Sound in Games: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Oh. My. Goodness.

I heard from rumblings in the Interwebs that this game was good, but I would never have expected it to be THIS FREAKING GOOD.

What a weird mind-trip of a game! Such memorable characters, crazy-ass plot, creative use of the DS hardware…

Oh yeah. Music. Right.

In this game, you play as Junpei, a college student, as he gets trapped in a replica of the Titanic playing the Nonary game against eight other contestants. The Nonary game is a game where one plays for his or her life – if they can escape through the number nine door, then they win. As such, betrayals, murders, and mistrust form around the group of people.

Visual novel games are often praised for excellent characterization and creative thinking in regards to storyline, and this game is no different – on top of the human drama that happens, crazy-ass plot lines such as unmeltable ice, morphogenic fields, telepathy, time travel, and parallel universes help bring this story to weird and bizarre heights.

This game, then, needs an appropriately bizarre soundtrack.

I don’t know how to describe the music. It is very reminiscent of thriller movies you’ll find today – maybe stuff from Taken or Bangkok Dangerous. Unlike these thriller movie soundtracks, though, this song has a definite main theme, which is the oscillating synths that go off in your different directions. Once you hear that sound, you know that something intense and fast-paced will happen in the game.

I love the track for how it creates tension by using very odd sounds – sirens, strange oscillating synths, and a very low-key percussion section. Yet, it works – the dissonance of the sounds create something rather unsettling and scary. Its relentlessness also drive home that time is of the essence here.

This track has a piano in it that comes in at around twenty seconds, but I love the intro for being dark and mysterious. The synth bass coupled with the gentle chimes create the feel of someone gently breathing down at your back, with something glimmering in their hands. When the piano comes in, the mood becomes something reminiscent of the X-Files; a dark mystery is unfolding, and you are to bear witness to it, whether you want to or not.

The game does have lighter music though – for instance, this track here. You hear it when you’re trying to solve the puzzles found within a room in order to escape. Different rooms use different songs, of course, and if I’m not mistaken, this one was used in the Kitchen. In either case, it still has that relentlessness found within the other tracks in the game, but this time with some much-needed tonality. If one is to keep tension running in any form of media, having something calming in the middle of it every once in a while will help the audience calm down and recalibrate, and in turn, remain engaged. So kudos to the composer!

This track is used whenever a mystery is being explained within the game. Appropriate choice for it too – it certainly evokes “super detective” moods and feelings when hearing it, especially with the synths setting up a calming tempo and gentle bells accompanying it. But this is not my favourite track, though.

This one is.

You hear this track whenever you get a “bad ending” in the game, which usually means imminent death. The track is, in one word, bad-ass. I love the sirens that go off in the distance, and the awesome guitar riffs that play. A rocking drum beat also accompanies this death metal-like dirge for the game over screen. I also love the syncopated rhythms that are being used in this track – it certainly adds to the unease of the song.

So yeah. I’d better stop before I keep ranting about the amazingness that this game is. Definitely play it!!! If you’re a fan of maddening mind-fucks in games, you need to play this game! It is excellent.

-FoA

Little Musics Here and There.

I got the permission to show you guys some of the music I was working on. : O

It’s all 8-bit! And cool!

It’s all the sexiness of Gravity Garden but done retro. And it’s sweet.

 

Have fun guys.

THERE WILL BE A SOUND IN GAMES THIS WEEK I PROMISE!!!

-FoA

Sound in Games: Starfox Adventures

I knew that Starfox Adventures was going to be a bit of an odd adventure – I just never knew how odd it would be. After playing it, I now understand why fans were quite riled up about this game. It really had almost nothing to do with the past Starfox games, and instead took inspiration from the Zelda series. Its voice acting never got any better. But the worst offender has to be the music.

Oh boy, the music…

The game itself is quite a smorgasbord of random things. You play as Fox McCloud, the Lylat System’s most respected and famous mercenary. Having taken down Andross several years ago, he was out of work until he gets a distress call from Dinosaur Planet. There, he’s assigned to save the planet from destruction from the evil General Scales. As such, you do a lot of foot exploration, and a lot less space ship battles that the Starfox franchise is more famous for.

I will give the composer some credit. David Wise has worked in Rare for many, many years, and his music is pretty much loved by the world over since he was the one who worked on Donkey Kong Country’s music. With that being said, this game does have great music. For instance:

You hear this track when you enter the first planetary area in the game, Thorntail Hollow. It pretty much sums up the game with its instrumentation and melody – you’re in a planet filled with dinosaurs. I don’t know if it was only me, but I felt a very strong vibe of “The Land Before Time” when I heard the track. It worked out great! Simple, primitive, and beautifully ambient.

But then you get tracks like this.

That irritating cello line gets me squirming every time. It’s really repetitive, and you hear it all the time whenever you fight any of the baddies in the game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well crafted and orchestrated, but it would have been a lot better if it wasn’t using MIDI instruments.

This was also a beautiful, ambient track. It played in a water temple section during the game, and the instrument choice helped reflect that mysteriousness. You had the gentle drums play with some rainshakers in the background, setting up the atmosphere of water. Then the melody kicks in with what sounds like a muted harp, again helping lend to that ambience.

To balance things out, here we have another bad-sounding track. I feel really bad for the composer! It is really well made, but the instruments just don’t lend the life and credibility it needs for this game. It makes me wonder why he couldn’t just work with real-life players.

Most importantly, though, it makes me wonder about its connections with Zelda.

This is the game’s item acquisition fanfare. I will give it some credit – if you listen carefully, you can hear that the first initial seconds were inspired from Starfox’s main theme music. It’s a great way to connect an important event within the game with the grander scheme of things.

…So why is it not any good?

Why is it, let’s say, not as good as this:

I suppose a few factors kick into play. The item get song for Starfox made Fox McCloud do the same canned animation over and over again, what with his face doing bizarre smiles and poses. Zelda’s item get song made Link do things differently – he might just open a chest, or he might receive an item from a character. But it didn’t have him do a ridiculously long victory pose and listen to a really bad item get fanfare.

I feel bad nitpicking this game. It really is a solid and fun adventure, though it has its own strange quirks and oddities. The graphics also hold up pretty well, and it breathes new life to a rather dormant franchise. But it’s rather unfortunate, but the music just kills the fun for me. There are some great tracks in the game, but personally, there are too many poorly made ones that make me cringe and kill the fun for me.

Do give the game a shot though, if you find it somewhere. It’s worth a playthrough, though don’t expect an audio masterpiece.

-FoA

Sound in Games: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

This game was largely ignored by the mainstream media, but I immediately fell in love with it when I first saw the trailer. Its bold and gorgeous graphical art style instantly sold me, and hearing the game’s rather angelic and ethereal music instantly put me in love with the game.

I’ve beaten the game some time ago, but never really got around to talking about the music until now. No time like the present!

This game must have been hard to promote to publishers. With the game taking inspiration from the Old Testament (yes, the Old Testament), you play as Enoch; the only man that has ever been allowed access to heaven. There, he serves as a scribe to God. However, with the angels beginning to fall in love with humans, and the humans in turn viewing the angels as gods, God decides to wipe out all life by a great flood. Enoch thinks this is a terrible idea, and instead enlists himself to return to Earth and reign in the rogue angels and bring them to justice. And so begins Enoch’s quest to save the world.

Being a story based on religious text, the developers were treading on some ridiculously thin ice – if they don’t stay true to the text, they will inevitably hurt a huge group of people, especially to the group that still follows the text. If they do stay true to the text, they’ll end up with a rather dull game. So what to do?

In my opinion, I think they solved it pretty easily; what would a person doing some rather serious drugs see if they started reading the story?

As a result you get a game that is undeniably Japanese – a game that takes inspiration from the strangest of places; a crazy smorgasbord of a soundtrack; and some bizarre yet undeniably lovable characters. The soundtrack is especially noteworthy (haha see what I did there?), since it uses the unique visual hook to create some truly unique music.

This is the song that pretty much ties the entire game together. Its unique use of a wide variety of percussion, crunchy yet ethereal choral lines, and its lovely use of seventh chords and parallel motion. I have a feeling that the composer working for the music of this game found a lot of inspiration from the French Impressionist composers such as Debussy or Satie, which is fitting; a lot of the game’s graphical look is very Impressionistic.

The Impressionist feel is especially prevalent in the beginning of this track. Listen to the chords gently slide from F to DM7, then to BbM7, and finally to GM7. Incidentally, the first note of each of those chords also outline a major seventh chord. This pattern continues downwards until the strings finally give a stable accompaniment as the horns carry the melody forward.

Remember how I said this game, despite taking inspiration from the Old Testament, is distinctly Japanese? This track is a great example why. It sounds like something out of the more modern Final Fantasy games, with its lively violin melody and frantic drum beat. Thankfully, it also features the lovely chordal progression that I have pointed out in the previous song, giving it a unique character and something easily recognizable.

…Yeah. A heavy metal song. Just give it a good listen. It might not rewrite the book, but having this song in this game and making it work is an achievement in and of itself.

This is one of my personal favorite tracks though. This plays whenever you die in combat, and I won’t spoil to you what happens when you do, but it was freaking creepy. And amazing.

This track is also a great example of the amazing range of influences that run through this game. You go from Impressionism to heavy metal to some crazy opera thing, and with this you venture into a world that’s similar to minimalism. The use of the heavily reverbed sitar and the gentle yet menacing ambient drums help give a sense of uneasiness.

I finally leave you with this. This track is really quite astonishing – it comes at a rather significant point in the game where Enoch travels to the place where the humans worship the fallen angels. Here, you see utter darkness and the blood-red tower that is in front of you, but below you, you see fireworks and you hear this joyous African-like hymn being sung by the people. It just helps outline the core philosophy of the game – this great battle between good vs. evil, and how it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

I love this game. I have five other tracks that I really want to show you, but I feel that I’ll just ruin the game if I do. Seriously, find this game and give it a go – it might not be your cup of tea, but it will leave you with a memorable and lasting impression.

-FoA