been a very bad move of EA and you can’t actually play the last episode now on a legit cartridge. Unless you are very lucky, and you find someone, or you do it by yourself. That was such a disappointment.

Thankfully, the last episode you can play without linking up wraps the story nicely. So, yeah. But the final episode is there, waiting to be played. But you can’t due to the reasons explained above.

The gameplay is actually quite nice. You run around, solve mysteries, talk to sims, decorate your home… Well, there are various things to do. This game isn’t linear at all. The experience of each playthrough will be quite different. A pleasant secret is that you can enter the directors’ room while playing. Of course nobody is there, but it’s a pleasant touch.

An awesome thing is that there aren’t annoying bars that you need to keep up. This way you don’t need to babysit your Sims’s needs in order to have an enjoyable time with the game. There is just one bar, used for everything. Every action like eating or sleeping will raise that bar. But if you repeat those actions, it won’t raise that bar. The way to drain the bar is to have your actions being rejected in a conversation.

There are also mini-games. While I don’t have the time to talk about them in this review, I can honestly say that they are quite good. I enjoyed playing them back when I was trying to beat this game and while I was replaying this game in order to review it, I enjoyed myself messing around with the mini-games again.

Other things

We are nearing the end of this review. So, it’s time to talk about the other things outside the story and gameplay. The length and difficulty of this game are just perfect for this game. While I wanted to play a bit more, I honestly think that they stopped at the right moment. If the game had been longer, the game might had destroyed its own novelty.

The game gets harder and harder each episode, but it doesn’t get too difficult. Getting enough money might be a challenge but as soon as you figure out how to abuse a certain game mechanic, it’s quite easy. I won’t tell how, but there is a way to farm money.

The controls, music, and design of this game are quite decent. They make great use of the Game Boy Advance and I think they help with the immersion. As soon as you give this game a chance, you get a nice experience.

While it’s quite clear that I haven’t talked about everything in depth, I think it’s time to move on to the conclusion. I like to leave questions unanswered so that players who are actually interested in the game might find some surprises. In my reviews I mostly talk about my experiences with the game and talking about it for too long, would be boring in my opinion. Enough rambling, time to give this review a conclusion.

Conclusion

The bad:

– The final episode is locked.

– Disappointing for Sims fans

– A way to farm money.

The good:

+ Decent plot

+ Decent visuals.

+ …

Final thoughts:

This game has problems for sure. It isn’t perfect. But with the amount of polish that this game has, it makes for an enjoyable experience. The game isn’t very memorable, but it isn’t boring.

While a Sims fan might not have a great time with this game… I think a gamer that likes to play adventure games will like this game and play it until the last episode. They can play unless they can link it to another game.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

NekoJonez: First Impression: Alice: Madness Returns (PC ~ Steam) – What Happened?

Wikipedia entry

(Warning, this article is written in a special way. I’m done quite fine, it’s written the theme of the game more. Also, this article is referencing an old blog I used to be a partner of.)

Dear readers. My fantasy might be real. 75 articles published by myself on the ButtonSmashers Blog. I don’t need a doctor about that. But the negative imagery is taking its toll on me. It’s hard as a writer to  see people you love and care about turn in these horrid monsters. Now that I’m back fighting in this land, it’s time to set things right. Or do I want to go back? I don’t know. I thought this wouldn’t be a pretty sight. That the game would suck. But as soon as I started playing it, it blew my mind. It’s actually good that I’m doing this. Maybe I have to let go. I have no clue. Possibly this game might provide the answers for me. Possibly, if I take a look into this madness I might find answers. Yeah, it will return… the madness. And feel free to comment on this, your opinion on it or on the game. Return… madness…

Bad cover hides a good game

Did the intro creep you out? Don’t worry, I won’t continue to write like that for the rest of the article. It would be too hard to talk about a game like that. But I thought it would make for a nice introduction.

The tale of Alice in Wonderland is most likely not a strange or a new one to you. Although, it might be that it has been quite some time since you have seen or heard of it. This game takes a rather interesting spin on it.

From what I can gather, after several years, Wonderland got corrupted. Alice gets visions from it and goes back to Wonderland. I haven’t gotten more into the story yet since I was more focused on the game then on the story. More on that later.

From what gather from the story, it’s quite unique. If I’m right and this game shows the scenario: “What would happen to wonderland if Alice went crazy?”… Well, then the story is doing quite well.

So, the title of the part is bad cover hides a good game. What I mean with that is that EA found it needed to have a “right in your face” protection for this game. With serial keys and verifying servers and all that lame stuff. Also, at first glance, the main menu gave me a bit of “meh” impression. But it gets better once you play the actual game.

Madness… MADNESS. THIS IS SP- nope. 

I have to admit something. I can’t judge on the keyboard controls. Furthermore, I saw that this game supports a controller. And when I see that, I don’t think twice about using it. Honestly, I sometimes prefer playing with a controller. It might have to do with the fact that I had keys popping off my keyboards…

Anyway, from what I can tell, the controls are smooth. I did to adjust the default settings a bit to have better sensitivity but hey, that’s why there are options.

In this game, Alice had various power-ups. You get them through the course of your adventure. Up until now, I got a shrink power-up and a special sort of gun. And then the madness begins. Oh, yes. It does.

This game offers you multiple paths with one being the correct one. But if you explore the hidden paths, you find collectables. While I have no clue in what these will be used for, it’s adding to the replay value, and it’s a good thing that they implemented this.

Talking back about the controls, they are good. Nearly each button has a different feature. But thankfully it’s so straight forward, you learn which button to press after some time of play.

The gameplay consists out of various platforming puzzles. You need to kill all the enemies or find something to activate platforms. You know, the usual stuff. What’s unusual though is the fact you can’t really die. Well, I’m not 100% sure about that. When you fall off cliffs, Alice bursts into butterflies and you get right back at the platform you died at to try again. This is rather neat.

So, why is the title of this part “Madness”? Well, because of the various collectables and the very variation in the gameplay… There might be too many things going on at once. And it works for this game.

Must finish?

The game has an automatic save-feature. Lately, I’m getting used to the auto-saving feature. This avoids that you are broken out of your immersion with the game.

Since I recently finished some games I was playing, I can now focus on this game. I want to finish this game because it caught my attention. The last time a PC game did that was Alan Wake.

The game has an amazing design. While it’s not going for the most detailed graphics and over the top visuals, this game shows off an incredible art style that really fits the story they want to tell.

You truly feel that you’re in a corrupted fantasy world based on the story of Alice. The animation, no complaints. I think it’s really well done. Maybe some PC elite may say that I’m wrong, but I find this game to be quite the eye candy.

To finish this article, let’s talk about the music. It has been playing in another tab while I was writing this article. And while I haven’t heard a lot of the soundtrack yet, the music I heard truly made my fantasy go wild. What’s going to happen to Alice? How are they going to continue this game? It’s a mystery to me but once I’m willing to solve. The sounds are fitting too. But I have to pay closer attention to give a more detailed opinion about it.

While I could have written something more special, I think that 100 articles is more fitted for that. Anyway, thanks for reading my article. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. This game looks like an awful lot of fun and I can’t wait to see more.

NekoJonez: Are digital downloads really a benefit for the market?

Are platforms like Steam and Origin really a benefit for the games market? Must everything now go digital or is that something that might doom the market? Let’s think about it. I think that this movement is a double-edged sword. It’s good but there is a big “But”. Cap was intended. I can’t deny that platforms like Steam and other have many advantages. But clearly, I have also a blaming finger to raise. I talked and discussed with many of my friends about this. From people in ButtonSmashers, Arpegi and outside of both of them. And after many rewrites, I think it’s time to voice my view on this. Feel free to debate with me on this in the comments. Flame comments will be removed of course. 

My biggest problem

Many people see this as the way of the future. Everything needs to go digital. It makes things so much easier. Yet, there is a big issue that comes with this. Security. Think about this, that your account is hacked and you lost all your progress and games. Or worse, they got your bank information. I have no doubt in my mind that this is something hackers in the future will be able to achieve.

Another issue is the fact that privacy is gone. Some people want to hide that they game since for some companies that are a big no if you want to be hired. Gamers have a big reputation thanks to some events that the media blew out of proportion. So, you have to hide. In addition to that, you can’t really hide your “guilty pleasure” games anymore. You know, those games that make your reputation of “hardcore gamer” go poof as snow for the sun.

And don’t get me started about abusing the system. There are some many ways to cheat the system and make fake money that can be used to buy games then. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good percentage of the sales on those digital platforms are actually illegal purchases gone undetected.

Android market feel

 

I’m not going to lie, I bought a ton of games on Steam the past month. But I really man, a lot of them. And my fear got actually confirmed. I felt like being in some online app store. Where you can easily download games and install them. And I kept playing a part of the game and when I got a bit bored of the game, I downloaded the next one.

Isn’t that a bit harsh? There can be boring moments in a game but when you wouldn’t have this Steam or Origin, it was your newest game and then your motivation was higher. At least in my case.

Also, as a retro gamer, I saw that nearly all the games I played in the past are on Steam as well. I’m afraid I won’t survive any sale if one happens of a game on my wishlist.

My point here is that it became too easy to find new games and you start to think less about your budget. It’s not new that I hear people say that they got a ton of games from a sale but if you really look to it, how many games are actually played and or finished from the ones they bought? Probably not all of them.

Big dogs smelled money.

Before I explain my next point, I want to talk about another thing. I’m a big-time collector. If I’m at a garage sale, my mood is like: “Buy all the games!”. If I had the money for it, I would. Yet, going to a garage sale and trying to hassle or look for a game. That feeling of going home with a new stack of games felt so rewarding. And that’s a feeling I have lost with Steam and Origin. You just push in some numbers and do one or two clicks. You can’t hassle or try to lower the price. And looking for a game is just a search away.

But this is actually a nightmare for collectors. Physical copies are a thing of the past. I love being able to hold a game in my hands and showing it off to my friends and being like: “Hey, look I got this new game.” That might be a bit bragging but hey, who doesn’t do that from time to time?

But what in the name of the good games are big companies like Atari and Square doing on Steam? Selling their big titles like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy and various other franchises. Honestly, I don’t think it’s good for that. If I would be Steam, I would have only allowed indie or start-up developers to make their big entree in the market.

Scary

I’m also afraid that the ease of DLC for developers on Steam might slowly be the new norm. The satire game DLC Quest might become the future reality one day. In this game, you can’t even go left at the start of the game. You have to buy the DLC for it when you have enough in-game coins. And I have this one game called Tomb Raider that has a big load of DLC and yeah, I bought it all. Just because I hate when I don’t have the complete package.

One of the final issues I can come up with is maybe one of the scariest things. The fact you and those developers become independent (Edit: Thanks for noticing my mistake here BloodCat.) from one company. Image how big of a catastrophe it would be if Steam went bankrupt. Or when they couldn’t handle the server load and much data is lost. Scary thought no? Or that they become so big that local game stores go out of business. Many jobs lost.

In conclusion

I can’t deny that platforms like Steam or Origin are great things. Many indie developers can show off their games. You can also buy games that your local game store might not offer. And if those stores are too far away, you can easily buy them on those platforms.

But if you look at it, there are big flaws in this system you can’t deny. I won’t go explaining them again since I talked about it in this article. I’m sure that I forgot some things in my article but I’m sure that I got the most crucial written down.

Maybe a good message is that you shouldn’t forget that there are retailers and various other things to get your games outside of Steam and Origin. It’s such a nice thing in our gaming culture so let’s not go to a culture where we sit in front of a computer and don’t much a muscle to get our games since you can easily get them on Steam.

3 games I wish I finished.

Thanks Nhi for creating this

As a hobby-blogger and game reviewer, I play a lot of games. Yet, I can’t succeed in finishing them all. One of my general rules is that I need to finish each game before I make a review of it. So, I can give this game a fair review. Since there can always be something in the end that makes or breaks the game. But with so many games that catch my interest, a gaming neko like myself can easily be distracted. Or I try to play a game and finish it but I play so many of them at once I barely can keep up. So, in this article I will talk about the games I haven’t finished yet and I wish I finished. (For what ever reason.) Of course there are more games I wish I finished but hey, let’s keep it at three for now. 

Okami (Wii)

I love myself some Japanese gaming culture and this game is truly a gem of it’s kind. Okami was originally released on the PS2. But I like the port to the Wii a lot more. Since this game was made for more free movement and the Wii delivers just that.

After finishing the amazing Okamiden on the DS, I directly wanted to play the original game on the Wii. I was blown away with the quality, graphics, music and level design.

Everything wasn’t perfect though, sometimes my Wii movements didn’t got recognized, making for some frustrating moments in the game. Also, the combat is just a joke to me. Waving the Wii Remote gives painful feelings after repeated action.

But why didn’t I finish this game? Well, I was nearing the end and when a friend of mine tried out the game, he saved over my save file by accident. And my save file back-up was so close from the start, that I decided to restart. But the fun is a bit gone since it doesn’t have that “new” freshness you get from a game. But this game is surely one I’m going to finish on calm periods.

Mirror’s Edge (PC)

Everybody who watches and follows my video’s on the YouTube, know that I’m extremely bad at parkour. But why do I play the game known for only parkour? Simple, because it’s a great game. I got this title for an extremely low price of 5€ and I played it always until a certain point.

Then other games start to distract me and I leave this game at this side unfinished. But I heard on the MindCrack podcast that it isn’t a long game anyways.

This game is pretty and really pulls you in. The graphics, music, level design or difficulty aren’t any factors of this game holding me back to finish it. Also, I didn’t follow the story the first time around. Which I of course regret since it was the game which I wanted to use to make my comeback as reviewer on my forum.

Till this day, this game often appears in the “What are you playing” thread for me since I play short bursts here and there and I’m anything but progressing in the game. I should actually start playing this game after publishing this article so I can finally make a review of this game.

Hopefully my terrible jumping skills aren’t going to hold me back for ever since that’s a reason why I don’t play this game for very long. Also this game asks a lot of my graphics card of my laptop so, that’s holding me back as well.

Mystic Quest (GB)

I was so excited when I got this game for the cheap at a garage sale. When I came home, it was the only game I played for a while. I even put aside my laptop to play this game with the use of my Super Gameboy and my SNES on my TV.

It really gave me a Zelda-vibe and really kept my attention with the game. The neat graphics, decent difficulty and interesting, yet somewhat generic story, keeps me interested to play.

So why have I stopped playing this game and not finished it? Well, simple. I got stuck and didn’t really found my way out, not even with the help of a walkthrough. So, I stopped playing.

But this game is one I am willing to finish. It’s collecting dust right now and as game collector I can’t let that happen. I’m not that kind of a collector.

So, any tips for this game are welcome in the comments. Maybe you can help me. I know that I defeated a dragon for some spell and that I need to find some holy water. See, my memories are getting vague, it has been that long since I played this game.

Final words

Of course, there are a lot more games I wish I finished. And not because they are bad, but simply because I got stuck or got distracted with another game.

Which games do you guys and girls wish you have finished? And why? And why isn’t it finished yet? Let me know in the comments down below. Anyways, that’s all for me. Thanks for reading and have an enjoyable remainder of your day.