30 Days of Gaming, #8 – Best soundtrack

To be completely honest, I usually don’t listen to a lot of videogame music unless I’m hearing it as I play the game. For me, there’s plenty of other things to listen to–currently digging Freelance Whales and lots of Connie Francis and Regina Spektor–and if I was to generalize, I’d say that a good portion of videogame tunes are unlistenable when they stand alone.

That said, I simply adore the soundtrack from Chrono Cross, the 2000 follow-up to Chrono Trigger. Composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, the official soundtrack features 67 tracks spanned across three CDs, hitting about three hours of music in total. That’s a whole lot more tunes than some games get. A few tracks subtly recall themes from Chrono Trigger, but it’s the new stuff formed for Chrono Cross that really make it unique, memorable. I’ve found it’s wonderful background music for drawing and writing, ranging from up-tempo town songs to battle music to somber undertones.

My personal favorite is titled “Reminiscence ~ Sentiments which Cannot be Erased,” a haunting piece of piano and echoes. Please listen to it as you continue on with today’s post:

One of the hardest things to write about is music. I know this for a fact; as a journalist for my college paper and alternative zine, I covered concerts and new album releases. These ranged from holiday choir specials to the latest Butch Walker CD to seeing a bunch of bands play live at summer festivals. At times, it was a grueling task. Describing how music is heard, understood, taken to heart–it’s a complex process, and it can be very hard to not seem overenthusiastic or fanboyish or simply in love with pretty sounds. Plus, how can I, someone who can’t sing, really critique those that can? So, yeah…writing about music has its tricks. It can also lead to pretty lazy sentences like, “The drums were totally kicking!” Not that I did that, ever, but the temptation to play it slack was always there. Music is meant to be heard, not read.

For this post, it’s best if I just link you to some of the finer moments from Chrono Cross‘ soundtrack:

“Dream of the Shore Bordering (Another World)”

“Leaving the Body”

“Garden of the Gods”

Enjoy!

30 Days of Gaming, #7 – Favorite game couple

Mario and Princess Peach, Sonic and Amy, Solid Snake and Meryl Silverburgh, Cloud Strife and Aeris Gainsborough, Mr. Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man. These are some of the most famous gaming couples. Many are borderline platonic; others are not.

It’s unclear to me, and maybe most of the Internet, if my favorite gaming couple loves one another romantically, or if their friendship, their dependence on each other is what rings truer in their hearts. Certainly there’s some past adventures they do not speak of, some tension and flirting. Hard not to charm it up when one half of this equation is the suave, cocky Balthier, and the other is the super old, but super vivacious viera warrior Fran. Together, they try to rule the skies.

First, some Final Fantasy XII backstory. Balthier is a young sky pirate and the pilot of the airship Strahl. His copilot is seemingly the complete opposite, an otherworldly viera—that means rabbit-like—woman named Fran that is extremely sensitive to Mist magic, as well as a truly seductive lisp. They depend on each other, and they depend even more on their ability to take from anyone what they want, and it’s this blatant thievery that gets them mixed up with Vaan and Ashe during the chaos of a rebel assault on the palace.

And so they are a team, a couple. Pilot and copilot. Voice and reason. Hume and viera. It’s never openly said that they love each other, that their feelings drop deep, but the subtle looks they share speak volumes:

You meet them as one entity, and you’ll never see them as anything else but together. There is no Fran without Balthier, and the other way around. When out grinding for bazaar items and experience points, you’re allowed to use a three-person team. This usually meant Vaan and two others: Ashe, Basch, Balthier, and Fran. Sorry, Penelo. Battling monsters and using gambits isn’t for kids. Anyways, I never separated the combo, and they worked well with each other, both offering ranged attacks and strong Quickenings. However, come the end of the game, I had to rely on Basch the Tank for most of my boss slaying. Still, these two characters remain my favorite gaming couple for what they don’t say and are only closely followed in the franchise by Zidane and Garnet from Final Fantasy IX.

30 Days of Gaming, #6 – Most annoying character

Hmm…something about this feels familiar. Oh, right. That’s because last November, I wrote up a little post about my top five most annoying videogame sidekicks, focusing in on the sidekicky aspect of the business. I mean, adventuring into the unknown is one thing, but doing it with a chatty brat is another. Sure, any of those could easily get smashed into bits by today’s 30 Days of Gaming topic train, but I decided to think some more and found a few other contenders. And we’re going with Tom Nook, simply for his sheer audacity to never, ever change.

Tom Nook is a raccoon tanuki that runs a shop called Nook’s Cranny in your town in all versions of Animal Crossing. He starts out as a nice fella, giving you a home to live in. One small caveat though: you’ll have to pay him for it, and he’s okay with payments over time, so long as you eventually pay it off. Once you do, he’ll expand your house, opening up more rooms to decorate…so long as you keep paying him, too. That’s fine. That’s kind of how it works in real life, minus the talking raccoon, I think.

Where he gets truly annoying is in his shop. You enter Nook’s Cranny (clean thoughts, dear readers!), and he welcomes you, and gives you a list of options. You do your things, peruse his wares, and leave, but not before he can get the last word in: “Thank you! Do come again! I look forward to seeing you!” You can never just enter and leave uninhibited, like countless RPGs that let you waltz into that potions shop, knock over some bottles, and leave before anyone notices. No, not at Nook’s Cranny. Not in Nook’s book. He will greet you, he will part with you. He never breaks form. He’s like that Obama smile video. He’s like braindead. He’s like…overtly annoying.

And then he follows you around the store, like a used cars salesman, like a true furniture pusher, like an ex-lover with a vengeance. You can run rings around his desk of player tools, but he’ll catch up to you eventually. Unfortunately, the only way to determine what some of the wallpapers/carpets are is to ask him, and you have to then mash the buttons until you can get him to stop.

You want more? Evidently, after you’ve fully upgraded his shop to Nookington’s, Tom will randomly ask you some questions, and the wrong answers will result in him downgrading the store back to its original format. All that shopping…for nothing.

I’m pretty excited about all the possibilities that Animal Crossing 3DS could hit on the head, but if Tom Nook is around, well, I’m gonna be several hundred thousand bells short of excitement.

30 Days of Gaming, #5 – Character you feel most like

This is gonna be a tough one, Grinding Down readers.

Mass Effect‘s Joker, real name Jeff Moreau, suffers from brittle bone disease, which is more scientifically called osteogenesis imperfecta. It’s the sort of disease that steers your life, causing extreme brittleness in the bones. Ultimately, Joker was born with severe fractures to his legs, and, as an adult now, he can barely walk. That didn’t stop him from excelling at flight school though and becoming a pilot. The Normandy‘s bridge is his home, his heart.

I don’t suffer from osteogenesis imperfecta. I do, however, have a bad left knee prone to popping out of place, and I walked on my tippy-toes for the longest time as a young child, but other than that, Joker and I are far from physically alike. Save for the beard. We both have sexy beards. I’m not gonna be a beardhole and claim that mine is the better. You can make that call yourself. But yeah, we’re total beard buds.

So, Joker and I are not alike physically. Wherein our sameness sits is in how we interact with people. Seth Green voices Joker, and 97.6% of Green’s acting work has been in comedy. He’s got a funny voice, a funny way of replying, good snark, all that. It’s natural then that Joker is, like Firefly‘s Wash, a funny pilot, often cracking jokes and commenting light-heartedly about Commander Shepard’s actions outside of the spaceship. He’s both comic relief and a rock that keeps everybody soaring safely through the galaxy. Depending on how you play Mass Effect, that’s all he could be, too. Paul Shepard, however, was a good guy, an everyman, and took the time to talk to Joker, to listen to the sad story of his upbringing, to understand where the bitterness lining his jokes came from. And he kept coming back after every mission, to include him, to hear his thoughts…to make sure he was doing a-okay.

I can be sarcastic; I can make nearly anyone laugh; I can bottle everything up and do my job–because it’s my job–and resent things I have absolutely no control over, and I can dance around topics with the swiftest feet this side of the Atlantic Ocean. We both wield humor as armor and wear it well, fully, careful to show no gaps. Unfortunately, we don’t need to wear it all the time, but lack the strength to undress ourselves, to show our companions and comrades who we are, to sit quiet and still, in the buff, brittle and scared, ripe for the reaping. With his weakened legs, he can only go so far; with my damaged heart, so can I.

30 Days of Gaming, #4 – Your guilty pleasure game

Hands down, this would have to be Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon White. I openly admit that this game series is very addicting, with so many pocket monsters to collect and raise, as well as tons of extra goodies to waste time on while slowly grinding your team to perfection. The throwback graphics hit home, and I dig that there’s a crazy amount of stats buried beneath every Pokemon, even with I myself don’t pay attention to such minutia. However, as a twenty-seven-year-old, recently married man, I can’t help but feel like, at times, I’m playing a kid’s game. Or something seriously twisted. Also, stuff like this doesn’t help:

So yeah, it’s a guilty pleasure. Always will be, especially as I continue to age. And I’ll keep playing, sure, but only when nobody’s looking.

30 Days of Gaming, #3 – A game that is underrated

This was a tough one to narrow down, and I’ll let slip the tidbit that I almost went with Chrono Cross for today’s 30 Days of Gaming topic. Like, it was a coin toss, only I didn’t have a coin handy and decided to go with the game that had the most lovable gargoyle ever. In that regards, Primal won through and through.

But what is Primal, you might understandably ask?

Other than a game I consider very underrated and overlooked, it’s the story of love, demons, and alternate planes. Jennifer Tate is dating Lewis, a tribal tattooed lead singer for a lame metal band, and everything is going peachy until a tall, shadowy man shows up at the Nexus nightclub one evening when Lewis and his mates are jammin’ and jivin’. Suddenly, the shadowy man reveals itself to be a freaky-deaky demon, attacks, and leaves both of them unconscious in an alley. Jen is moved to a hospital room where she is in a coma and given a fifty/fifty shot of making it. As she sleeps, a gargoyle named Scree slips into her room and separates her spirit from her body, claiming that he was sent to find her and needs her assistance. Together, they will travel to an alternate plane known as Oblivion to restore balance.

Yeah…it’s a crazy whacky opening, but at least it gets everything in place to get truly videogamey. I can’t help but imagine Joss Whedon approving of it though.

Primal is divided into roughly three aspects: exploration, combat, and puzzles. Naturally, the weakest of these three is combat, and one can’t, unfortunately, simply get by with button-mashing. It can be very frustrating, especially since combat is solely Jen’s responsibility; Scree turns into a statue when danger shows up. Jen can take on different demonic forms–Ferai, Undine, Wraith, and Djinn–and each have their ups and downs, but none really make anything easier. Once all enemies on screen are killed, Scree softens and is able to heal Jen’s wounds. 

Both characters can be controlled, and using Scree to hold a torch and scout ahead always comforted me because I knew nothing could hurt him. Search away, little stone buddy!

Like I mentioned though, the joy to be found in Primal sits not in fighting werewolves, but exploring the otherworldly planes, solving puzzles, and talking. Yes, there’s some great chatter here. Scree is voiced by Andreas Katsulas and Jen by Hudson Leick, and together, the two make one enthralling team. Scree is 99% seriously serious, and Jen plays the role of a sarcastic goth perfectly, bouncing off each other. She’d fit fine in a snooty book club consisting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins.

I’ve read that some consider Primal to be the British Ico. I don’t really get that comparison. Instead, I like to think of it as Tomb Raider With a Twist. You play as a strong, intelligent, well-capable woman searching for mysterious artifacts and trying to keep evil at bay. Sure, Jen does it for love, and Lara Croft does it because, well, it’s her job, but the two titles seem very similar to me. However, Primal‘s world and its characters are must more imagined, and I’d rather climb walls as a gargoyle than climb walls as an archaeologist. Oooooh snap!

So, yeah. That’s my pick–2003’s underrated Primal. Eight years later, it’s still an excellent, engrossing adventure. If you can find a used copy, grab it.

And now I will just keep refreshing the Internet, praying that one day it will spoil me all about that forthcoming Primal HD remake…

30 Days of Gaming, #2 – Your favorite character

I grew up in a small, New Jersey town known as Smithville, which is historic, quaint, and brimming with flesh-biting bugs in the summer. It’s the sort of place many know not, and I’m okay with that…mine forever more, as they say. I lived on a street that “ended” with two cul-de-sacs, and it was the kind of place where families raised their kids together at the same time, meaning I grew up with my neighbors’ kids at pretty much the same pace. We were all right around the same age, same grades, same what-have-yous. We hung out after school and on weekends, we went to planned BBQ parties, we fought with each other and made up, and had to deal with bullying and betrayal and boring bus stops in the morning. And through all of this was our parents, watching over, making amends, playing host to sleepovers and carpools, and one parent stands out to me especially in terms of today’s 30 Days of Gaming post: Mrs. B.

Mrs. B and her family lived directly across the street from my house. My family and hers were very close, as well as strangely similar in terms of kids; she had two daughters and a son, same as my mom and dad, and we were all pretty much four years apart too. We were destined to interact with each other. Anyways, Mrs. B worked the nights at the KayBee Toys in our local mall, and her son mentioned to me one day that she was able to get some great deals on the latest PlayStation games thanks to her employee discount. I believe he got Frogger 3D and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that year for Christmas. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal between my mother and Mrs. B to obtain a copy of Suikoden, a game coming out shortly before Final Fantasy VII that impressed me greatly from a preview article in some long-lost gaming magazine. As a youngling, I didn’t purchase many games so the ones i bought had to matter. I don’t remember where I got the cash from, but I do remember handing it over to Mrs. B with boyish excitement. And then I waited, and waited, and waited, and finally the game came back to me with a nice little note, too.

Suikoden is a game I can talk about for many paragraphs, but we’re not here to talk about the game itself. Instead, a single character from it still lives in my head, falling down countless times, truly living up to his Star of Destiny, churning my stomach into knots. Yup, my favorite character is Gremio:

Servant to the McDohl family after one of Barbarossa Rugner’s Six Great Generals, Teo McDohl, saved his life, Gremio helped raise the general’s son Tir. He ended up playing both the role of a servant and a parent since Tir’s father was constantly away and his mother died some time after giving birth. He becomes a permanent party member for much of the beginning of the game as Tir escapes pursuit and begins to build his own rebellion army. At one point, Tir and company rescue a famous doctor from the prison operated by Milich Oppenheimer, another one of Barbarossa’s Six Great Generals. Before escaping, Milich traps everyone in a room and releases flesh-eating spores, which threaten to consume the entire party. Gremio is able to open the door, granting everyone freedom, but then locks himself in the room, afraid to let the spores get out. Here are his final words to Tir:

“Young Master, can you hear me? I’m sorry I can’t protect you any more … But now that you’ve grown up, you no longer need my protection. Young Master…You make me proud. I wish Master Teo could see you now. Young Master. I think it’s time to say goodbye. I can’t see anymore. Young Master. I’m proud of you. Promise me you’ll always follow your heart. That is my first, and final…request…”

In battle, if Tir’s health falls too low, Gremio will actually protect him from further damage by using his own body as a shield. Outside of battle, all the way to the end, he continued to protect his young master, no matter what the cost. It’s no wonder why Gremio is the Tenei Star (Heroic Star). What’s really sickening is that Milich can be recruited after all this to join Tir’s fight in the Gate Rune Wars.

Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII did not affect me as much as Gremio’s did. Both were surprising, sure, but his more so. It did not feel like a “great character death” sort of moment, just another prisoner rescue mission. I even remember loading him up with the best items before getting ready to leave the prison, only to not have lost just him, but everything he was carrying. Tir already loses his father early on in the game, and then shortly after he loses the man he called both father and friend. Suikoden is all about tragic losses actually.

I didn’t find out that Gremio could be resurrected before the final battle for many months. To do so, you simply have to recruit all 107 other Stars of Destiny, which, at the time when there was little Internet access and only magazine features to go off of, was very difficult. But I did it, and seeing him and Tir reunite just as the emotional cup overflowed really cemented his potency in my mind. It only made defeating Barbarossa all the more sweet.

Gremio is the sort of character easy to bond with. He’s caring, careful, and stubborn where it counts. He also makes a mean special stew. Thanks, Mrs. B, for letting me get to know him, if only for a little while.

30 Days of Gaming, #1 – Your first videogame

 

This meme starts off with a doozy, and it’s a rather tricky doozy for me. See, while I’m going to talk about Super Mario World here as my first videogame, it most likely isn’t able to claim that title truthfully. Unfortunately, my gaming history from the early days is fairly foggy, and I know I played a lot of NES games over at the neighbors’, as well as bowling alley arcade machines and those weird solar-powered handheld things. I have very strong memories of a baseball one that traveled with me during long car rides. And I can’t quite place in the timeline when I got my GameBoy.

That said, Super Mario World–and the SNES is launched on–were truly my first, the very first console I ever opened on a Christmas morning, hugged, and called my own. It was the first videogame I could play, turn off, and turn back on an hour later, or the next morning, or whenever–because it was mine, and I was at home, not a friend’s place, and I could play it as much as I wanted. What we should also consider is that, having gotten no other games to play with the console for Christmas, I was extremely thankful the system came packaged with Super Mario World, which kept me busy for many snowy vacation days. And this trend of giving gamers a freebie is still somewhat followed by Nintendo (Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii; those AR games for the Nintendo 3DS). It was a move that would ensure many would play it, burn it into their upbringing, never forget about it.

Two paragraphs in, and I’ve yet to really dig into Super Mario World. It’s that same ol’ story from previous Mario games, wherein the princess gets herself kidnapped by Bowser and it’s up to Mario Mario and Luigi Mario to save her. They’ll travel across themed lands to get her, too. However, a new savior joins the party, and it’s my personal fav…Yoshi the dinosaur. When ridden, Yoshi can eat enemies, spit fire, and allow Mario to reach new heights thanks to a higher jump. The saddest thing anyone can witness is when an enemy hits a ridden Yoshi; the dinosaur cries out in horror, tosses its rider off, and makes a bee-line run for the nearest deathpit. It’s sickening, I say.

As a youngling, getting to the next section was all that mattered. And this game taught me how to jump, to run, to move effectively from left to right more so than any other game. I remember barely squeezing by on extra lives when beating World 4: Forest of Illusion and skipping over to the dreaded World 5: Chocolate Island. As I got older and revisited the game, I discovered that it harbored a great number of secrets. Things like Warp Whistles and holding down for X number of seconds to hide in the level’s backgrounds, but these were mostly about alternate exits and unlocking colored blocks throughout the worlds. Such things as alternate exits blew my mind back then; stumbling upon one where I accidentally had Caped Mario fly too far over the end goal on to discover a second end goal was like–I can only assume here as I don’t eat such dredge–finding two toys in a box of cereal purporting only one plastic army guy.

Awesomely, the game still stands up on its own today. Sure, some of the levels feel very short, and large chunks can be skipped if you are able to fly high enough, but the challenge still sits around medium. Those chargin’ football players always give me trouble. The graphics are just as colorful, and the music invades your head in ways you’d never expect. Hearing the bwwwwoooo-oop at the end of the level as the screen circles in on Mario and then goes black is pure cocaine.

And if older games had Achievements, I’d have ’em all for Super Mario World. Yes, even the one for opening up the EXTRA mode, which changed the colors of the levels, as well as messed with in-game sprites. This was accomplished by completing Star Road, which is not the easiest of tasks. But I had much more free time then to devote to a game, and no secret sat unturned. It’s most definitely a legendary title, and the fact that I’m considering it my first makes it all the more special.

Anyways, here’s a moment in time. Me with my wife’s copy of Super Mario World, a game now 20 years old. Enjoy the nostalgia, dear readers:

Next up on 30 Days of Gaming…is my favorite character? Hmm. Spoiler: it’s not that jerkbag, Milich.

That 30 Days of Gaming meme coming to Grinding Down soon

It might come as a surprise to my many silent readers here that I don’t plan a lot of the content that goes up on Grinding Down. I don’t write drafts or notes as I’m playing games for later posting…I just think and then type up what I’m thinking about. Off-the-cuff is a perfect way to describe how this blog lives, and the only thing I do try to do is remain constant in my updating at least once a day, Monday through Friday. Not too hard, but there are occasional days where I do struggle with a topic to post about. We all feel, at some point or another, that we’re just rambling at a wall and stealing someone else’s oxygen/brain cells with our pointlessness.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of fellow videogame bloggers doing a meme, a meme all about generating topics to talk about. Sounds good to me! So I’m gonna start this crazy meme next Monday and try my hardest to get through the 30 days as strong as possible. I will still, more than likely, take weekends off. But at least now, for the next 30 days, if there is ever a day where I’m drawing a blank, I know where to turn to: um, this blog post.

Anyways, here’s the 30 topic trains I’m going to be, just like Link in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, steering your way soon enough:

Day 1 – Your first videogame
Day 2 – Your favorite character
Day 3 – A game that is underrated
Day 4 – Your guilty pleasure game
Day 5 – Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)
Day 6 – Most annoying character
Day 7 – Favorite game couple
Day 8 – Best soundtrack
Day 9 – Saddest game scene
Day 10 – Best gameplay
Day 11 – Gaming system of choice
Day 12 – A game everyone should play
Day 13 – A game you’ve played more than five times
Day 14 – Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper
Day 15 – Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now
Day 16 – Game with the best cut scenes
Day 17 – Favorite antagonist
Day 18 – Favorite protagonist
Day 19 – Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in
Day 20 – Favorite genre
Day 21 – Game with the best story
Day 22 – A game sequel which disappointed you
Day 23 – Game you think had the best graphics or art style
Day 24 – Favorite classic game
Day 25 – A game you plan on playing
Day 26 – Best voice acting
Day 27 – Most epic scene ever
Day 28 – Favorite game developer
Day 29 – A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving
Day 30 – Your favorite game of all time

That’s a lot of musing. Are you stoked?

15 Games in 15 Minutes meme

So, there’s this 15 games in 15 minutes meme going around the Interwebz, and it’s been many moons since I participated in one of these things. The rules are simple and as follows: List 15 videogames you’ve played that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Don’t take ages pondering this one over that one over that one. Just react.

And here’s my 15 in no special order:

1. Suikoden II
2. Super Metroid
3. Shadow of the Colossus
4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
5. Super Mario Bros. 3
6. Fallout 3
7. Chrono Cross
8. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
9. Dark Cloud 2
10. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
11. Twisted Metal
12. Super Mario World
13. Animal Crossing: Wild World
14. Metal Gear Solid
15. Final Fantasy IX

Some of these might surprise y’all. Why Chrono Cross and not Chrono Trigger? Why Final Fantasy IX and not Final Fantasy VII? What the bleepy-bleep is Dark Cloud 2 doing here? Naturally, I have my reasons, and I think it’d be good to explore this more, but for now, let’s just leave it all as a meme.

What are your quick, unforgettable 15? Feel free to post ’em in the comments below.