The Best Music award goes to a game that delivers emotion, atmosphere, and tension through the game’s soundtrack. Whether it be orchestral, licensed, or anything else it must feel just right. There weren’t many games with great soundtracks this year, but there were a few. These were the best, but only one comes out on top.
Journey comes out on top because of how rich and powerful the score is. It reminds me a lot of Skyrim, and hey, it was up for a Grammy! Journey is not only a very unique game, but the soundtrack pulls you in and provides feelings and emotions on top of the visual experience. Mass Effect 3 was very close, but the epic space battle music doesn’t compare to this masterpiece.
The band rhythm genre was one of the shortest-lived I have ever seen. Starting with Guitar Hero and quickly being killed off with games like Rock Band 3, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, and DJ Hero 2. There were a ton of them, but because of the constant yearly releases, the public got sick of them quickly, and now the genre is pretty much dead. Harmonix decided to go back to its roots and release another controller-based rhythm game like Amplitude for PS2. Before you insult the game, read on.
Blitz is just as addictive as the other games in the series, but in a different way. You play all the instruments at the same time, but this is a very important thing that you need to remember: This game is about scores and not hitting every note. You only use two buttons on the controller to hit each note on the left and right sides of the track. You play like you normally would in a Rock Band game, but just with two notes. Don’t sit there thinking this is easy. The game can get downright hard, mainly because you have to constantly keep your score multiplier up. As you play along, you will pass gates that will turn the multiplier wheel. It will stop at the lowest-set number. Make sure you switch between tracks and get those multipliers for each one! If you play close to perfect, you can raise each track by four with plenty of room left before the gate.
This sounds hard and stupid, but the game is so much fun! It also helps that you can use power-ups that you unlock by raising your cred. Using the power-ups costs coins that are earned based on your score. There are a lot of fun power-ups, such as a rocket that will shoot ahead and destroy some notes. Certain instruments can have double points, bombs, flames that spread around and increase your score, a 2x multiplier, and the list goes on. You will find yourself trying out different power-ups and using your favorites. I also love how you can use your entire Rock Band library. You can also download any Rock Band song from the store, and it will work with this game! This, of course, increases replayability quite a bit.
Blitz incorporates Facebook integration for co-op play and most multiplayer stuff. This is both good and bad. It’s good for people who use Facebook, but bad for people who don’t or who are paranoid about their internet security. I didn’t have a problem with this, but I know some people will. One issue I did find annoying is that there is only one stage the game plays through. Sure, it changes a bit as you go along, but I would have liked to have seen more. Other than that, there really isn’t much wrong with this game.
In the end, this game is about taste. Some people may think just hitting two buttons is stupid, but if you sit down and play for a while, you will realize how ridiculously addictive this game can be. The game keeps your adrenaline up by constantly having to switch between tracks and keeping your multiplier up. If you are a huge Rock Band fan, then give this a whirl, but due to the small list of songs the game comes with, newcomers will find the game less appealing. You should really only play this if you have a large Rock Band library.
The DS doesn’t have enough good rhythm games, but Elite Beat Agents helps fill that void with a campy, off-the-wall style that any fan of the genre will enjoy. You play as three Charlie’s Angels Esque agents (men instead of women) with crazy hairstyles who go out helping people do impossible tasks that break real-world rules. Various stages include helping a pirate find treasure, helping a taxi driver deliver a pregnant woman to a hospital after a cop tells him to not speed ever again, or a movie director making successful movies. These are told in comic-style frames, and they are quick and funny to watch. You play about 30 seconds of a song, then you watch the rest of the wacky story unfold, and how good you were at that segment determines whether or not they succeed in their goal or fail.
The gameplay is different from most rhythm games in the sense that you don’t follow colored blocks that fall into place, and you hit them at the right time. The game uses solely the touchscreen, but I couldn’t really dig the way the rhythm mechanic was designed. You hit numbered circles, and depending on the beat, an outer circle will close in, but once it gets even with the numbered circle, you tap it. The numbers tell you in what order to hit it, but you must follow the colored group. Various other “notes” range from following a ball with your stylus, double-tapping, triple-tapping, or using a spinner to fill a meter. These are weird for rhythm games and help add to the random, crazy feeling of the stories, but they are really hard to master because timing is hard when trying to line up circles within circles.
Later on, the songs get harder, so there are all these circles floating around, and you can get confused and lost on the tiny screen, and the game has little room for error. Keeping your meter in the yes is important because if you are in the no after the segment, you fail that part of the story. My issue is that the meter is constantly running down and you are keeping it up, so failing a lot in slow sections makes you fail faster. Once you get the hang of it, you start having fun, but younger people may get frustrated quickly due to the high learning curve.
A rhythm game isn’t complete without good songs, and EBA is lacking here as well. There are famous songs here, such as Village People’s “YMCA” or Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8ter Boi,” but that’s just it; it’s a hodgepodge of random artists, and these are just cover songs (remade by someone else). Not only that, but the audio is very low quality and tinny, so it feels like a half-baked rhythm game. I like some of the songs here, but there should have been more consistency and fewer random pickings, plus there are only 19 songs, so you can finish this in one or two sittings. The game also lacks any type of mode besides multiplayer, so you will get bored after a few sittings with this game.
EBA has a great sense of humor, funny stories, and a decent selection of songs, but it feels like it’s missing something, and the high learning curve will turn anyone away except the hardcore rhythm fans. This is a great weekend rental or something you can pick up in your bargain bin if you are craving rhythm action on your DS.
The Best Music award goes to a game that delivers emotion, atmosphere, and tension through the game’s soundtrack. Whether it be orchestral, licensed, or anything else it must feel just right.
This was a tough call against Portal 2, but Skyrim came out on top thanks to composer Jeremy Soule’s amazing passion for the Elder Scrolls game. Every piece of music moves you and sucks you into the world like no other video game soundtrack can do. There are dozens of songs and each is masterfully composed and that is extremely hard to do. Every piece fits everything you do, see, hear, or interact with within Skyrim. The sweeping and dramatic theme song to the softer tones of exploring the world is perfect and nothing can match this kind of instrumental beauty.
Being able to play a game using your own music isn’t new, but being a good one is hard. Beat Hazard lets you select your own music and then uses the tempo to create difficulty spikes and the flow of enemies. The beat of the song is seen in the bullets you shoot as well as the crazy explosions on one screen that can give you a seizure. When you select your music, you get to decide the difficulty. Pick a heavy and fast metal song, and you’ll be lucky if you get through the whole thing. Pick a normal soft rock song, and the difficulty is very gradual.
When you actually start shooting, there are several power-ups that range from increasing the volume, shot power, money, and bombs. If you die, you can collect the stuff you’ve dropped, but if you keep collecting the stuff, you get more and more powerful. You can use the money to buy perks that range from power-ups when you start to extra lives and other various perks. There’s a good amount, and it’s worth playing just to unlock them all. However, the game doesn’t have much depth, so this is a 30-minute-at-a-time game, or you will get bored. The visuals are decent, but the special effects that flash around remind me of Geometry Wars on crack.
So this is once again a game that makes you the decider of how fun an experience you get. The engine underneath does a good job using the songs to be a fun space shooter, but I would like to have seen more power-ups or maybe something more 3D. If you don’t like 2D space shooters, you won’t like this, even if you get to use your own music. The game can get really hard quickly and can be a bit confusing at first until you get the hang of it. There are quite a few modes, such as multiplayer, boss rush, and endless mode, so there is some variety there. For the low price, you can’t really go wrong, so pick it up and enjoy the craziness!
The Rhythm/Music genre has always been about great music, and whether your rocking out, dancing, or singing you are meant to have a great time, but the game also has to have responsive controls. If the game can’t also be read without thinking your game is broken. Making a good rhythm game is hard since the genre is so bloated these days. The game also has to have good sturdy hardware that’s responsive.
Rock Band 3
Rock Band isn’t a unique or original game anymore so why does it win for the second year in a row? The new peripherals and the fact that it actually teaches you how to play music now. With the addition of the new keytar and being able to play with a real guitar? That’s ingenious, and while the gameplay hasn’t changed much that addition of excellent hardware makes it a winner.
Multiplayer really defines most genres these days and is usually what keeps people coming back to games. A good multiplayer game usually consists of leaderboards, stat tracking, a reward system, and lots of maps, customization options, and just super fun addictive gameplay.
Modern Warfare redefined the FPS multiplayer scene and Black Ops perfects it with Wager matches, tons of customization options, perks, ranks, and well-made maps. Nothing can really hold a light to Black Ops, and to me is probably one of the best FPS multiplayer games of the decade.
What makes music in a game good? Something that fits the style of game, setting, and something that isn’t repetitive, annoying, or something we’ve heard in a million other games. Music is probably one of the most important parts of the game but easily overlooked by most gamers.
Bayonetta’s music isn’t only angelic and beautiful, but it’s so catchy that you just want to hear it again and again, and it really fits Bayonetta and her style. You just get goosebumps when seeing Bayonetta fight with style on the screen along with this angelic music. While there isn’t a huge variety what does play is amazing and is memorable.
DJ Max is probably the best rhythm game on the PSP, but that isn’t saying much since there aren’t too many on the system. The game has been well-known for its great song selection and addictive rhythm gameplay, but after so many iterations of the same thing, people were longing for some changes, and thankfully, Portable 3 adds something new. While it may not be enough, the game tightens some of the sloppy menus and other minor issues with the long-running series.
The new model has 3.2 and 4.2 tracks. You use the analog nub on the new sidebar that has purple streams running down it. You play the middle bar as usual, but when a purple stream runs down the side, you move the analog nub accordingly. It remixes the songs, adds a new layer of depth and fun to the game, and makes it even more addictive.
If you aren’t familiar with the series, you press the corresponding button (depending on difficulty) to see the track icons running down the screen. You are scored on timing, and a percentage will pop up after each hit, telling you how accurate that note was. You will see a little meter filling up in the middle of the screen, and when it’s full, you activate your fever mode to double your multiplier. In Portable 3, you can stack these up by getting your meter up again fast enough to add on top of the multiplier. Once you finish, you are scored, and as you level up, you unlock new gear and collectibles.
Portable 3 also lets the unlocking come much quicker, and there’s more to unlock. There are more characters, gear, notes, wallpapers, videos, etc., and it’s all great. Of course, if you get bored with the arcade mode, you can unlock missions, and these have certain parameters, such as getting a certain score, hitting a certain multiplier, or breaking under a certain number of times.
DJ Max 3 is well worth the purchase for series fans and newcomers alike. There’s enough content to unlock to keep you very busy, and replaying the excellent song roster is very enjoyable. I hope to see further changes in DJMP4 because this series has lots more potential.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.