Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The World Ends With You
I have some kind of a bad habit. Once in a while, I'll go into a store selling books, video games or CDs, and there I'll look through the available items to finally end up buying something I know nothing about. That is, a good cover art and an unusual title can be enough to make me buy something. In this day and age, many would consider that a little dumb. Surely enough would it be better to write down the title of the interesting discovery, then check on the internet to see if it's really good or if it's just a cool package with a boring content.
But I only rarely do that, and when I do that doesn't mean I make the right choice: I researched before buying Electroplankton, and that was a quite expensive mistake. On the other hand, random buying introduced me to After Forever, Ayreon, the "His Dark Material" trilogy from Philip Pullman, and countless other great stuff.
So, not long ago, I walked into one of the video game stores I regularly go to, and browsed through the DS games they had for sale. I was almost done when one of them caught my eyes. Its title was rather unusual, and the art on the box looked classy enough. Only after I was out of the store did I take the time to read what was written on the back of the box, and find out that what I got myself was a new game by the RPG giant Square Enix : The World Ends With You.
I skimmed through the instruction booklet on my way home, and the more I read, the more it intrigued me. Square Enix, a company best known for their classic fantasy-styled RPGs, seemed to have come up with something really fresh, set in an urban setting.
The World Ends With You is about Neku Sakuraba, a teenager which is your typical angsty protagonist, unwilling to get to know those who are around him, in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of FFVII's Cloud or FFVIII's Squall at the start of their respective games. But at the beginning of his story, Neku wakes up lying in the middle of one of the world's most famous crossroads in the middle of Tokyo's Shibuya. Quickly, Neku gets attacked by strange frogs, and runs into Shiki Misaki, a girl with who he has to make a "pact" in order to be able to defeat those weird frogs. As the battle dust settles, things get explained a little : he's part of a game run by people called the "Reapers", and must complete a mission each day. And if he fails, he'll be "erased".
That's the basic plot of this modern tale, and believe me when I say there is a lot more : the story will twist and turn in many ways, some of them you can see coming, some not quite. But the plot, great as it is, isn't the first thing that'll grab your attention.
First is the overall "look and feel" of the game. Everything, from the characters' designs to the environment, including the in-game menus, are made to make the game feel "urban", or "in". And that works extremely well. Even if you didn't like Tetsuya Nomura's work for Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts, here it really fits well, giving the various protagonists a trendy look fitting for the game. As for the places you'll visit, they're pretty close transposition of the real Shibuya landmarks (you could find some of the places on a real map after playing the game), albeit with slightly changed names - the 109 building is 104 in the game, HMV becomes AMX, etc.
Your ears won't be left alone either. The game's soundtrack really compliments the visuals, with a great variety of style represented. Takeharu Ishimoto, a really talented up-and-coming Square Enix composer that worked on FFVII Crisis Core for example, put together a score composed of rock, electronica, pop and hip-hop, with around half of the songs having vocals performed by various artists. And that choice was really a good one, as it help you get immersed in the lively Shibuya.
And lively the game's Shibuya certainly is: dozens of sprites walk around the screen, making you feel like you're really making your way around a busy retail district.
As you progress through the game, the overall design continue to be spot-on, and fun, but what'll keep you playing are the countless great ideas that Square Enix put into their title. It is so full of neat gameplay elements that it's difficult to know where to start...
For one, the game's designers have succeeded in using two modern crazes to add to the experience : mobile phones and pins, or badges. The former is used as your menu, and is integrated nicely into the plot, so that you constantly use it, as would any other japanese teenager. The latter are one of the core aspects of the gameplay. Because to find the monsters (called the "Noise"), you'll need to use psychic powers contained in collectible pins. There are more than 300, so you'll have quite a bit of choice, from bullet-firing badges to healing pins.
And those pins are activated by doing various moves on the DS touchscreen. Drawing lines, slashing across enemies, tapping a spot repeatedly, shouting or blowing into the microphone, you'll have to do all that, and more. And even if that alone would make for a fun battle system, you'll also have to control your partner, who'll be fighting on the top screen.
I could go on and on about the myriad of things that make The World Ends With You an atypical yet awesome game. Like how brands and trends are important (you'll have to dress with the right attire if you want to be at the top of your abilities), how you can eat to raise your stat, but with a real-life time limit, how you gain experience by not playing the game (I'm serious ^^), how you can make the game as hard or easy as you like, or the huge replay value.
So if you want to test something fresh, with great concepts and with the careful attention to details that Square Enix can put into their games, do yourself a favor and buy The World Ends With You, you won't be disappointed. Even if you don't own a DS, I think this game alone would be a good enough reason to get one.
But I only rarely do that, and when I do that doesn't mean I make the right choice: I researched before buying Electroplankton, and that was a quite expensive mistake. On the other hand, random buying introduced me to After Forever, Ayreon, the "His Dark Material" trilogy from Philip Pullman, and countless other great stuff.
So, not long ago, I walked into one of the video game stores I regularly go to, and browsed through the DS games they had for sale. I was almost done when one of them caught my eyes. Its title was rather unusual, and the art on the box looked classy enough. Only after I was out of the store did I take the time to read what was written on the back of the box, and find out that what I got myself was a new game by the RPG giant Square Enix : The World Ends With You.
I skimmed through the instruction booklet on my way home, and the more I read, the more it intrigued me. Square Enix, a company best known for their classic fantasy-styled RPGs, seemed to have come up with something really fresh, set in an urban setting.
The World Ends With You is about Neku Sakuraba, a teenager which is your typical angsty protagonist, unwilling to get to know those who are around him, in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of FFVII's Cloud or FFVIII's Squall at the start of their respective games. But at the beginning of his story, Neku wakes up lying in the middle of one of the world's most famous crossroads in the middle of Tokyo's Shibuya. Quickly, Neku gets attacked by strange frogs, and runs into Shiki Misaki, a girl with who he has to make a "pact" in order to be able to defeat those weird frogs. As the battle dust settles, things get explained a little : he's part of a game run by people called the "Reapers", and must complete a mission each day. And if he fails, he'll be "erased".
That's the basic plot of this modern tale, and believe me when I say there is a lot more : the story will twist and turn in many ways, some of them you can see coming, some not quite. But the plot, great as it is, isn't the first thing that'll grab your attention.
First is the overall "look and feel" of the game. Everything, from the characters' designs to the environment, including the in-game menus, are made to make the game feel "urban", or "in". And that works extremely well. Even if you didn't like Tetsuya Nomura's work for Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts, here it really fits well, giving the various protagonists a trendy look fitting for the game. As for the places you'll visit, they're pretty close transposition of the real Shibuya landmarks (you could find some of the places on a real map after playing the game), albeit with slightly changed names - the 109 building is 104 in the game, HMV becomes AMX, etc.
Your ears won't be left alone either. The game's soundtrack really compliments the visuals, with a great variety of style represented. Takeharu Ishimoto, a really talented up-and-coming Square Enix composer that worked on FFVII Crisis Core for example, put together a score composed of rock, electronica, pop and hip-hop, with around half of the songs having vocals performed by various artists. And that choice was really a good one, as it help you get immersed in the lively Shibuya.
And lively the game's Shibuya certainly is: dozens of sprites walk around the screen, making you feel like you're really making your way around a busy retail district.
As you progress through the game, the overall design continue to be spot-on, and fun, but what'll keep you playing are the countless great ideas that Square Enix put into their title. It is so full of neat gameplay elements that it's difficult to know where to start...
For one, the game's designers have succeeded in using two modern crazes to add to the experience : mobile phones and pins, or badges. The former is used as your menu, and is integrated nicely into the plot, so that you constantly use it, as would any other japanese teenager. The latter are one of the core aspects of the gameplay. Because to find the monsters (called the "Noise"), you'll need to use psychic powers contained in collectible pins. There are more than 300, so you'll have quite a bit of choice, from bullet-firing badges to healing pins.
And those pins are activated by doing various moves on the DS touchscreen. Drawing lines, slashing across enemies, tapping a spot repeatedly, shouting or blowing into the microphone, you'll have to do all that, and more. And even if that alone would make for a fun battle system, you'll also have to control your partner, who'll be fighting on the top screen.
I could go on and on about the myriad of things that make The World Ends With You an atypical yet awesome game. Like how brands and trends are important (you'll have to dress with the right attire if you want to be at the top of your abilities), how you can eat to raise your stat, but with a real-life time limit, how you gain experience by not playing the game (I'm serious ^^), how you can make the game as hard or easy as you like, or the huge replay value.
So if you want to test something fresh, with great concepts and with the careful attention to details that Square Enix can put into their games, do yourself a favor and buy The World Ends With You, you won't be disappointed. Even if you don't own a DS, I think this game alone would be a good enough reason to get one.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
This isn't Helm and Grungi's thoughts on cucumbers; or, A Review of Utada Hikaru's HEART STATION
Introduction
After nearly two years since her last Japanese album hit the market, Utada Hikaru has released the follow up to her largely successful 'ULTRA BLUE,' entitled 'HEART STATION.' So when two sexy guys like Grungi Ankhfire and myself got our hands on the album, we decided to review it together and look at it from a multiperspectival view and combine our thoughts and analyses.
Here are some of the basics about the album:
Tracklist
1. Fight The Blues
2. HEART STATION
3. Beautiful World
4. Flavor Of Life -Ballad Version-
5. Stay Gold
6. Kiss & Cry
7. Gentle Beast Interlude
8. Celebrate
9. Prisoner Of Love
10. Take 5 (テイク 5)
11. Boku wa Kuma (ぼくはくま I'm a Bear)
12. Niji-iro Bus (虹色バス Rainbow Colored Bus)
13. Flavor Of Life (Bonus Track)
Much like ULTRA BLUE, HEART STATION has a lot of advance singles, six of them in fact, or seven if you count the bonus Flavor of Life, which appears twice on the album in the ballad and original mix forms. This means that half (or more) of the album has been heard already, so the exciting part of the album for those who have heard the singles already are, of course, the tracks that are only on the album.
So without further ado, let's get to some reviewin'!
Helm's Assessment:
Finally. It's felt a lot longer than it's actually been, but I've been really anticipating this ever since ULTRA BLUE came out and simply blew me away. I had never really followed Utada Hikaru before that, except for seeing the Keep Tryin' Promotional Video and liking her theme for the game Kingdom Hearts, Simple and Clean. ULTRA BLUE is easily one of my top J-Pop albums, and a favorite that I come back to every so often. I enjoy it every single time, so my expectations for HEART STATION were pretty high, of course.
So, finally HEART STATION arrived, and I listened. My first reaction upon finishing listening to this album was that "This is the best album I've heard so far in 2008." My second reaction, though, was that it feels like this has been done before, and it has--by Utada herself. I'm just going to say it: This is ULTRA BLUE 2. The album feels like an extension of ULTRA BLUE in the sense that the songs aren't very different sounding stylistically. There isn't anything surprising here: You still have Utada singing with several layers of her own voice over lots of simplistic micro-melodies that cling to your brain, which are accompanied by upbeat percussions, and to top it off they are of course expertly mixed and mastered. This is what Utada does and she does it well, however, it's not as good this time, and it might even be getting a little old. There is less variety, less Passion (pun alert!) and less originality.
In spite of that (and my caustic tone), these are still some very, very good songs that I enjoy quite a bit, with my favorite probably being Kiss & Cry, along with Heart Station, Fight the Blues, and Flavor of Life. Most of the new tracks are pretty good, although I wish there were more of them; I really feel like she releases too many advance singles and the album starts to feel like a compilation album, especially in the first half. (Also, Take 5 is cut tragically short...which may have been the idea.) The melodies that she made here are some of the strongest and best she's made. They're engaging, intricate and touching, yet they have trouble standing out when placed side by side, which leads to...
One of the problems that HEART STATION has is that it never bothers to really slow things down, and I think the album suffers a great deal because of it. The upbeat tempo throughout is almost nonstop. The singles she's released from the past 2 years that made it onto the album have been almost entirely uptempo, with the exception being Boku wa Kuma. These upbeat singles are stacked next to each other so tightly that it just feels like a big blur when I listen. This is due to the very apparent lack of pacing, and the album actually starts to sound kind of samey. The lack of breaks or changes in pace doesn't let the songs set themselves apart, and I think she realized this because she opted to put the Ballad Version of Flavor of Life in the fourth slot for this album. Why is this noteworthy? Simple, really. While I at first objected to the Ballad Version being there over the original mix, it's obvious to me now that the regular single version of Flavor of Life would blend in too much with the five tracks that surround that fourth slot. It's almost as if she was putting the album together and said to herself, "Oh shit! I forgot to write some ballads!" It was put there for a reason, and that reason is to try (furtively) to give the listener a breather because as I said before, the rest of this album is a pretty active listen. Ironically, one of the slow parts of Celebrate she says "Stop...let me breathe." That's about all you'll get to soak in the tracks' differences and nuances.
The bottom line: We all know that people are going to buy her stuff up because of rampant fanboy/girlism for one of the biggest pop stars in Asia, but let's not sell Utada short: there are some damned good songs on here. She is still putting out incredibly catchy and enjoyable music that I think has quite the lasting appeal. As firmly as I believe that last statement, I'm hoping that Utada does a little different the next time around. I'm not saying that she has to reinvent herself, but that she's gotten a little too comfortable with her own sound and that she's not challenging herself enough. However, with her new English album on the horizon we may see some new ideas come to life as she tries to reach different audiences, and it'll be interesting to see what she has in store for the different markets.
Grung's two cents:
Now that I've gotten a hold of Utada Hikaru's new album, I can confirm what I feared from the singles : It's a "disappointment". But don't you go thinking that I don't like it, it's still really good, just not as good as I had hoped it to be. I think that there are a number of things wrong with this album.
As a start, take the tracklist itself : 7 tracks out of 13 were already released on singles before the release, and even if that's just one more than for ULTRA BLUE, they're not as well placed. I mean, after the first track, you get 5 single tracks in a row. That's just too much, and you rapidly feel you're listening to some kind of singles compilation. What's worse, the album closes with Flavor of Life, the ballad version of which you already heard on track 4. Add to that Boku wa Kuma, which may be cute and all, but can't really be compared to Utada's usual tracks, and you're left with something quite weaker than her previous effort.
That said, the singles were good for the most part, so that kinda makes up for the poor ordering.
And after a fair number of listening sessions, as you become used to all the tracks, the "compilation effect" tends to wear off. But another characteristic of the album surfaces then : it's less varied than ULTRA BLUE.
At first, I was sad not to be listening to a second ULTRA BLUE, but after I while, I saw it was for the better. The softer overtone that's dominating HEART STATION kind of make room for a future album with more bells and whistles, while letting Utada try some new stuff. Because if you listen to her back catalog, you'll see that she never went that far into the "electro" territory. Before ULTRA BLUE, she was doing stuff that was close to R'n'B, then she did an album really driven by her voice (that was what really stood out from ULTRA BLUE for me, more than the instrumentations, even if they were her best so far), and now this.
With HEART STATION, Hikki retains the grooviness of her earlier works but modifies her sound palette. The result is a song where vocals really become an instrument, more than something dominating the whole album. Of course, that's not to say she sings too quietly or that her voice isn't well used. But I found myself humming instrumental parts almost as often as I mumbled vocal melodies. And that is something that never happened with her last album, where the singing had a more prominent role in almost all songs. And in addition, the impression I got from HEART STATION was that she somewhat used more layering than before, which certainly explains partly my feelings about this album's vocal melodies...
All in all, HEART STATION is still an awesome album. Take 5, for example, is one of those track I'm sure I'll get back to quite frequently and for a long time. Beautiful World also is one of my favourites Hikki tracks since the release of the single. So there's a lot to love about the disc, despite some "disappointing" aspects. But now that she did something a little bit more toned down, I sure hope she's going to deliver another epic record like ULTRA BLUE was. Still, good job, Ms. Utada !
Reactions:
Helmholz says: It's clear that we agree on a lot of things, including what you called the "compilation effect," which is compounded when you take into consideration that one of those thirteen tracks is an interlude that's not very long, and that Flavor of Life at the end is just a bonus track. Will future reprints even include that one? Not to mention Take 5 really feels like a rip-off because of the way it ends. Although to be entirely fair, ULTRA BLUE had a lot of advance singles, an interlude, and COLORS which was on her first Singles Compilation before it was on an album. Seriously, it took three and a half years for COLORS to be on an album. That seems to be kind of cheap when you think about it.
I'm less familiar with her older stuff so after listening to these two albums it is clear to me that this woman is in love with her own voice. As you said, her voice becomes an instrument for her and she does this while singing the main parts and I think it might be just a little too much. Maybe she should learn a new instrument.
Other than that I'm not sure how you can not call this a second ULTRA BLUE, as some of the songs sound like they were just leftover from the last album. But that's what I think!
And Ms. Utada, indeed. She's single again now, right?
Grungi says: Correct, she is now single. But back to the album, even if I do agree that a couple songs on HEART STATION could almost have made it on ULTRA BLUE, my opinion that it wasn't ULTRA BLUE II comes from the album as a whole. To give an analogy, ULTRA BLUE was akin to riding a rollercoaster, whereas HEART STATION felt more like cruising on a highway. That's exaggerating, of course, but still, it depicts what I felt quite well.
And as for me, one of the few things that I didn't really agree with was the fact that you call listening to HEART STATION a "pretty active listen". On the contrary, even after quite a few listens, I'm still thinking that this new album makes for better background music than her previous offering, but as is almost everything about music, it's very subjective.
But one conclusion that comes quite clearly out of this little joint review is that, yes, it is a very good album, albeit some weaknesses, but that each listener will probably get something different from it, depending on their tastes. And isn't that what music should be all about ?
After nearly two years since her last Japanese album hit the market, Utada Hikaru has released the follow up to her largely successful 'ULTRA BLUE,' entitled 'HEART STATION.' So when two sexy guys like Grungi Ankhfire and myself got our hands on the album, we decided to review it together and look at it from a multiperspectival view and combine our thoughts and analyses.
Here are some of the basics about the album:
Tracklist1. Fight The Blues
2. HEART STATION
3. Beautiful World
4. Flavor Of Life -Ballad Version-
5. Stay Gold
6. Kiss & Cry
7. Gentle Beast Interlude
8. Celebrate
9. Prisoner Of Love
10. Take 5 (テイク 5)
11. Boku wa Kuma (ぼくはくま I'm a Bear)
12. Niji-iro Bus (虹色バス Rainbow Colored Bus)
13. Flavor Of Life (Bonus Track)
Much like ULTRA BLUE, HEART STATION has a lot of advance singles, six of them in fact, or seven if you count the bonus Flavor of Life, which appears twice on the album in the ballad and original mix forms. This means that half (or more) of the album has been heard already, so the exciting part of the album for those who have heard the singles already are, of course, the tracks that are only on the album.
So without further ado, let's get to some reviewin'!
Helm's Assessment:
Finally. It's felt a lot longer than it's actually been, but I've been really anticipating this ever since ULTRA BLUE came out and simply blew me away. I had never really followed Utada Hikaru before that, except for seeing the Keep Tryin' Promotional Video and liking her theme for the game Kingdom Hearts, Simple and Clean. ULTRA BLUE is easily one of my top J-Pop albums, and a favorite that I come back to every so often. I enjoy it every single time, so my expectations for HEART STATION were pretty high, of course.
So, finally HEART STATION arrived, and I listened. My first reaction upon finishing listening to this album was that "This is the best album I've heard so far in 2008." My second reaction, though, was that it feels like this has been done before, and it has--by Utada herself. I'm just going to say it: This is ULTRA BLUE 2. The album feels like an extension of ULTRA BLUE in the sense that the songs aren't very different sounding stylistically. There isn't anything surprising here: You still have Utada singing with several layers of her own voice over lots of simplistic micro-melodies that cling to your brain, which are accompanied by upbeat percussions, and to top it off they are of course expertly mixed and mastered. This is what Utada does and she does it well, however, it's not as good this time, and it might even be getting a little old. There is less variety, less Passion (pun alert!) and less originality.
In spite of that (and my caustic tone), these are still some very, very good songs that I enjoy quite a bit, with my favorite probably being Kiss & Cry, along with Heart Station, Fight the Blues, and Flavor of Life. Most of the new tracks are pretty good, although I wish there were more of them; I really feel like she releases too many advance singles and the album starts to feel like a compilation album, especially in the first half. (Also, Take 5 is cut tragically short...which may have been the idea.) The melodies that she made here are some of the strongest and best she's made. They're engaging, intricate and touching, yet they have trouble standing out when placed side by side, which leads to...
One of the problems that HEART STATION has is that it never bothers to really slow things down, and I think the album suffers a great deal because of it. The upbeat tempo throughout is almost nonstop. The singles she's released from the past 2 years that made it onto the album have been almost entirely uptempo, with the exception being Boku wa Kuma. These upbeat singles are stacked next to each other so tightly that it just feels like a big blur when I listen. This is due to the very apparent lack of pacing, and the album actually starts to sound kind of samey. The lack of breaks or changes in pace doesn't let the songs set themselves apart, and I think she realized this because she opted to put the Ballad Version of Flavor of Life in the fourth slot for this album. Why is this noteworthy? Simple, really. While I at first objected to the Ballad Version being there over the original mix, it's obvious to me now that the regular single version of Flavor of Life would blend in too much with the five tracks that surround that fourth slot. It's almost as if she was putting the album together and said to herself, "Oh shit! I forgot to write some ballads!" It was put there for a reason, and that reason is to try (furtively) to give the listener a breather because as I said before, the rest of this album is a pretty active listen. Ironically, one of the slow parts of Celebrate she says "Stop...let me breathe." That's about all you'll get to soak in the tracks' differences and nuances.
The bottom line: We all know that people are going to buy her stuff up because of rampant fanboy/girlism for one of the biggest pop stars in Asia, but let's not sell Utada short: there are some damned good songs on here. She is still putting out incredibly catchy and enjoyable music that I think has quite the lasting appeal. As firmly as I believe that last statement, I'm hoping that Utada does a little different the next time around. I'm not saying that she has to reinvent herself, but that she's gotten a little too comfortable with her own sound and that she's not challenging herself enough. However, with her new English album on the horizon we may see some new ideas come to life as she tries to reach different audiences, and it'll be interesting to see what she has in store for the different markets.
Grung's two cents:
Now that I've gotten a hold of Utada Hikaru's new album, I can confirm what I feared from the singles : It's a "disappointment". But don't you go thinking that I don't like it, it's still really good, just not as good as I had hoped it to be. I think that there are a number of things wrong with this album.
As a start, take the tracklist itself : 7 tracks out of 13 were already released on singles before the release, and even if that's just one more than for ULTRA BLUE, they're not as well placed. I mean, after the first track, you get 5 single tracks in a row. That's just too much, and you rapidly feel you're listening to some kind of singles compilation. What's worse, the album closes with Flavor of Life, the ballad version of which you already heard on track 4. Add to that Boku wa Kuma, which may be cute and all, but can't really be compared to Utada's usual tracks, and you're left with something quite weaker than her previous effort.
That said, the singles were good for the most part, so that kinda makes up for the poor ordering.
And after a fair number of listening sessions, as you become used to all the tracks, the "compilation effect" tends to wear off. But another characteristic of the album surfaces then : it's less varied than ULTRA BLUE.
At first, I was sad not to be listening to a second ULTRA BLUE, but after I while, I saw it was for the better. The softer overtone that's dominating HEART STATION kind of make room for a future album with more bells and whistles, while letting Utada try some new stuff. Because if you listen to her back catalog, you'll see that she never went that far into the "electro" territory. Before ULTRA BLUE, she was doing stuff that was close to R'n'B, then she did an album really driven by her voice (that was what really stood out from ULTRA BLUE for me, more than the instrumentations, even if they were her best so far), and now this.
With HEART STATION, Hikki retains the grooviness of her earlier works but modifies her sound palette. The result is a song where vocals really become an instrument, more than something dominating the whole album. Of course, that's not to say she sings too quietly or that her voice isn't well used. But I found myself humming instrumental parts almost as often as I mumbled vocal melodies. And that is something that never happened with her last album, where the singing had a more prominent role in almost all songs. And in addition, the impression I got from HEART STATION was that she somewhat used more layering than before, which certainly explains partly my feelings about this album's vocal melodies...
All in all, HEART STATION is still an awesome album. Take 5, for example, is one of those track I'm sure I'll get back to quite frequently and for a long time. Beautiful World also is one of my favourites Hikki tracks since the release of the single. So there's a lot to love about the disc, despite some "disappointing" aspects. But now that she did something a little bit more toned down, I sure hope she's going to deliver another epic record like ULTRA BLUE was. Still, good job, Ms. Utada !
Reactions:
I'm less familiar with her older stuff so after listening to these two albums it is clear to me that this woman is in love with her own voice. As you said, her voice becomes an instrument for her and she does this while singing the main parts and I think it might be just a little too much. Maybe she should learn a new instrument.
Other than that I'm not sure how you can not call this a second ULTRA BLUE, as some of the songs sound like they were just leftover from the last album. But that's what I think!
And Ms. Utada, indeed. She's single again now, right?
And as for me, one of the few things that I didn't really agree with was the fact that you call listening to HEART STATION a "pretty active listen". On the contrary, even after quite a few listens, I'm still thinking that this new album makes for better background music than her previous offering, but as is almost everything about music, it's very subjective.
But one conclusion that comes quite clearly out of this little joint review is that, yes, it is a very good album, albeit some weaknesses, but that each listener will probably get something different from it, depending on their tastes. And isn't that what music should be all about ?
Labels: 2008, album, HEART STATION, helmholz, j-pop, music, reviews, Utada Hikaru
Friday, January 18, 2008
X-MEN (The Arcade Game): One of America's Favorite Beat 'em Ups Revisited
One of my favorite arcade games growing up was X-MEN (1992), known to many as X-MEN: The Arcade Game. In case you've never played the game, it's a sidescrolling beat 'em up which was riding the popularity of games like Double Dragon (1987), Final Fight (1989), and Streets of Rage (1991), which were all very popular arcade-styled games involving hand-to-hand combat (sometimes with various handheld weapons) where the player directs his or her character from one side of the screen to the other, beating up generic thugs and a few other types of enemies before you get to the boss of each particular level. In X-MEN, the same concept applies but instead of weapons you get mutant powers respective to the character you choose, which are a blessing and a curse, as I'll explain later. So basically, you get to the end of the level, beat the boss, and you're onto the next level with a few cut scenes in between to explain the simplistic (but not unwelcome) story for the game.
Recently I decided it was time to go back and see how X-MEN held up. I was also seeking revenge since I don't remember ever beating the game as it seemed to always eat up all the tokens I had. I figured that my older, more talented and experienced self would have no problems tearing through the game on just a handful of credits.
Well, I was wrong. I played through it and discovered a lot of things. Among these the fact that I wasn't giving my former self enough credit. This game is tough, but not in the right way. It is a very cheap game. The kind of game that makes you want to give up but not after already pumping in a few dollars worth of quarters and then discovering said cheapness.
This game has several flaws which hinder enjoyment:
- The Inevitability of Death. This is by far the greatest flaw in the game. You WILL die in this game. Lots. Some of the reasons that follow in this list will help explain this, but it's mainly because the game doesn't follow the ethos of arcade games: Reward the player for being good. The game does no such thing, and being good only entails that you are getting punished less than the average player.
- No Power-Ups. Throughout the level you will be outnumbered and there will be hits which you will almost certainly have to take, and there are no health bonuses or anything that will increase your attacking abilities. There aren't even any interactive weapons that you can pick up, and although that might seem stupid since the X-MEN have mutant powers, you should be able to get some kind of temporary advantage over your foes, if not just to break up the repetition. Your only reward is given at the end of the levels after beating the bosses, an extra orb for additional mutant power usage. This is not a good deal.
- Mutant Powers = Pain? The fact that your character's mutant power hurts you unless you have three or less bars of health is just stupid. When you have three or less, you can use your special orb(s) up, which is usually going to be just one since you will probably have died and not beaten a boss in between deaths. Coupled with no health restoration (unless you count adding tokens to respawn--I don't!), this game is unforgiving and this would be slightly more okay if you could just use your power without simultaneously harming yourself.
- Redundant Enemies. Get used to fighting mini-Sentinels in all their palette-swapping glory, because by the end of the game you will be fighting hundreds of these for no reason whatsoever, along with some bazooka toting Sentinel-esque enemies and some laser machines which look like something you'd see in a metal cutting shop.
- Repetitive and Crippled Attacking. Also get used to the same three-hit combos and a couple of other animated attacks, such as a random throw or turnaround attack that seems to work better for some characters than others. Yes, Colossus sucks in this game because he will be unable to fend off attackers on his backside mostly without using a special, which leads to the Catch-22 of you taking damage to deal damage no matter how you approach the situation. Nevermind the fact that your attack combos can and will be broken by the bosses mercilessly, forcing you to use life-shaving mutant powers which in turn lead to death.
As I said, the game still can be enjoyable. However, this game would have held up better if it had better balancing that worked more in favor of the player's skills rather than his wallet.
Labels: 1992, beat 'em ups, genre analysis, helmholz, konami, reviews, x-men
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]