Saturday, June 25, 2016

Hyrule Warriors Legends Review

The feats modern technology can achieve is amazing.  It feels like only yesterday I saw Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt on the original Nintendo DS and was blown away by the 3D graphics it could achieve.  Now with the 3DS and Vita, there are entire console games you can fit in portable systems.  Ocarina of Time, Super Street Fighter 4 and Tales of the Abyss are all on the 3DS while the Vita has games like the Blazblue games, Injustice: Gods Among Us and the God of War PS2 games.  That would have made my teenage head explode!

Handhelds have their setbacks, of course.  It almost never looks as good as a game's console version and the processing power doesn't match up, which is why a lot of gamers were skeptical about Hyrule Warriors Legends, the updated portable version of the hit WiiU game. Hyrule Warriors is a hack and slash crowd brawling game with a heavy emphasis on murdering enemies by the hundreds with flashy and fancy moves.  Unlike the far superior Sengoku Basara, a lot of these games from Tecmo Koei take place in many wide open areas, meaning a lot has to be rendered at a rapid pace.  The 3DS can do a lot with enough time, money and effort, but can it really pull off a game like this and keep all the elements that make it so fun?


The answer is a surprising yes.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

10 Game Soundtracks Suited for Guitar Hero

Who doesn't still get a kick out of Guitar Hero?  Average gamers may not have the dexterity to hold cords in specific fashions and tune real guitars, but we sure know how to rhythmically press buttons, and Guitar Hero used that to emulate a guitar's feel as well as challenge us with some of the most iconic guitar-heavy songs in music history.

Guitar Hero was a major party game franchise back in its heyday and is still a big favorite to this day even if all the old peripherals are no longer officially sold and all that's left is the new Guitar Hero Live.
I think the problem the original Guitar Hero games had was that they released too many games too fast and ran out of big-name songs to use, but that's only looking at the music industry.  If the eligible songs expanded to games, there's an entire medium they could use, full of challenging, catchy guitar jamming up there with the best of them.  Entire franchises are built on rocking tunes.  Look at how puny all the sections on this TVtropes page are compared to the Video Game one.

It's not like music needs lyrics.  Cliffs of Dover in Guitar Hero 3 and Frankenstein in the original game are both classics.


It's sad that the only thing qualifying for game music in a Guitar Hero game is recreations with the music creator and the Halo theme.


That's why to demonstrate the musical strength of games and just for fun, I'm making this list of 10 game/game franchise soundtracks that should be in a Guitar Hero game.  To show how impactful and challenging they are, for each I will pick out what I think would be the most difficult song to play and the most iconic song that every fan should know (usually opening or credits music).  There's only so much you can say about music in words, so this won't be especially text-heavy.