Nothing adds a bit of spark to a game like a quick musical number. A comic song is often a game’s funniest, most memorable moment – a spooky vocal track the most haunting bit of sound. In the first of this irregular series, let’s take a look at ten interesting ones from the world of adventure games. Not a Best Of, not a comprehensive look, just a random pick of interesting tunes, served up courtesy of YouTube. Let its name be praised.
#1) The War Song – Sam and Max
Jared Emerson-Johnson’s music is one of my favourite things about Telltale Games’ episodic adventures, and never more so than when a musical number kicks off. Just listen to the fantastic You And Me And Ted E. Bear about how the Mafia is definitely, absolutely not involved with the city’s casino, or the soft World of Max that plays out as the main characters happily travel the world punching people in the face. I really want a full-musical episode of Sam and Max in the next series, though I’m not holding my breath because that would probably kill the writing team stone dead.
At least we’ve got The War Song. This was originally intended as a quick sequence… just a few funny lines… but got quite badly out of control when Jared wrote a full showtune instead, resulting in this hastily but wonderfully choreographed song and dance number. We join our heroes in the Oval Office of the White House as they manipulate America into a war for their own benefit. You think they’ve been looking forward to it a little too much? Their bloodlust is our gain.
Continue reading this post…
There are 16 comments on this story
“Sorry, Captain. Starfleet protocol demands we humour the Klingons.”
Game: Star Trek Online
There are 2 comments on this story
I still feel bad about having to kill the Big Daddies in Bioshock 2. They never do anything to deserve it, but nobody cares…
Bioshock 2 is an unusual game in many ways. I like it a lot. I liked it when playing. But unlike most games, I like it much more after giving it a while to sink in – to really appreciate what it does, rather than necessarily what I wanted it to be when I sat down to finish it last week. That experience was tinged with disappointment, mostly brought on by just how familiar it all seemed. Gorgeous as the level design is – and by god, it’s beautiful – it couldn’t possibly have the same oomph as the first trip through Rapture, and while the shooting is much improved over the first game, only smashing people with the drill really stood out as a solid Being A Big Daddy experience.
That was while playing it. I had fun, but I was underwhelmed. Having given it time to simmer in my head however, I’m much more impressed. The obvious complaint is that it’s just more of the same, and on one level, yes it is. It’s still a shooter, improved but still very similar, and suffers from a number of the basic mechanical problems as the first game. I wish it was Deus Ex instead.
As a story and a narrative experience though, it’s very much it’s own thing – a game that seems built not on continuing the previous game’s themes, as it initially appears, but on inverting and subverting them at every step. On the grand level, there’s the obvious altruism vs. objectivism fight between Sofia Lamb and Andrew Ryan, which doesn’t quite work, mostly because of Lamb not being a very good character (Ryan was a hypocrite, but Lamb never successfully embodies her philosophy at all), but still sets the tone. After that, you get the more metaphysical concept of the first game’s search for identity transformed into a game about actually forging one, just as the levels themselves present a reversal of fortune – not simply showing us the seedy side of Rapture rather than its ivory towers, but presenting a world where civilisation still clings on, however tenuously, if only because its residents didn’t have anything like as far to fall.
The list goes on, and the longer it does, the more interesting a sequel Bioshock 2 feels. It’s not at the same level as Thief and System Shock 2, but it is definitely in the same spirit. At its simplest, Bioshock was fundamentally about the past – dealing with what happened. Bioshock 2 is about the future. Same setting, same basic style, but seen through a very different lens.
Thinking about it like that, I liked it a lot more. For what initially seems like a slightly uninspired continuation, and one that I won’t deny I’d have preferred to see strike out in a more ambitious new direction, Bioshock 2 turns out to be a very smart game. It’s also one with plenty to talk about, so for this post, I’m just going to be focusing on the bit that jumped out the most for me – how it handled the morality of playing as a Big Daddy, and what the role comes to mean by the end.
In case it’s not obvious: SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. HERE BE SPOILERS. SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! AFTER THIS, SPOILERS! GOT IT?
Continue reading this post…
There are 8 comments on this story
“Listen, Shepard, this may be a bad time, but… I bought you this card.”
Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day/Aching Solitude Awareness Day (delete as appropriate). What better time to take in a good love story, or lend a hand making sure it ends happily ever after? What’s that? You’re out on a hot date? Screw you then, I’ll be over here in World of Warcraft.
Oh, all right. Let’s do this first.
After the amazing Alistair romance in Dragon Age, I was curious to see how (the absolutely fantastic) Mass Effect 2 was going to handle the issue of love. In short… it’s a mixed bag. When they work, they’re fine, but only a few of the seven options really gel, and all of them share a few particularly annoying flaws. Most notably, it’s tough to really get to know characters when Commander Shepard, Hero Of The Entire Goddamn Universe, is only given one real chance to talk to them between each mission and generally gets blown off with a curt dismissal the rest of the time. To strike up a relationship with your crew in Mass Effect is to bounce effortlessly between randomly telling people how much you want to dock with their pants, and being That Guy In The Office – the creepy smelly one who keeps trying to make everyone look at pictures of his cat.
His dead cat.
You don’t want to be That Guy.
When your crew deigns to talk with you though, things get interesting. Not only are they all beautifully well-written and great to spend time with, romantically, they present an interesting spectrum of choices – every character representing a different type of relationship as much as acting as a love interest in their own right. In each case, the romance comes after doing them a favour, which forces you to spend some time with them, often getting past their prickly first impressions and showing the true personality you might otherwise have completely overlooked.
The bigger your crew gets, the more options become available. Right at the start for instance, you get the Action Movie choices, so called because their romance is largely down to them being present and the right gender for a ‘heart’ moment in a blockbuster flick, rather than them particularly compelling in their own right. For men, it’s Miranda of the Vacuum Packed Buttocks. For women, it’s Jacob, the latest in a long line of Bioware’s First Male NPCs to be less interesting than a balsa wood statue of himself. They’re clearly the defaults, if only because they’re the only ones who warranted special shirtless character models, while everyone else has make love in their standard wardrobe. Luckily, after their blandness, the rest of the crew shows up to offer more interesting angles and curves, from Thane’s melancholic broken-bird personality, to Jack doing double-duty as a tameable wildcat and dispenser of violent quickies in the cargo bay.
(I only know this from YouTube however, having taken her out on a mission exactly once, and even then, only in the hope that the secondary outfit you unlock by making crewmembers loyal to you would include a shirt to replace her ridiculous hate-bikini. My ship has a dress code.)
Continue reading this post…
There are 15 comments on this story
Jeez, no need to rub it in…
Game: Drakkhen
There are 5 comments on this story
<< Newer Posts ---- Older Posts >>
