Entry 063: "Thunder Seven"

Dear Internet,

                Hello, again.  I feel like I just talked to you.  Maybe it is just my imagination.  Perhaps I should just go straight into telling you about Triumph's album "Thunder Seven."

                Thankfully, "Thunder Seven" is the seventh album put out by the heavy metal band.  Otherwise, the first question would be "What happened to the other six thunders?"  Well, I do not have an answer for than anyway.  I think this might be the only album I have of Triumph.  At first I though the band's name was the name of the album and the album's name was that of the band.  At the risk of sounding like an old man, the title of the work is more important than the name behind it.  Music albums and books as well have a tendency to randomly choose if the title or artist is more important from one entry to the next.  It gets even more confusing if you approach a book at the store and the title of the book is a character's name.  Music albums are definitely worse when it comes to this because the bands can name themselves and their albums after any little thing to strike their fancy.  But I digress and should be talking about "Thunder Seven."

                The music is clear metal rock.  I did not say clearly metal rock because there is a difference.  Unlike Pitbull Daycare which almost prided itself on making as much noise as possible, Triumph knows how to mix the various sound levels.  The guitar does not drown out the drums, nor do the drums beat so hard to kill the synthesizers.  The vocals are clear and understandable, which is important especially when lyrics are no longer cared about.  You do not believe me?  Then how did a South Korean pop song become an international sensation despite the works being in Korean?  "Thunder Seven" has a high level of technical skill which is apparent n the instrumental tracks like "Midsummer's Daydream," but that should be expected from a band that had been financed for six previous albums.  

                The good part of "Thunder Seven is that it is good old rock and roll.  There are no gimmicks or tricks to the music.  There are no audio samples playing from a computer, no Auto-tune robotic voices hiding poor singers, and definitely no "WUB WUB WUB."  However, describing what it is by what it is not is a poor way of saying nothing.  The core of "Thunder Seven" is the lyrical songs.  The songs deal heavily with the passing of time and having to keep up with it.  Three of the ten songs have "time" in their name.  The album for the most part approaches the problem of keeping up appearances and having to deal with the world forcing broken molds upon people.  Having to change oneself to fit the passing and illogical moods of the time is something that is just as foolish as the trends that are followed.  "Stranger in a Strange Land" makes a nice dig at a specific artist that ate and fed into that idiotic plate.

                The songs are all enjoyable to an extent.  The only strike that I can have against it is that I want more specific things after having listened to the album.  I wished "Midsummer's Daydream" to have lasted longer because it is such a beautiful acoustic guitar solo.  Other than that song and "Stranger in the Strange Land" the second side was not as strong as the first.  This album is good, very good, but for some reason, there is a missing element that the album lacks.  I wish I could place my finger on it, but I cannot.  Maybe if some of the band's other strong songs from other albums were here, I might say otherwise, but I cannot since I do not know what those other songs even are.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 059: Pitbull Daycare Discogrophy

Dear Internet,

                I mentioned a few entries ago about a friend of mine who would ask me to find music for him.  This occurred a number of times, so I have accumulated a few albums that would fit his tastes a lot more than my own.  Pitbull Daycare would have to be one of those groups.  There is no way that I would have gathered their three albums together or even listened to them if my friend did not ask for my assistance

. 

                Pitbull Daycare was a Texas based electronic industrial metallic punk rock band.  If you can saw that all out loud, try swallowing it next.  The nature of the music from their albums was not eclectic, which one might assume with that first line about their genre.  No, the band played exactly electronic industrial metallic punk rock music, and they played it often.  They made three albums before their apparent disassembly.  I was able to find an official Myspace page for the band, but the group has not logged on for almost three years now.  The three albums were "Six Six Sex" (1998), "Unclean" (2004), and "You, Me, and the Devil Makes Three" (2006).  As you can tell by the titles of the albums, the group heavily pushes their songs to the depressing, darker themes.  Listening to the sings themselves, one realizes that the band has "edge" to them.  In fact, there is so much "edge" in these songs that it makes a truncated cuboctahedron look like a two sided dice.

                When I began to listen to the albums in the order of publishing today, I was reminded of how my friend had described the band and their songs.  It was something like "Music to be downright be pissed off to."  That pretty much sums it up, but I suspect that you want to know a little more than that.  Between the three albums, the majority of the songs are very similar.  It is to the point that nothing changed over the course of the eight years from the first album to the third.  I can make sweeping generalization about the band because they were stagnant for the entire time.  The problems of the first album spilled over into the next.  It became a constant repetition through the three albums that only when the band tried to do anything different did they actually succeed.  

                The albums are filled with elements of the various genres that I mentioned earlier.  These genres do have distinct sound to them despite being closely related.  Electric will be filled with synthesizers and computer made sounds.  Industrial will include rhythmic beats that sounds more in place at a steel mill than in a song.  Metal can be directly tied to industrial as an influence if not a parent genre.  Punk and rock go hand in hand in most cases.  A band can belong to one group and not another, although I imagine they would most likely all be grouped under "rock" at a store.  Pitbull Daycare makes use of all these genres all of the time.  A song will start off with an electronic melody or random synthetic sounds, and then it will make way for the industrial percussions, which will lead into the metal guitar riffs, which overshadow the punk lyrics.  Eventually the song will reach a closing point where everything becomes mute short of the electronic sound samples.  About 80% of the songs on the three albums play like this.  The songs are painfully repetitive once they actually begin.

                The lyrics of the songs are not going to win any awards.  A number of the songs just constantly repeat the same four or five words over and over.  Most if not all of the songs are depressing, moping, pity party songs.  That is except for the rage filled ones throwing insult upon a supposed third party.  I do not mind songs about a cheating woman or about some other calamity thrown upon the unsuspecting fool.  I love old county-western songs.  Pitbull Daycare, however, does very little to make one song feel unique against its peers.  There are a few lyrics at the beginning, but they all stand aside for the two minutes of insult throwing, which is screamed out.  The benefit of making screaming lyrics is that there are no notes to hit.  There is no melody to keep the screams within a specific range.  It is all just shrill sounds.  It takes no skill to scream at the top of your lungs, only to cream longer and louder than others.  

                The only times that I found the tracks good was when they were covering songs from other bands.  "Sheer Heart Attack," "Ace of Spades, "It's the End of the World As We know It (And I Feel Fine)" are all well done.  The band's take on each one feels unique because they are applying a plethora of genre techniques to songs that have proven their worth and ability.  On top of that, those same techniques work very well for those selected songs.  That is another thing that the band does seem to do well.  The instrumentals are well done to the point that the lyrics are in the way.  Even the ways the levels are mixed place the words well behind the guitars and drums.  If the albums were composed of more cover versions, I might have liked them better.  

                The only thing that I can do is highlight the few songs that I liked, which were "Hold On" and "No Compromise."  The rest, like I said, are repetitive angst filled tracks that would appeal mostly to teenagers.  Maybe after finally getting through these albums I should wonder about the musical tastes of my friend.  I can question the compatibilities of our tastes, however.  It really is not much of surprise that Pitbull Daycare was only around for a little while and never quite got above a limited level of popularity.  There are plenty of indie, underground, or amateur bands around that can learn a few genre techniques and spit out mediocre albums.  A listener might be willing to have a go at these albums, maybe even work out to the hard hitting beats and shredding guitar riffs, but listening to these songs on headphones or ear buds will make their lackluster lyrics seep through, and listening to this on a speaker system will get you stares and maybe a knock on your door by the landlord.  The whole thing is stuck in the middle, between problems that come from a mess of genres and actual skill with the instruments.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next will be "1001 Nights" (1969).

Edit: The next Backlog item is incorrect and is addressed about in the next entry.

Entry 049: "Brutal Legend" Pt.2 End

Dear Internet,

                "Brutal Legend" is over as far as I am concerned.  I have completed the main story and the game was unable to make me want to play it any longer than that.  There is still multiplayer mode that I have not played, which allows players to play one another in the tower defense mode.  On top of that there are sidequests that reward the player with points for upgrades, statues to raise, tablets to find which unlock music, and various other things that are hidden away.  None of these are essential or needed.  I was able to get through the whole story without any upgrades except for a few that I purchased for the ax and guitar.  There are six guitar solo moves hidden throughout the land that are special moves that aid in battle.  I found and needed one.  I played about for side quests out of the 30 or so and saw that they were mostly repeats with only location or enemy changes, so I chose not to do them.  

                There is a lot to do in "Brutal Legend," I will admit, but none of them are needed to get through the main quest.  Worse than that, the game was unable to make me want to play though them.  This is coming from a guy that is trying to get 100% in "Lego City: Undercover," a game with well over 300 collectable unlockables.   To a certain extent this might be due to the fact that I am playing "Lego City" for my own enjoyment with no entry being required for it while "Brutal Legend" is preventing me from continuing through the backlog.  However there is a glaring problem.  The various things that "Brutal Legend" has ready for the player to collect are not needed one bit.  Maybe playing on the highest difficulty would make the player search out these various goodies to help aid them, but even on mid-difficulty I breezed through the majority of the game.  The only time I had to repeat the same battle over and over again was with the second to last fight, and that was more because the game decided to throw a new enemy type into my arsenal and one in the enemy's and asked me to quickly understand the mechanic of the new type mid-battle.  The game forgot a simple lesson in game design: you do not teach in the middle of a test.  The other times when I failed a mission was when I got thrown into a new situation with little to no explanation, but I got over those much quicker once I got the mechanic down, so that is more par for the course.

                Last I wrote to you, I spoke very highly of the various elements that the game while touching upon a few less than stellar points.  I said there were some things that I wanted to wait to say, and now I can say the.  For one thing, that open world that is supposed to be filled with various things to collect feels really empty.  To a certain extent it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  The world is huge, but rather pointlessly so.  Since the player has access to a car at any one time, traversing it can be quick, albeit annoying since there is no minimap and navigating to a waypoint by means of turn signals feels a bit broken.  There is no point in walking anywhere since you cannot jump which can leave you stuck in a hole until you summon your car three seconds later.  The only way I can detail as to why the world feels pointlessly big is comparing it to "Lego City."  In "Lego City" not only is there a huge world, but there is a sense of exploration.  There are hidden nooks and crannies everywhere that are waiting to reward the player when they find them.  The game encourages the player to get out of the vehicle to find the items scattered everywhere.  "Brutal Legend" does the complete opposite.  It highlights all the sidequests and has little to no walking exploration.  Having enemies scattered everywhere makes speed bumps that push the player away from getting out of their car to look around.  There is no stress in finding the various collectables.  At least in "Lego City" it admits that collectables are completely cosmetic, but creates a sense of excitement in the player by making the player wonder what exactly they are going to receive.

                Tim Shafer games are herald as the epitome of wit and comedy.  I played "Psychonauts," which was the game that Shafer and his studio designed right before this game.  It was funny, but never in a way that made me laugh out loud consistently.  It made me smirk constantly more than laugh uncontrollably.  That more likely has something to do with the fact that a video game can make the same joke as a movie, but requires the player to regain their concentration quicker than a movie lest the player lose the game.  The player needs to make the joke less funny or they risk having to repeat the level by losing their concentration.  I digress because "Brutal Legend" has to follow this--somewhat overblown in my opinion--legacy of Shafer being the epitome of comedy.  There is some really witty writing at the beginning of the game.  The whole segment of Eddie rescuing the headbangers from a mine got me laughing.  After about the three hour mark, there was next to nothing for the remaining of the game.  A few jokes were scattered here and there, but they definitely dropped in both quality and frequency.  The game turns dramatic and serious very quickly despite it being rather ludicrous and filled with holes.  By the end, there are a few switcheroos pulled that could not make me care at all.  They are pushed in there at the last minute to try and add some sort of backstory, yet the story as a whole lacks telling the player about those key aspects before shaking them up, so none of it really matters.  You cannot pull the rug from under a person if they were not standing there in the first place.  Apparently, there are a few ways to learn about the world from either talking to the various characters or finding those collectables I mentioned.  If the game expected me to pick up on excess information scattered outside of the main story when it was actually central information, then the game pulled a silly trick.  You do not put central information anywhere but at the center of the game.  I am still trying to figure out how Eddie knew what the Black Tears was or when it was explicitly told to the player what they were.  

                Another thing about that giant open world that I am not going to slice into the above paragraph since I am getting lazy, the car handles terribly.  I was constantly sliding around like a sugar-hyped four year old in a bouncy castle.  It reminded me sometimes of the rover in "Mass Effect."  At least that game had an excuse as to why the vehicle behaved like it was rolling around on the moon.  In "Brutal Legend," the vehicle has next to no weight to it except when it goes crashing into an enemy.  I found myself crashing into walls constantly and being forced to slowly slog away because the crash would cause the vehicle to point at an awkward angle half way up a rock.  The driving was never satisfying or all that fun.  It was just a means to get to the next mission, and something to be put up with.  There were sidequest that were races, but I completely avoided them because of how I did not like driving that car.

                Overall, "Brutal Legend" finishes as being mediocre and uninspiring.  The novelty of having a game's artistic aesthetic based around different types of rock is unique, but it quickly grows old when the game plays all its cards so quickly.  The whole premise of a real time strategy game where the player takes on the role of one of the soldiers never quite works.  The biggest problem I had with the game was not the controls as others have said, but the fact that the viewpoint from Eddie constantly restricted my perception of the playing field, hindering my understanding of how I should go about each match.  The game's biggest draw might be the huge soundtrack, but since a number of them are not available until the player finds them or progresses in the story, it limits what the player can listen to awkwardly.  Unlike the Tony Hawk games that I mentioned earlier which handled a soundtrack management perfectly by letting the player choose exactly which songs would cycle throughout, "Brutal Legend" often teases the player by never finishing a favorite song.  I have yet to hear "Through the Fire and Flames" completely because it only plays when I drive the car, and I get anywhere I need to go in under two minutes.  "Brutal Legend" is not legendary in the scope of the story, which comes across like a teenage angst drama, or gameplay, which is not all that brutal either.  

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells.

Entry 048: "Brutal Legend" Pt.1

..well not really.

Dear Internet,

                "Brutal Legend" is pretty brutal, or in the very least it is when trying to connect it to a video capture card due to PS3 issues.  I was able to play some of it on the stream earlier, but after being forced to reboot my computer, it will now no longer even go through to my computer so I can take screenshots for illustrative use.  I believe this is only a problem when it comes to PS3 games due to some protection issues, but if Sony believes that people should not even route their visuals through a computer no matter what, what can I do but comply?  I can do either that or find some sort of Chinese backwards engineered device that strips the signal apart.  Who knows?  In the mean time, both you and I will have to make use of the few screenshots I made in the first session and just utilize our imagination for the rest of the time.

                "Brutal Legend" of Tim Shafer fame, follows the roadie Eddie Riggs, voiced by Jack Black, as he is thrown into a metal rock inspired world after he is crushed by a giant stage prop at a concert.  Mountains of horned skulls adorn the landscape while giant guitars are plunged neck deep in the plains between.  The world that Double Fine made is rich in the art and style that adorns rock covers of a foregone era.  I dare not even try to attempt to categorize the various levels of musical genre and sub-cultures that this game includes.  Trying to distinguish and separate from such genres as Classical Heavy Metal and Folk Metal is better left to someone who has spent years listening to such songs and can detect the subtle nuance.  Billy Joel summed it up enough for me saying "It's still rock and roll to me."

Our lovable yet eccentric protagonist.

                The songs that the game does select are not all obscure ones selected to create a pure underground atmosphere.  There are a few that even I recognize.  I think one or two are shared with the old "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" games, but I cannot be sure about that.  There are similarities between the two games track listings and how they handle the music.  Both create a unique vibe by creating a playlist of licensed music that is perfectly enjoyable by itself.  I had heard that the soundtrack was well selected and created, and I was worried that I might not enjoy Brutal Legend and would be making a quip like "The game's soundtrack lasts longer than the enjoyment from playing the game," but thankfully that is not the case.  A side bit about the audio: I noticed sometimes that the character lines would completely fail to play during some cinematics.  If I was not playing with the subtitles on, I would have missed a few crucial lines of dialog. 

                The gameplay, so far, is somewhat enjoyable, if not a bit clunky and cumbersome.  When the game got released it was sadly toted as being an action/adventure game.  While it does have many elements of these two genres, the game is much more heavily a tactical strategy game.  The player controls Eddie directly with am over the shoulder view.  He can either use a battle ax or an electric guitar that functions as short range and long range weaponry, respectively.  Add dodging and blocking to the mix, it can be understandable that the game would sound like an action/adventure game.  After a little while, Eddie frees a group of head banging men, with more than a dose of comedy, and the real game begins.  The player has to give orders to the other characters like telling them to go somewhere and fight a specific enemy or stay and guard an area.  Eventually, the members of Eddie's army begin to grow well beyond a handful.  It is there that the game really begins.  Soon the player is controlling 40 or more teammates while fighting off hoards of enemies that are attempting to break down the rock band stage that you are protecting.  Basically, the game is a tower defense game in a 3D environment.

When the game does place something in the middle of this world, it is done with plenty of style.

                Coming back to the blood-soaked demonic environment for a moment, it is huge.  The world is ridiculously large and requires a vehicle to navigate it constantly, which the game thankfully gives you very early.  Even when the game shifts from exploration to tower defense mode, the "area" is huge to the point where trying to walk from your base to the enemy's would take much too long to warrant.  The game works a clever workaround to this predicament.  Once the battlefields get to the point where one end cannot be seen from the other, Eddie is "cursed" with large bat wings that allow him to fly around at speeds that make the hot rod from hell look slow in comparison.  Sadly, the wings only work in tower defense segments, and the game has yet to say exactly why only then they are active.  There is an explanation as to where they come from, but that is it.  Perhaps the game will say more as I continue.

                The tower defense matches are rather easy I must say.  I am going through the game in "Normal" difficulty, so perhaps I should be playing on hard.  What generally happens is that I can create enough troops to the point where I defeat all the current enemy troops on the field.  Then I spend a minute or two looking for the one or two obscure enemies on the playfield trying to figure out what I am supposed to do to continue the match.  Sometimes it seems the game is waiting for a specific time before launching the next wave instead of identifying whether or not I have wiped out all previous forces.  This creates lulls in gameplay.  Sometimes it is to the point where I lose concentration and miss when the enemy troop does arrive because I am just waiting for it.  It does not help that the game does not explicitly give you win objectives for each match.  Sometimes it is to simply survive, while other times it is to destroy the enemy's base.  I found myself constantly wondering what I am supposed to be aiming for since the game thinks it is giving enough clues.  And while it is true that if you fumble long enough you can figure it out, it makes the matches take longer because you spend extra time figuring out what you are supposed to be doing specifically.  

                This lack of a clear goal sort of rolls into one of the bigger problems of the game.  There is almost no heads-up display.  This brings back one problem that I found in "Fable III."  I do not want to go back to those entries and read them again because it was such a bad game the first time around, so I am not sure if I made this point before.  Both "Fable III" and "Brutal Legend" make use of no health bar to indicate to the player how close they are to dying.   What both games decide to do is take out all the color saturation on the screen and add a growing red boarder on the edges of the screen.  This is a horrible concept because the player has no concrete idea as to how close they are to being dead.  When they are playing, they are asking themselves, "Can the screen get redder?"  The only way they can know if they are in real trouble is by allowing themselves to die to know at what point they should be concerned when the effects trigger.  Looking at a screen going red is subjective to the interpretations of the player and silly since the health points of the characters are objective and number based.  You can argue about how red a color can be, but you cannot argue about how two out of a hundred is close to nothing.

                I will stop for now, Internet.  There are a few other things that I will cover in subsequent entries that I do not want to talk about until I am deeper in the game.  Until then, keep headbanging.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop