Shattered Memories soundtrack

I've mentioned before that I'm really looking forward to Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. One of the things I anticipate most about a new Silent Hill release is listening to the soundtrack, and particularly the songs. The musical duo of Akira Yamaoka and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn have consistently produced some really awesome songs to go along with the series, a lot of which are never actually used in the games.

Some intrepid soul has uploaded what appears to be the full soundtrack to the game, so here's a mini-review of each of the four songs featured:

Hell Frozen Rain



I'm assuming this is the "main" theme of the game, as the rockier, fast paced pieces like One More Soul to The Call from Homecoming and You're Not Here from Silent Hill 3 usually are (Room of Angel is a major exception). Hell Frozen Rain doesn't quite reach the same heights as those two, but it's a great song nonetheless. The sound is recognizably Yamaoka, but with a more pop-music tone and less of a rock feel. "Lighter" is the only word I can use to describe it. One segment starting at around 3:50 in particular sounds like something from a catchy pop ballad from the 90's, which I guess goes to show how versatile Yamaoka is.

 The guitar solo right before that is a remix of a solo from Theme of Laura, interestingly enough, probably my favourite non-vocal Yamaoka piece. I'm guessing it's in there to reinforce the game's theme of memories and familiar things being twisted and changes.

Acceptance



I swear to God I've heard this somewhere before, but I can't quite think where. The opening segment in particular feels like something I listened to years ago and have forgotten.

This is another case of keeping in familiar elements while trying something new- the synth piano tones in the background are classic Silent Hill, but the tinkly notes definitely aren't. It's like seeing something familiar under a layer of ice.... which, I guess, is entirely appropriate. Well done, Mr. Yamaoka.

The slower Silent Hill songs have always been a bit hit and miss for me, and that goes for this one. Like I said, it's very evocative with a definite "wintery" feel, and I can imagine it being used very effectively in the game, but I don't think I'll have it on my iPod to listen to regularly.

Interestingly, the lyrics to this and Hell Frozen Rain seem in a lot of ways to be about Cheryl even though they also have obvious applications to Harry's situation. It's not a bad song- in fact it's quite beautiful- just not very enjoyable to listen to.

When You're Gone



Like the previous two songs, this is classic Yamaoka, in this case his harder rock songs like You're Not Here, with some unfamiliar sounds mixed in. There's a bit of a country feel to it, with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's vocal delivery differing quite a bit from what we usually here from her.

I'm always impressed with how Yamaoka manages to make a soundtrack that fits together to give a unified impression, and even though When You're Gone is very different to Hell Frozen Rain and Acceptance, it still seems to fit in with them perfectly.

The song is a bit shallower and more forgettable than what we're used to in Silent Hill, but it's very fun to listen to. And while inserting the name of the game/movie/series into the lyrics usually comes across as cheesy, here it's done well and seems to fit the lyrics well.

Always on My Mind



One of the most interesting tracks here, this is a cover of an Elvis Presly song that's apparently been done by a lot of country singers in the past.  Listening to the original, this is definitely very different and it's really interesting to hear such an unfamiliar sound being put through the Silent Hill filter. Since the lyrics of the other songs reflect the game so strongly, I'm interested to see if this was chosen because it has some sort of thematic relevance to the game.

I said that Hell Frozen Rain is probably the game's theme song, but after listening to this song I have to change my evaluation. There's a real feeling of power and emotion here and while it's not my favourite song in the soundtrack, I think it would serve as the main theme better than any of the other three.Similarly to Hell Frozen Rain using part of Theme of Laura, there's a recurring background track here that I'm fairly certain is liften directly from one of the songs from Origins.

I think Yamaoka went a little overboard with the snythesized sounds here- I would love to have a remix of this with guitars and more natural sounding instruments.


Overall, this isn't the best soundtracks Yamaoka has ever done, but as a Silent Hill music fan I'm fully satisifed with it. None of the songs blew me away as at least one from each game usually does, but at the same time there are none I don't care for at all, which wasn't the case with all of Yamaoka's other soundtracks.

It's interesting to hear such a different sound coming from Yamaoka, and while he doesn't always pull it off- like I said, the synthesized sounds are a bit overdone- I can appreciate the attempt to do something new.

I must add the caveat that Yamaoka's music is tied strongly to the game it's produced for. Even songs that aren't used in the game really only come into their own once you've played it, so I'll have to revaluate my opinion once I've beaten Shattered Memories.

Morality in Video Games Part 2

I just found this neat little flash game in the latest PC Gamer that you should all play right now. Here's a link.

I'm going to put some long-winded thoughts on this after the jump. I really recommend you play it first, though. Don't even look at the screenshots or the plot description- just go in blind.

Dragon Age impressions

I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins (henceforth referred to as Dragon Age because "Origins" is the most cliched video game title ever) a whole lot lately.

I'm not a big fantasy fan, mainly due to just how cliched and derivitave the whole genre is. This goes double for video games, where your usual Tolkien/ Dungeons and Dragons archetypes seem to rule the day (the big exception being the two World of Warcraft expansions). At first glance Dragon Age seems to follow the same template- elves, check, underground dwarves, check, medieval human kingdoms, check. But the more I play the more the game seems to be using these worn out cliches in new and interesting ways. The elves are former slaves who live in run down "alienages" in cities and in no way resemble the usual glowy immortal ethereal beings. There are Dalish elves who live in forests and stick more closely to the old ways, but even they're way more down to earth than usual. The dwarves really get a unique angle, in that they're portrayed as a pile of scheming political backstabbers. Which, when you think about it, makes sense for an insular, enclosed community.

This attention to detail extends throughout the game. The world feels fully fleshed out and real- characters from Orlais, the nation that ruled Ferelden for centuries, have distinct accents, a unique culture and even distinct styles of clothes. The religion of Ferelden seems like something that could actually exist in real life. As I play the game I keep noticing little details, like the way Chantry priest's robes have more sun-like details with increasing rank, or the way most commoner women don'ty cover their shoulders. None of this is explicitly pointed out and explained (although most things are, by way of an extensive automatically updating codex), they just sink into your subconscious as you play. It feels as if every detail was included because it makes sense for it to be there, not because the developers just thought it would be cool.

I'm playing as an elf, and the game provides one of the best examples of "fantastic racism" I've ever seen in fiction. The way this usually goes is that the story will be peppered with straw-man parodies of racism, almost always on the evil side. Everyone is either a bleeding-heart progressive or totally and irredeemably consumed with irrational hatred. There is no in between*. In Dragon Age the whole situation is almost startilingly more realistic and nuanced. You very rarely meet people who are out and out hostile, but you do frequently encounter completely freindly and helpful characters who are extremely prejudiced, and don't realise they are. In one particularly hilarious moment, one of my party members- probably the kindest and most friendly in the group- started telling me about elven servants in Orlais and came out with a stream of unknowingly racist comments. As she obliviously dug herself in deeper my character's choice of non-hostile responses dwindled until there was no diplomatic way to end the conversation.

That's another thing I love about Dragin Age: it has a sense of humour. Far too often fantasy writers seem to think the invention of humour coincided with the discovery of electricity.

I've still got a ways to go- I'm not even halfway through the game and I've been playing for over 30 hours- so I'll leave off any comments about the combat and gameplay until I've finished the game.



* this is one of my only really big gripes with Harry Potter series, although to be fair Rowling was a bit more subtle when it came to non-human species like house elves and werewolves.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and the SH fandom

I'm a huge Silent Hill fan, in the sense that I love the Silent Hill games to bits. However, I also love Silent Hill Homecoming to bits, and that statement probably disqualifies me from being a True Fan in the eyes of many.

A little background information may be needed here for those of you not versed in the lore of survival horror fandom: Silent Hill fans are totally batshit insane.

Okay, that's not fair. Allow me to explain. Silent Hill is a long running series of games with a relatively small but extremely devoted fan following. I'm sure everyone has encountered this sort of insular community before- most people will be part of one- and you'll know that it tends to be a breeding ground for nit-picking and snobbery. Case in point: way back when, it was announced that Silent Hill Homecoming, the fifth entry in the series, would be developed by an American company, Double Helix, rather than Konami (or more specifically "Team Silent", a largely notional group of developers within Konami).

Immediately there was a massive fan backlash predicting that the series was Ruined Forever. Some people decried the fact that the game was in the hands of a relatively unknown studio, some resented the fact that an American company was making it, and pretty much everyone hated the idea of a Silent Hill game being made by anyone other than Team Silent (Origins, being a prequel and initially handheld-only, was seen at the time as a side project and didn't really count as the true "next" Silent Hill game after The Room).

As more details about the project came to light the fans picked over and complained about every little detail, from the over the shoulder camera to the fact that the game had an energy bar. As it turned out the consenus on Homecoming from the media and the fans was that the game was mediocre at best. Personally I loved it, but I can see why, after playing it, most people didn't. But most people also didn't wait to play it before deciding they didn't like it.

I'm trying to make the point here that a large portion of Silent Hill fans are extremely clingy and resistant to change, with the result that the series has stagnated over the years, with sequels that were pretty much the same as their predecessors. Homecoming was an attempt to breathe some much needed life back into the series and met with fierce fan backlash for doing so.

Seeing all of this Climax, the developers of Silent Hill Origins and apparent possesors of balls of steel, decided that Homecoming didn't go nearly far enough. Which is why in a few scant weeks we're getting a remake of the first game that's totally and completely different in almost every way from any of the previous Silent Hill titles, and I for one can't wait.

I don't quite agree with Yahtzee that sequels should be made by people who didn't like the original game, but I support the idea that simply churning out the same thing over and over again is never a good thing. Let's take Mario games as an example. Now the Mario series has spun off into a multitude of different franchises, most of which are composed of lazy cookie-cutter sequels (I'm looking at you, Mario Kart Wii), but the "main" franchise of platformers has always shown an admirable willingness to try new things. After Mario 64 came out and promptly became one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, Nintendo could have just made an identical sequel and watched the cash come rolling in. God knows the fans wanted them to, and still do to this day. Instead they made Mario Sunshine, which..... was quite good, but not nearly as good as it's predecessor. After that the temptation to go back to what worked must have been matched only by the number of people urging them to do so.

Instead they produced Super Mario Galaxy, which came out in 2007 to universal critical acclaim and which I personally consider to be the best game ever made. Trust me when I say that there were a lot people who held Mario 64 on a pedestal and resented every facet of Galaxy that was different from their 64-bit idol. The Mario franchise is one case where the developers in charge of a series have refused to bow to this sort of video game ancestor worship, and it resulted in a modern masterpiece (and never mind that there's a sequel coming out next year that's pretty much identical to the first one- I'll let that one slide since Mario Galaxy was so good and New Super Mario Bros is coming out as well. Just don't make a habit of it, Nintendo).

The Silent Hill series is one case where the opposite holds true, and it's resulted in Silent Hill going from being the undisputed king of the horror genre to a largely sidelined and margianlized franchise only appreciated by die-hard fans. Sticking to what worked before doesn't always run a series into the ground- the Zelda games started to get stale years ago, but they're still as good as they've always been. However, it's never done what fans want it to do- create the sort of beloved masterpiece that represents the series at it's percieved peak, whether it's Mario 64 or Silent Hill 2.

To get back to the supposed point of this post: Shattered Memories. Climax is really going out on a limb by throwing out almost all of the traditional Silent Hill tropes and replacing them with something that most fans wouldn't even recognize as a Silent Hill game if you didn't tell them it was one beforehand. Will Shattered Memories be the Mario Galaxy of the Silent Hill series? It's too early to tell, but I do know that we'll never reach that point if no one has the balls to try, fans be damned.

V remake episodes 1 and 2

Hollywood's obsession with creating nostalgia-fuelled movies around things people watched/played with during their childhood and teenage years has spread to TV. Be afraid.

Or not. While the craze for movies based on old properties has produced such drivel as the Transformers and GI Joe movies, and seems to have reached it's psychotic apex in the form of the planned Viewmaster movie (no, really), in TV land people are producing remakes that actually make sense, such as an upcoming miniseries based on British mindscrew classic The Prisoner and a modernisation of V, the quality of which will be judged below the jump.

Paranormal Activity review

It bothers me a lot that most modern horror films don't pass my Horror Movie Quality Criteria (patent pending). The criteria are as follows:

1) The movie must contain less than one explosion
2) The movie must contain at least five seconds of frightening footage

 You'd think more horror films would be able to manage that, but apparently not. Thankfully paranormal activity, the original 2007 cut of which I got a chance to see yesterday, is both explosion free and features far more than five seconds of the good stuff.

[spoilers below! Don't read if you haven't seen it]

Runaways Volume 09 review

I'm not a big fan of superhero comics. The sprawling contuity and back story is one problem, as is the constant shift of writer and artist, but mostly it's because they're just silly. I like Batman in the movies, where he fights criminals and super villains who seem as if they could actually exist. I like the X-Men films because they introduce one fantastic element- a genetic mutation that grants super powers- and build the entire plot, villains and all, on that concept. I liked Superman Returns because Superman was fighting a human opponent and himself and kryptonite were the only sci-fi elements present, both of which came from a single source.

But contrast that to the comics, where Batman is suddenly running around in a garish purple suit he got in another universe or something, the X-Men fight freaking aliens and Superman stumbles into five alternate dimensions every time he trips over the mantle and all of this is crossed over with five hundred other stories, all of which are just as wierd and ouch my brain hurts.

More so than the inability of super hero stories to focus on one damn story at a time, it's just impossible to take the characters seriously. I cannot feel any empathy with someone who calls themselves [insert animal/concept]man and who runs around all day in a skintight latex outfit. Now you might say that the movies I just claimed to like suffer the same problem, but they also go to great lengths to make their characters seem more human. Movie Wolverine feels like a real person, whereas comic Wolverine feels like, well, Wolverine.

Which is why I love Runaways. There's all sorts of crazy shit going on here- aliens, time travel, robots, mutants, you name it, this series has it, but it's established right from the beginning that the story is going to be a melting pot of different concepts. You don't start off with a comic about, say, a super hero with the ability to control electricity fighting gangs (why yes I have been playing inFamous) and then suddenly there are aliens invading for no apparent reason. The aliens were always there, as were the time travellers and the evil geniuses and what have you, so it's no great surprise when the biblical giants come along.

But the big reason I like Runaways is because the characters are real people, not super heroes. They refer to each other by their real names and wear ordinary clothes. They're teenagers with super powers, not super powers awkwardly shoved into a human frame.

With that rather long winded introduction over, lets look at the latest volume of Runaways!

Shattered Horizon looks pretty cool

I recommend you watch the following video.

I don't know how well it will actually play, but in concept this is probably the most intruging first-person game I've seen since Mirror's Edge. Come to think of it, the graphical style is actually pretty similar.

Also, is that a totally awesome logo or what?