Random Battle

I’ve just recently finished playing Bastion and the awesome soundtrack got me thinking about games I love and their music. A lot of my favorite games have amazing soundtracks, but does the excellence of the game make me appreciate a decent soundtrack more or is it the other way around? It’s probably a bit of both, each part being excellent completing the other one to make one especially enjoyable gaming experience. Nevertheless, here’s a list of my favorite games that have amazing soundtracks.

VVVVVV

This little indie game is a must play for all gamers. It’s a regular offering in all the indie bundles popping and often on sale for around 2$. The game is quite short but very enjoyable and the chiptune music fits perfectly.

Don’t let yourself get turned away by its simplistic graphics, it’s one good game.

Bastion

This one caught me by surprise. I had seen a couple of screenshots of the game and it looked interesting, but I was not really considering purchasing it. It’s only once I saw a gameplay video that I understood this game was special. The game features a reactive narrator who accompanies you in your adventure commenting on your actions and explaining the unfolding story. The narrator’s voice is perfect and never repetitive or annoying. Of course, the music is also excellent. It’s available on Steam for $15 and, as most indie games, will probably have deals for it every now and then.

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In the last few months, I acquired a few games from Steam because of their sales. They were all games I actually wanted to play but until today I hadn’t found the time to play them. It did not go well.

My first try was Freedom Force which I had bought for 2$. The game was unplayable at first, but I managed to get it working after a looking for solutions to the problem online. However, I only managed to finish the tutorial because the controls were unresponsive in the second mission.

My second try was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which I also got for the low low price of 2 dollars. Unlike Freedom Force, this was a game I was really looking forward to playing. Just like Freedom Force, the game was unplayable at first and I had to find a hack somewhere to get it to load. I managed to create my character and see the initial cinematic, but the screen was totally black after the video. I will try a few more things (like playing on a Windows XP machine) before giving up because I really want to experience this game.

After failing with 2 old games, I figured I’d try with a more recent title: Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (I do not understand Tycho’s love for prose). I had actually tried playing this game on my previous machine with no success. I attributed the failure to my PC because it was crap and never played any games well. However, my current machine is well built and plays modern games without any issues. This game was different, the audio would simply not work. The official FAQ mentions crackling noise (which is exactly what I was experimenting) however the proposed solution was not doing it for me. I contacted support and am still waiting for a response (it’s the week-end, so I wasn’t expecting an answer yet).

My last try was Flock. It played correctly for the first 7 or 8 levels but froze for no reason at some point. I haven’t tried playing it again, but I suspect I could continue playing and finish the level without issues. I was just too frustrated with my PC experience that I stopped playing for the day.

Thoughts on PC gaming

With that kind of experience and all the DRM fiascos going on (Spore, Ubisoft, etc.) it’s no wonder that console gaming is more popular. You just have to put the game in the console (or just run the downloaded game) and start playing: no setup, no issues (most of the time), just fun.

Birth of a fanboy

The boy was a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games. He first learned about it when the first Final Fantasy came to America. He was too young at the time to know what it was about but his father seemed to enjoy it. He heard about Final Fantasy again when Final Fantasy II (now IV) appeared on his Super Nintendo. He was still quite young to be able to play but he could understand what was going on. Then came Final Fantasy III (VI) which was a gift from his father to his mother (obviously a joke). He was now old enough to play, but he was too shy to take the controller from his older brother’s hands. Instead they played together, the little boy would observer and advise his brother. He had a fantastic memory and everything that happened on screen was embedded forever in a part of his brain. This would help him play the game himself once he would dare try the game.

A year or two passed, he now had enough confidence to try the games he only saw others play. He first played Final Fantasy III, then II. He played a bit of FFI but it was too hard for him. His parents even bought Final Fantasy Mystic Quest which he enjoyed even though it was not really like the other games. As the time passed, he learned to love those games and the consoles they were made for. He was not only a Final Fantasy fanboy, he was also a Nintendo fan. He made his parents buy the Nintendo 64 along with the excellent Super Mario 64. Then Squaresoft decided to leave Nintendo (rather, Nintendo decided to use cartridges that could contain a tiny fraction of what CDs could). The boy followed Squaresoft and sold a bunch of old games for the privilege of playing the newest Final Fantasy game.

A seasoned fanboy

In the following years the boy would play everything related to Final Fantasy. When he couldn’t find the original game he would find the ROM. He played and replayed the classics he had learned to love in his youth, he learned the correct numbering of the SNES games, he played the real Final Fantasy II and III. He played Final Fantasy V and bought all the remakes (Final Fantasy Origins, Chronicles, Anthology, Dawn of Souls). He tried Final Fantasy Adventure (which turned out to be a marketing name since it was really a Mana game) and the Final Fantasy Legend games. Even when a game was not really fun, he forced himself to play it just to know more about the fantastic universe of Final Fantasy.

He played everything.

The enlightenment

He loved the series so much that he spent a lot of time in forums discussing the games (released and announced). He learned about all the re-releases of his games, how plenty of games were first released in Japan, then in North America then re-released in Japan with just enough additional content to make plenty of fans buy the games again (and make the North Americans envy them). He learned about the shady marketing tactics the company had used to sell games. They used the Final Fantasy name to boost sales of other series.

One day they announced what fans everywhere were hoping for since the release of Final Fantasy VII: more Final Fantasy VII. They announced a mobile phone game, a movie and a spin-off game based on a character from the original game.

It was really that one game that put the last nail in the coffin. The game didn’t appeal to the boy (who had become an adult) at all and the reviews didn’t help either. The low scores confirmed the boy’s suspicions: SquareEnix could make a bad game. The fanboy in him had died. He was still very much a fan of the series, but he no longer bought games just because of a name stamped on it.

As I said in my last post, I recently finished playing through the remake of Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo DS. There was one thing that annoyed me more than anything else in the game. It’s how much the main character sucked (stat wise).

Normally, the main character is a powerful character that is a must to your party. If you could only have one member in your group, it would be him. Well not in Dragon Quest IV, the main character was not the strongest, not the fastest, didn’t have the best spells, he wasn’t the best at anything. He was not the worst in any either (except speed). He was in the top 4 characters, but he was not especially helpful. He had 2 things going for him. He was the strongest character that could equip the best armor (making him a tank) and he had the best healing spell which was only useful in the final boss battle (and the bonus quests after the game). So he was pretty much the dumb tank while a physical attacker, a healer and a powerful mage took care of things.

I did not like that my main character was the tank which is usually reserved to beefy but stupid characters.

I recently finished playing through the remake of Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo DS. It’s a fairly standard jRPG (4 characters group, grinding, turn-based battles, …) which is a genre I enjoy playing from time to time.

As I said, this is game that requires grinding, however in the last few years grinding has become less and less useful to finish a game. So when playing DQ4, I did not grind too much, I battled for money, not so much for experience. I managed to get through most of the game just fine, with many battles being hard fought which made them quite more enjoyable. I did die once or twice though which is perfectly fine (since the deaths were not due to cheap tricks by the game developer to make the game artificially difficult).

Battle preparation

Back to the topic, I went into the final battle with relatively good equipment, my four best characters and my HP/MP were mostly full. I forgot one important thing to do before engaging the battle. I did not use the item that would allow me to switch party members during the fight, I was not stuck with my four main characters.

Fight!

The battle started, I used my boss-fight routine and it worked well most of the fight. Boost defense of the party, reduce defense of the boss, hack away and heal when necessary (with the occasional omniheal which refills all the HP for every party member). The boss went through plenty of stages (it has 7 stages!!). At one point in the fight, my healer’s MP was getting low (my MP ring – Prayer Ring – broke during the fight) and my HP was not as high as I wanted it. I couldn’t cast omniheal anymore, my healer died before he managed to heal the party. My caster died, my main attacker died too. I was left with my main character, the hero, with no mana and without enough HP to survive any attack. I could have casted one tiny healing spell, but that wouldn’t have helped me.

I decided to give up the fight, I told my hero to attack one last time before dying. I got lucky, my hero attacked before the boss and the damage dealt was enough to kill the final stage of the boss. I was victorious!!

Victory is mine

The win was so rewarding considering I was so dead. I had really given up and I was thinking of what to do to be able to win next time. The victory felt really good. I’d love it if more games could reproduce that feeling, I don’t remember the last modern game where the final fight was close.