5 Favorite VG Original Soundtracks

It's high time I shoot myself in the foot! Not only is this a numbered list of things people can actually comprehend and have their own opinions on, but it's about music! Something no other person in the world will agree with!

Just take this time to see if there's something new out there to hear. I'm trying to pick things that are less popular (IE no Zelda, Metroid, Halo, Call of Duty, or God of War) although- admittedly- a couple of these are extremely popular and well known for their music. Also, each soundtrack has to have at least THREE good songs.

Whatever the case, just click the links!

5. Double Dragon

Here's a good example. This was a pretty popular game, but I don't think it's held in people's memories for its music nearly as much as it should. Definitely as good as Zelda, just that this stuff is more about fist-fighting and mayhem instead of a hero's journey.

Try to not bounce up and down when you hear Mission 4.

It's also a good soundtrack to demonstrate the limitations of video game hardware and software of the time. Mission 1 showcases some of the most memorable ideas, but what the hell is up with the beat? The "drummer" is just beating the crap out of ONE cymbal. You can hear how thin the sound is from an NES since there's only four channels (five if the developer uses the Sample channel, which most didn't) and each one can only play a single note at a time. Chords and echo required using up those other channels. Listening to this, I'm guessing the composer is just some coder guy with little to no musical training. Which is actually another limitation some games had since games back then had no budget.

But man. Whoever this guy is, he's got some great ideas. Just listen to Mission 2. It sounds like a tense fight is about to break out, but then everyone must be break dancing or something. Then things get tense again before some fanfare lights up out of nowhere.

This is also an example of a game where I remember most of the music, but not a lot of the game. Video games were stupidly difficult to the point of being almost unplayable back then.

4. Dynasty Warriors 4

How can I not talk about this game? If you know me, you know I love metal. But it takes effort for me to notice a metal soundtrack. You can't just have distorted guitars mashing power chords alongside double kicks. No, you've got to have MEANING and SUBSTANCE. Like Struggle for Existence. It conveys exactly what the title says... only with guitars! And that weird Chinese violin thing.

There's even a sense of nostalgia when I listen to Look Back on Your Way; thinking on all the thousands of people I killed... uh, I mean KO'ed... just to achieve victory. But for whaaaaat? I suppose that question would be deeper if I wasn't sincerely confused on what was accomplished in all these battles.

And who could forget good ol' Lu Bu's Theme? This is the best version of it that I've heard.

3. Contra

Here's another one that's really big. Arguably another metal entry, too. But I don't think this game gets nearly enough credit. I often measure how popular a game is by how well I feel people remember it versus Legend of Zelda's theme. And Contra is not remembered nearly well enough! It's got like 6 Zelda theme quality songs in it! Start of with Waterfall. The tense intro, the funky bass call and return, and those awesome dual "guitars."

And I can't think of a song that has more gung ho, charging-into-battle feel to it than Energy Zone. That song is as masculine and heroic as the two protagonists on the cover.

Now, I wanted to avoid talking about Enemy Base. But I don't think I can, man. It's burned into my brain with how often it plays in the game and how repetitive it is by itself. I hope it's the first time you've heard it, because I remember back when this was the perfect theme to come on when blasting my way through a pseudo-3D enemy base.

2. Castlevania 3

This is supposed to be a big franchise. But for the life of me I never seem to meet people who have played the Castlevania games. I never did as a kid. So this gets bonus points for finding me without the aid of nostalgia. I've started thinking of this franchise as being like the cool kid game... or something. It was dark and had evil monsters, so maybe most parents didn't want us kids playing it. At any rate, tell me this isn't the most gangster vampire slaying music you've ever heard: Stage 3. Blade would be proud.

The way these songs swerve and dance around the beat so fancifully, I really can't help but think of these as being some kind of super technical rap songs. Like, if rap had melody and structure. You know? If it was a form of music that was performed by professional adults rather than buffoonish children. Uh, that was harsh. Here's another of the break-dancing gangster style: Stage 1.

There was that time when rap and rock were merging together. I guess that still happens. Why not classical music and rap? Am I completely crazy to think these things? Yeah, more than likely. Don't forget Stage 7, yo.

1. Silver Surfer

Holy crap! To me, this is the granddaddy of the lost NES soundtrack classics. I think it has some cult following, but not enough to where your average Mario fan recognizes it. So it belongs at the damn top! I can never get over this thrash-metal-fusion-cosmic-what's-it stuff! Listen to Level 2 and compare it to the other NES tracks here. While Mr. Follin has the advantage of using the Sample track, you can hear just how much fuller and more alive his songs are. He's a technical wizard, he is, and even uses audio illusions to achieve some of his stuff.

I'm not too informed on the electronica scene, but the Title Screen sounds like the genre's posible conception. Is 1990 far back enough to take credit for that? Doesn't really matter either way since this is just like Castlevania in that it goes way outside the contraints of the genre I'm talking about. Man, you can just hear the story unfolding just from the music!

And, of course, what would Silver Surfer be without funk? The High Score lets the player know just how funky you gotta be to hang with this space-truckin' groovemaster.





WAIT?

No Mega Man?!

Yeah, I think... I HOPE Mega Man gets enough credit. I think he does. Two and Three are like the modern day Beethoven's 5th... of video game music. Here, let's end this post with the best ending/credits theme of all time: Ending Part 3!

Halo 4

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: First Person Shooter

ESRB: M (For firing lots of bullets at weird abstract art)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 16/6 (including Spartan Ops for thorough)

Developer: 343 Industries 

Wiki page

The fight was over only if you don't understand how business works. Microsoft has a top-selling product here, so of course there was going to be another sequel. It's said that video games cost three times that of a movie ticket, so consumers are three times pickier when it comes to buying them. This, in turn, is why publishers are so obsessed with putting out sequels since they know it'll sell. So 343 Industries has been tracing the steps of Bungie in order to prepare themselves for when they would inevitably take the reins. These guys have been pretty humble about it, too. When you beat the game there's a note from the team thanking the player for going through their version of Halo. Imagine my surprise when I find out how superficial their knowledge of Halo is.

By the way, Master Chief's name is apparently "John." John... Spartan?

From what I remember (and what I read on the Halo 3 wiki) the war with the Covenant had ended. Especially of note was that the Elites had dropped out of the Covenant. But wouldn't you know it? They're somehow back and shooting bullets at the space-wandering Master Chief. Not that the lore or story to Halo has ever mattered to me. Master Chief shoots aliens and not much else makes sense about it. Like that Gravemind thing in Halo 2. What was THAT? Anyway, I won't go into any spoilers (as usual) but this game seems to be all about pushing buttons. Basically, the Forerunners and the Covenant make it a point to install "make us lose" buttons all over the damn place. Cortana just keeps telling the player which button needs to be pushed next. And then when you do, a bunch of monsters spawn all around you. It's one thing to make a game a forgettable, plotless action game. But to make it feel redundant and pointless is a problem. The ending of this game is mind-blowingly stupid, too, and it involves this big, bad final boss that you defeat with an incredibly simple and anti-climactic mini-game. Easily as bad as Mass Effect 3's ending. I'd say WORSE. Although it's obvious I'm biased for Mass Effect... come on.

And "Forerunner" sounds like "Foreigner." I don't want to shoot at Foreigner!

Gameplay remains the strongpoint of the franchise. But only because of all the things that were already in place. All the bad guys, vehicles, guns, and physics tuning were designed in previous games by Bungie; the original developer of the series. The new enemies in this game are incomprensible in appearance and story. I can't tell the different Knights apart, I didn't know they had shields until I looked it up, they have a confusing not-dead-yet animation, and they disintegrate when they die. They're supposed to be digital people or something? And there are dogs that bark bullets at you? The guns they use have floating parts that transform for no reason. The new guns in this game are simply other guns in the game but with tweaked stats. For example, the Boltgun is a pistol that can be charged up so it's a combination of the Magnum and the Plasma Pistol. And the Forerunner rocket launcher is jut like the human rocket launcher except it hits HARDER.

Yay loadouts!

What would a Halo game be without multiplayer? For the first time, Halo sports customized loadouts. Unlike Halo Reach, which only pretended to have loadouts. They've also introduced ordinance drops, perks, and kill cams so it's more like Call of Duty. But don't worry, the game is still exactly like Halo; just with more stuff. If I were to rate just this one section of the game, I would have given it three stars. But there's another multiplayer feature that's been introduced: Spartan Ops. And it's inexplicably come at the cost of removing the Firefight mode. It's a cool idea, but the execution is so repetitive, lazy, and badly written that it's not even worth the time to play. It's little missions that play like extensions of the Halo 4 campaign, but guess what it has you do? Push more buttons. Buttons... buttons everywhere. Your commanding officers are bored and disinterested as they yell at you to push the next button, not offering any kind of depth or characterization. I don't know why 343 even bothered with any story at all. And to top it all off the maps used are very limited and are copied from other parts of the game.

Conclusion:

While Halo 4 offers a robust amount of gameplay and endless multiplayer fun featuring triple A polish, so much of the game is a blunder that I can't give it a full recommendation. If you haven't played it already, don't worry too much about it.

All 3 Mass Effect 3 Paid DLC

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Third person cover shooter; Sub-Genre: RPG

ESRB: M (same stuff you'd find in ME3)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/4

Developer: BioWare 

Wiki page

To clarify, this doesn't include any of the free DLC nor does it include the Javik DLC, or item/skin DLC's. This is just the three released post-launch that fill out the campaign story and I can only think to refer to as "proper DLC" since it actually includes content and costs money (although free DLC is very very nice). That means this review is about three pieces of content: Leviathan, Omega, and Citadel. I've talked a lot about this damn game, but this is a good opportunity for me to review DLC. Other reviewers do that stuff, you know. The thing is, though, I hate DLC. There's a potential in it that I like and I can respect the smart business of giving rich people a way to part with their money for cheater items and vanity crap. But I simply loathe these dinky two hour snippets of gameplay that are intertwined within the normal story. Why? Because I already played through the whole game by the time they come out! I don't want to come back to it just for a measly couple hours, especially after the story is done, and most games I only beat once so I'm not going to replay it just for the sake of DLC. Except with a game like Mass Effect. It's a series I care about enough that I want to come back to it again. Also there is replay value in choosing a new class and seeing the universe with different choices. All that being said, I still hate this method of story-telling. Really, if not for the handicap of "being DLC" I would give this content a 1 out of 3. Didn't expect me to rate this so low, huh? Check it out.

Yay, mystery!

I'm doing these in chronological order of when each piece of content was released. So first up is Leviathan. If I had played this when it first came out, I might have had more hope for the coming DLC's. This is arguably the strongest entry here as it actually assists the story in providing additional lore, fitting tone, and being a kind of long side quest that I wished the game could have featured instead of all those fetch quests on the Citadel. Of course, if ME3 had quests like this in place of ALL the ones it does feature then it probably would need a development cycle that would have been three times longer. Despite all this praise, this doesn't live up to how good the three ME2 DLC's were. I'll talk more about those later, but my last note on this is that some of the acting and writing is awkward in this. Especially at the start of it. I do wish it was better because it's all downhill from here.

Mass Effect's "Mos Eisley cantina." Good for a shoot out.

Next comes Omega, which I would say is as good as Leviathan except for two things: major missed potential and an inexplicable 50% price increase. The latter item is easy to explain by asking, "Why does this DLC cost $5 more?" I honestly don't know the answer to that. But where it missed its potential is in its limited content. Without giving any spoilers, this is about liberating the Omega space station for its owner, Aria (that description is available in the download and is explained when you first meet up with Aria). When it's all said and done, the player is not able to go to Omega. You literally teleport from Citadel space, get locked into this long quest, then teleport back to Citadel space. It is a rather lengthy mission, but for $15? And you can't even bring any squadmates with you and the two the game does give you do not follow you through the rest of the game. That's three things I wanted out of this DLC that I did not get. Leviathan doesn't give me two of those things, sure, but it didn't ask for 50% more money to deliver the same amount of content. But more content isn't always the answer. The next entry is a good example of this.

When I go "duh" it makes a "duh" sound!

Citadel was the most recent release, and what a mixed bag this is. On the one hand, it gives you a beefy amount of stuff that should easily be worth the $15. On the other, it's really ... REALLY dumb. The setup seems simple enough: Shepard tries to take some shore leave but ends up falling into another of his/her bullet-filled adventures. It gives you a house, filling the needs of players who felt they needed a housing feature in a non-open world game that already has infinite storage and a limited continuity. I'm being sarcastic because I really have no idea who asked for housing when all I want is my damn hover tank from ME2's DLC and to get to explore some planets with it. And you can customize it with an incredibly limited pool of swappable furniture, so there you go. There's also an arcade with a few mini-games that aren't terrible for the 5 minutes of entertainment they provide. But the best feature this DLC provides is an arena. A very, very cliche thing for an RPG to have, I know, but I still love it. It provides some quests, rewards, and a way to farm money with a nifty little match customizing interface so it almost redeems this DLC by itself. Almost. Unfortunately, this DLC must have had either the B or C team of writers working on it. Instead of the seriousness and infrequent dry humor of Mass Effect, it has constant bad humor by way of forced one-liners. Seriously, every line of dialogue is a one liner. Just imagine Star Trek: The Next Generation versus the Star Trek TNG movies. Yeah! Out of character, wrong tone, and the story doesn't even make sense. I really don't get the motivations for the villains in this one. And this is coming from a guy who found the cosmic mumbo jumbo from the Reapers and the Leviathan to be acceptable. My only guess is that BioWare realized that ME3 is too much of a downer, so they injected some Jay Leno to lighten up the mood. Naturally that makes it much more depressing so... oops!

Vehicle exploration is officially completely absent from ME3 and its DLC.

To restate, I really don't know how to rate DLC because I don't like how it's executed. But you know what actually convinced me to keep giving DLC a try (when it's for a game I like)? Mass Effect 2. Yup. All three of its DLC pieces were solid. Overlord featured vehicle exploration and a cool Tron-like section. Lair of the Shadow Broker had some great set pieces and had a car chase, offering the most thrilling adventure of the three, and also gave the player additional little features like a form of housing (sorta) and the ability to see Liara again (although she doesn't stay with your team). Lastly, Arrival was completely essential to the story in bridging ME2 and ME3, in addition to just generally being an acceptable piece of DLC. Also, these were priced at $7, $10, and $7 respectively.

I don't blame BioWare, though, I blame EA. BioWare gets rushed to death to make these games.

Conclusion:
If you really love Mass Effect or love it a little and love the concept of DLC then these are all decent entries. None of them stand out as fully adding to the game or being exceptional on their own, so don't get too excited.

WWE '13

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Fighting; Sub-Genre: Sports Sim, Wrestling

ESRB: T (Lots of shirtless dudes getting hit with stuff)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 8/2

Developer: Yukes 

Wiki page

I'm done with this game series. Get a new developer, please. Many games are accused of just releasing the same game over and over but with minor tweaks so they can call it a sequel (Call of Duty, Madden, Dynasty Warriors, etc), but this series takes the grand prize for it. Why? Because the games have gotten WORSE. I should be able to put "infinite" up there for gameplay hours, but it can't even hold my attention through the campaign. And the 2 hour mark is just the amount of time you can spend screwing around in create-a-character before getting bored since that's the best thing to do in these games. I'm guessing the only reason other critics don't pan it as much as I do is because there aren't other wrestling games out there to compare it to. Unless you have a freaking memory like I do. Just from starting this game up I found six major things to be missing from previous iterations:

1. Create-a-taunt

2. Explore 100% of backstage area

3. 4 player campaign mode

4. Targeting that worked

5. Hit point system that made sense

6. Full UI

Tearing it up backstage...yes! And this is PS1 era!

Here's an inherent problem with any wrestling game: they don't care about hit stun mechanics. See, in a proper fighting game there is attention to how easy it is for one fighter to lock the other down with a barrage of attacks. Typically attacks will push the fighters apart so eventually they can't reach one another and the recovery from being hit leaves enough time to evade damage from improperly timed combos. In a wrestling game, EVERYTHING can be used to stun lock an opponent. And, of course, you can hit your enemy when they are on the ground or getting up. The only feature in place to prevent every single battle from devolving into "he who lands the first punch wins" is an incredibly awkward and random counter system. And WWE '13 has done nothing to improve on this situation. On top of that, the targeting system in this game is remarkably unresponsive, slow, and ultimately useless. Seriously. If I'm targeting my opponent and perform a grab I can accidentally grab my own teammate if he's close enough. Instead of the game understanding that I seriously do not want to DDT my tag partner, leaving myself vulnerable and alone, my guy just follows through while thinking, "Oops, might as well. Not like I could just let go of him or something." The best way to avoid this is to fight in one-on-one, but then you'll still subject yourself to all the other terrible gameplay decisions. Animations are more "realistic" these days, so that means they are stupidly awkward, lethargic, and difficult to connect. Damage is not explained at all. Back in the day everyone just had a life bar like in Street Fighter or what-have-you. Hit a guy in the head 35 times with a steel chair and he still will get back up after being knocked out for approximately zero seconds. Oh, but he'll clutch his temple in pain, I guess.

Generally the audience believes that this would hurt. Video games disagree.

For some reason it was decided that campaign modes would be added to recreate the mid to late 90's storylines going on in the WWE. There was a heated ratings war with WCW and it lead to an amazing jump in viewership for the program, sure, but why is this the foreground in a game named after the current generation? Games like Legends of Wrestlemania are a celebration of nostalgia, and that's cool, but why drag the kids through this when they paid to see CM Punk or whoever? My best guess is that the people who watched back then were teenagers and are now adults. Or, more specifically, adults within the specific demographic that spends the most money on video games. So... marketing. Whatever. What does this mean for the game? Nothing much, really. It's an idea. But I really didn't care about it at all. I want to run my create-a-character around and mess up the WWE universe. If you don't do the objectives it's fun to think that you're messing up history by ending matches differently than they're supposed to and causing paradoxes, but time won't actually implode on itself. Missing objectives just means missing unlockables. WWE has some good archivists to dig up all this stuff, so I'll give them that.

Oh man! Do you remember when this happened? Do you, huh huh huh?! REMEMBER!!!

One great thing about modern gaming is online multiplayer. Unfortunately I don't have a code to access it fully so I was limited to the trial stuff. It doesn't matter, though, because in my first match I realized that my opponents were taking the fight seriously. So I picked up the steel steps and hit the ref with them, rendering myself disqualified. I did this because I had already had enough of the game and this was just the last stop. It's unplayable, in terms of being a fighting game, so my patience for trying to actually fight anyone had run out. 

I also want to add real quick that the graphics in this game are bad. Vince McMahon looks like a mutant, no one has detailed texturing, and the audience is as blocky and fake as ever. This seriously looks like a last gen game with HD resolution. Garbage.

Conan, Val Kilmer, and a caveman in a suit? Who?
(Supposed to be Triple H, HBK, and Vince McMahon)

Conclusion:

Don't play this game. Either get an emulator and pick something out from the past (like RAW for SNES or Smackdown 2 for PS1) or wait indefinitely for some other developer to make a wrestling game that's actually fun.