Great songs are a sign of a great game.

Gaming has been rewarding in many ways from the occasional rich storyline to incredibly fun game mechanics. However, music has become more and more of an integral part of gaming and games. Some older games like Fallout and its sequel had oldies in them setting the unique memorable mood for the games. I for one could not play Fallout 2 without the wonderful intro with Louis Armstrong’s A Kiss To Build A Dream on. No one can deny the fact that the song contributes a great deal to the Fallout universe.

The best thing about the music in games is the rewarding feeling of discovering a new band or a fantastic song. The first band and song that I remember the best is Late Goodbye that was based on a poem written by Sam Lake (Sami Järvi) who many concider the mastermind behind the Max Payne games. Performed by Poets Of The Fall the song gave flight to the ending credits making Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne a damn fine film-noir game experience. Also it provided a very significant lift to the band, which consequently has been successful with every single album so far thanks fans worldwide much gained by the game.

Perhaps my favourite is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’s ending credits. If you’re an MGS-fan you’ll have one teary experience at the end of the game. Starsailor’s Way To Fall was the best way to the end the game. The song telling the always-heart trembling story of Snake and Big Boss. To me Way To Fall was a song about a father and a son, Big Boss and Solid Snake and how they both were so deceived by the ones they served. A wonderful ode to the relationship between the two.

Most recent finding was Faunt’s M4 part 2 which fit the mood and vibe of Mass Effect spot on. The song itself fits the story and setting as well. For me, M4 part 2 is about war. Losing your comrade and trying to fight alone in a setting where you can’t win.

Great songs come with great games. I continue to look forward to that.

Where do all the good games go?

Recently EA purchased Bioware and Pandemic, two successful game-developer companys. To many this might mean the usual EA-method of publishing, new sequels every year with hardly anything new for the gamers. Unfortunately people buy them, Finns especially go for the NHL-franchise, but there are many more. Hopefully Bioware will remain as it has always been, the games the company has made are undeniably good in sales figures as well as among the fans. Hopefully EA won’t mess with their game-development and let them have their free hands to make a just sequel to Mass Effect.

The latest frowner is EA’s attempt to get the Grad Theft Auto-license into their hands. EA continues to grow, but as a company they have withered many talented game-developers into oblivion. They may have had good intensions in the beginning but now it seems that it’s the killer company of good game-developers that deserve to remain intact as they are. To me skate. was a cultural deed from EA’s Black Box and renewed the skateboarding-genre of games tremendously. Otherwise I haven’t had much respect for the games published under EA’s frightening name. Criterion still makes their Burnout series with a polished touch of unEAness, but you never know when things could change to worst.

John Riccitiello has expressed the regrets about EA’s past that has buried many brilliant developers in the flow of time. Next thing EA does is run after Take-Two and Rockstar. Hopefully EA offers their resources to developers without meddling with the important internal organs of game-developers. If Mass Effect 2 comes out the end of this year all half-assed, we will know that before you can say “I knew it”, Mass Effect 2011 is out. Talk about backtracking of the setting. MS is designed to be a trilogy and hopefully it will stay that way instead of EA taking it to new unwelcomed heights.

Boom! & money

Not too long ago my computer went to the otherside, and never came back. It’s a tolerable loss, but I’m sure some people couldn’t live on without their precious pc. The upkeep of my still newly fresh blog has become less frequent, and much harder. I use a laptop now and then but the keyboard seriously lacks in precision in these things. Enough about that.

The American dollar is going through a lot at the moment, but since I live in a country that has high taxes, it has certain advantages. I’ve added a Play-Asia.com link to my seletion of few good websites, a webshop where you can order cheaper region free games from Asia etc. The dollar prices are what you’d expect if you lived in the States, or at least near to what they are. Normally games cost around 50-65$, which might sound expensive.

Here’s the fun part for a European citizen, more precisely a Finn, our games generally tend to cost 60-70€. Certainly our taxes give us the benefit of free health care, but it also means that our VAT is a bit over 20% – games are extremely expensive. To put it in numbers, a game that costs roughly 70€, which is most of the triple-A games, is according to the current rates a bit over a 106$!

At the moment 1€ is equal to 1½ USD, but at one point it has been 1€=1,7$. I would guess Live time in the States would be around 60$/year, similiar to our 60€, which is still over 90 bucks. Consider yourselves lucky, gaming in Finland is a very expensive hobby, and I hardly think that the little benefits Live gives would justify such a price. I gladly pay 60$ for a game, since in my terms it means I’m saving at least 20 €uros when shopping for video games. Many great games out as region free and that’s the way I buy them when possible.

I’m afraid that the majority of great games coming out this year won’t be found region free on the lists of Play-Asia, but one can hope. If I find a job after matriculation exams, at least buying those games will be less of a blow to my economy, but time will show. Hopefully the majority of them will be available as region free versions, that would be fair for us all.

I miss the summer

I really do, and here’s something from the archives. There aren’t many skateboarding photos of me, but this happens to be a rare one. Damn winter, basically you skate for the summer and then have to wait for the winter to pass. A lot of stuff is forgotten, my legs don’t always remember every trick after 6 months of skateboarding-deprived time.

Mass Effectively Bioshocking skate.

Out of these 3 titles skate. takes the top spot. I and many other skateboarders have been waiting for that one true title that would stay true to the sport. Having played Tony Hawks since the second installment in the series, I’ve grown tired of Neversoft always making the game with less and less realism. Tony Hawk’s Underground was and still is the best in the series in my opinion, although I stopped buying the TH-series after American Wasteland. Sure the backflips were a fun addition but nowhere near enough to keep me interested.

At some point videos of skate. begun to emerge. Mostly the videos discussed about the flick-it control system, which naturally made me doubt whether or not the game would manage a good precision control you need for a skateboarding game. Now, well-after the game’s release, I give thanks since the game is near perfect when it comes to the feel of rough concrete against your urethane wheels. Oh, the gloriousness of glory!

After playing the game for at least 200 hours, a lot of bugs have appeared to me, yet they can be easily forgiven. The reviews I saw before skate. came out in Europe (Scandinavia -> Finland) were complaining about the hardships of mastering the control system, which I find highly intuitive. I haven’t had problems with separating a 360 shove-it from a 360 flip. Now, I do understand that they are hard to differentiate, but in fact they are quite very differently executed with the analogue sticks. The very thing that makes skateboarding what it is, is the challenge of learning and vice versa. Skate gives that same feeling as the gameplay revolves around you learning tricks, just like in real life.

The Console War

So it goes…

Around the last quarter of 2007 I eventually decided to buy a next-gen console. A tough decision might I add. Games like Bioshock, skate. and Mass Effect caught my attention, thus being the first games I own on the 360. However, it is the least likable solution of the 3 consoles on the market, highly because of Microsoft whose “ultimate” operation system just happened to crash some time ago rendering my computer useless. Linux saved me and my computer’s life, thank you Torvalds for a brilliant FREE operating system!

Anyways, off to console wars. I bought the 360 for a couple of reasons: 1. It has a good selection of good games, 2. The price had just dropped to 300€, 3. It has good graphics. These are fairly simple reasons, and to me important.

I’ve never had a decent PC for playing games so I have never really got to enjoy good graphics, but finally I can. Microsoft’s whitey-console also has a selection of quality-infested games that you can buy region-free for half the price what they cost here. Unfortunately you can’t import games for the PS3 (thank you Sony!) whose every game is region-free. Lastly it was within my price range. It was an easy choice to make from all the 3 consoles, but it also makes me an M$ fan-boy, right? At least owning a certain console seems to be reason enough for someone to spite somebody. Or actually, oh so many people.