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GameSpottings' Revenge

Welcome to GameSpotting, where massive space barriers and swirling space vortices are everyday problems for hyperevolved space bugs.

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Welcome to GameSpotting, where massive space barriers and swirling space vortices are everyday problems for hyperevolved space bugs. When we're not out exacting our intergalactic vengeance on the evil Qotile, we're busy ranting about the harms of deep discounts, subliminal beef bowls, virtual loss, and other odd, random topics. So, while we charge up our Zorlon cannon, sit back and enjoy our latest editorialized offerings.

Everything Must Go
Jeff Gerstmann/Senior Editor
"Is there going to be a landfill right next to the E.T. 2600 landfill filled with copies of, say, WWE Crush Hour for the GameCube?"

Insidious Beef Marketing
Bethany Massimilla/Community Manager
"It's a crazy, addictive, and lovably oddball game that happens to be directly constructed around a certain product, and it seems just a happy side effect that playing the game makes you crave the product."

Five Capital Letters, Two Little Systems, One Big Bloodbath
Greg Kasavin/Executive Editor
"Debates have raged on as to the relative merits of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. The obvious questions abound: Which is going to be better? Which one would you buy?"

A Viking Burial
Tim Tracy/Senior Producer, GameSpot Live
"Perhaps I should take this as a sign that I shouldn't get too involved with MMORPGs..."

From Azeroth to AMD: Adventures in Hardware
James Yu/Senior Editor, Hardware
"Almost all of today's processors have multiplier locks that severely limit overclocking options, but the Mobile Athlon XP is a throwback-type processor--an unlocked chip able to hit massive overclock speeds around 2.4GHz or more."

The Soundtrack of Our Lives/Games
Alex Navarro/Associate Editor
"A lot of game developers have yet to understand how they can use their soundtracks to draw the player deeper into what they're playing."

The Impact of Storytelling
Justin Graham/GuestSpotter
"The ending cinema is so elegant, so tragic, that, when combined with the sheer intensity of the game itself, it can leave you emotional."

So You Wanna Be a Gamer
Rev. Josephat Greymatter/Practitioner of Game
If you want to live the life of a gamer, actually playing games is only part of the equation. If you have thoughts on this lifestyle choice, why no submit them as a potential GuestSpotting column?

Jeff Gerstmann
Senior Editor
Now Playing: Boktai, Megamania

Everything Must Go

Everybody loves a good deal. Good deals in the game industry used to be few and far between. Games came out for $49.99 and pretty much stayed that way for quite some time. Budget-minded titles or "greatest hits" rereleases didn't really take off until fairly recently. Now they've taken off quite a lot, but there's another trend in game prices that seems a little more disturbing.

With more and more regularity, game retailers have turned to blowout prices in order to clear stock off of their shelves. It's usually just an underpublicized sale of one or two games. For example, as of this writing, EB is selling copies of Namco's passable but unexciting racing game R: Racing Evolution for about 11 bucks. Originally shipping in December of last year, R is around half a year old, and it's already been dramatically discounted, even if it's only a temporary sale.

Now you can invite Chris Berman into your home for the low, low price of a twin.
Now you can invite Chris Berman into your home for the low, low price of a twin.

Temporary sales have also spread to some of the larger chain stores that primarily deal in electronics, like Best Buy and Circuit City. Both chains have recently had multiday sales where some games sold for as little as 99 cents, though most games dropped to around the $5-to-$15 range. Now, I'm all for sales, and I certainly went to both places and bought a bunch of random, cheap games, but this is starting to feel a little dangerous.

Should someone really be able to get a new copy of Soul Calibur II for $14.99 less than a year after its release? Granted, you could make the argument that everyone who cared at all about that game has probably already purchased it, but $14.99 is still a pretty steep discount. Who makes money when a game intended to sell for $40 or $50 drops that low? Who makes money when copies of Superman: Shadow of Apokolips sell at Best Buy for 99 cents? Not Best Buy, that's for sure. Not Atari. Not even DC Comics.

So why does this happen? In most cases, it's because these games aren't selling. Let's focus on that Superman game a little more. According to NPD sales data, it looks like the PS2 version of the game, released in September of 2002, has sold around 160,000 copies to date. Not exactly a barn-burner. The GameCube version hit shelves in March of 2003, but Nintendo fans weren't biting either. That version appears to clock in at around 46,000 copies sold. I'm no retail wizard, but that probably leaves a lot of copies of that game sitting around in warehouses at various retailers and distributors across the land. Eventually, it makes more sense to just get rid of that stuff at any price rather than having it clutter up a warehouse forever. So the price takes a serious dunk. Most places are selling the game for $15 now--the Best Buy thing was a temporary offer. I bought a copy for 99 cents. Hell, I almost bought 10 copies, just because the price was so outrageous.

For the guys and gals out there buying games, these sales and the general trend of quick game discounts for games that aren't the absolute top tier are fantastic. But how long is this sort of thing sustainable? Game development certainly isn't getting any cheaper. Are these blowout sales the first sign of impending doom? Is there going to be a landfill right next to the E.T. 2600 landfill filled with copies of, say, WWE Crush Hour for the GameCube?

OK, so perhaps it's a bit premature to start talking all doom and gloom about game sales. The big games are still doing great numbers, and from a dollar perspective, things seem like they're going well, I guess. But here's a more recent and, to me, a more startling development.

You probably already saw that Sega's new football game, ESPN NFL 2K5, is going to retail for $19.99 when it's released this August. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The NFL games from Visual Concepts have been the best in the business for several years now. Forget what you read in the sales columns. Year after year, it's been a better overall game than its main competition, the Madden series. So how, exactly, is it a good business move to cut the price down to the budget range? With less money coming in, will this have a negative impact on the development of ESPN NFL 2K6? How much money could Visual Concepts possibly be getting per game, considering that some of the money from those sales probably has to go to, maybe, the NFL, or ESPN, or David Arquette? And if this does gain a little market share for the series, are people going to stick around if next year's game is back up to full price? Or will any potential converts run right back to Madden? This, more than anything, seems like a very dangerous game for Sega, Take-Two (who will be handling distribution of the game), and Visual Concepts to be playing.

At the very least, all of this football drama will certainly be interesting to watch. And the constant game sales are also something worth keeping tabs on. I just hope that deep discounts today don't end up translating into a smaller industry tomorrow.

Bethany Massimilla
Community Manager
Now Playing: World of Warcraft beta, Front Mission 4, La Pucelle: Tactics, all manner of Japanese eatery simulators

Insidious Beef Marketing

This is my first GameSpotting since E3, and while it was some time ago, I feel as if I should pay a brief homage to my time at the show. Here goes:

There were lots of games there. I have never seen so many plasma screens in one place in all my life. I kept wanting to stab people out of my way when I was trying to get to appointments. I caught snatches of Kingdom Hearts music from the Disney booth and got all emotional for no reason. I encountered much frightening food. I can't wait until next year.

OK, that's done. Now I can get to what I really want to talk about today, which is beef.

Behold the most elegant box art you have ever seen. Be the beef bowl.
Behold the most elegant box art you have ever seen. Be the beef bowl.

You'd think that beef has almost nothing to do with video games, and you'd be right. You'd think that beef has no place in the video games of today, and you'd be wrong. Japan shows us that this is the way in the import game Yoshinoya, a recent release whose title also happens to be the name of a chain of restaurants that's been serving edibles over rice since 1899 or so. (It's even possible you have one in your area.) In the game (insofar as I can tell, since I don't read Japanese very well) you play as a workaholic Yoshinoya employee who's sent to various horribly understaffed restaurants to single-handedly feed scores of people fast, delicious foods. You can rack up combos according to the number of customers you successfully serve at one time, and when you do well enough, you have the opportunity to serve a particularly demanding customer in an epic boss battle of food. Careful with the rice; don't add too much beef! There's also a point in there where you mash buttons to make a tray of food glow--if you do it correctly, the food items are superimposed over an image of outer space. No one here is really sure what's up with that.

I don't have access to screenshots at the time of this writing, but the back of the Yoshinoya box is easily as righteous as the front. The sunburst in the background keeps it real.
I don't have access to screenshots at the time of this writing, but the back of the Yoshinoya box is easily as righteous as the front. The sunburst in the background keeps it real.

Anyway, aside from the fact that the game is spectacularly insane and somehow irresistibly appealing, it's also an obvious marketing instrument for the restaurants. After watching someone play the game for about five minutes--serving up tea, spooning beef over rice, selecting side dishes, and other such activities--it's hard to shake the feeling that you should be going out and getting this food. It's even worse around lunchtime--after watching Ricardo demo the game for a short while, and admiring the game's box art, a group of us proceeded to the Japanese restaurant down the street (not a Yoshinoya, but Japanese food is not hard to come by in San Francisco) in search of the fabled beef bowl. It's fascinating how benign and reasonable the compulsion seems, even as you're fully cognizant of the fact that you've been directly affected by carefully crafted suggestion. It's not quite that you're rendered powerless against the mighty draw of a branded product, but the fact that it's been couched in entertainment and is presented in such an innocuous way makes even a heavy-handed piece of marketing like this seem perfectly acceptable. After all, it's not just a billboard in your face saying, "Hey kids, this is yummy. Buy this food!" It's a crazy, addictive, and lovably oddball game that happens to be directly constructed around a certain product--and it seems just a happy side effect that playing the game makes you crave the product.

That's absolutely horrifying. Don't get me wrong, I had some beef donburi and it was quite tasty, and I was glad that I had purchased it, and I adore the Yoshinoya game, but I always imagined that I was better than this, that I was somehow immune to the evils of beef marketing. I thought I was made of sterner stuff. It's disconcerting. I'm not sure if this is some inherent, heretofore unseen flaw in my character, or if I'm just a sap for crazy Japanese games. (I believe, and sincerely hope, it's the latter.) But Yoshinoya makes it clear, if nothing else, that none of us goes truly untouched by marketing. Now, you'll have to excuse me; writing this column has made me hungry!

Five Capital Letters, Two Little Systems, One Big Bloodbath

Never a dull moment if you follow games. One of the most exciting developments this year has been the emergence of information about Nintendo's and Sony's upcoming portable game systems--respectively, the DS and the PSP. Revelations about these two devices certainly were the most interesting news to come out of May's Electronic Entertainment Expo, and since then, debates have raged on as to the relative merits of the two devices. The obvious questions abound: Which is going to be better? Which one would you buy? Which company's approach is right? I love portable gaming systems--I've practically professed my undying love for my Game Boy Advance on numerous occasions in the past--so I'm very interested in these types of questions and have put a lot of thought into them.

Nintendo's next gaming device is certainly intriguing, but it's going to have to be a lot more than that to be a success.
Nintendo's next gaming device is certainly intriguing, but it's going to have to be a lot more than that to be a success.

I've also come up with preliminary answers to them. They are, in order, as follows: The PSP, the PSP, and Sony. But, in each case, it's a close call. First, let me admit that it's very, very easy to jump on Sony's bandwagon in practically any case. For what it's worth, though, it's also very, very easy to root for the relative underdog that Nintendo's lately turned into. But let's level the playing field here. Neither of these companies expects your loyalty or necessarily deserves it. They're both these big, huge Japanese firms designed to pull a serious profit year in and year out. Forget about which company you "like" better. Let's talk about the real issues at stake--the fact that two new game systems are coming out in the next year, and most of us are going to have a tough choice in trying to decide which one to get. Granted, that choice might not be so difficult once the systems are finally available along with their launch titles--if one system's games are markedly better than the other system's games, then the choice will be clear. For now, though, since we've seen relatively little of either the DS or the PSP lineups, the debate is mostly focused on the design philosophies inherent in the respective systems' forms.

Sony's PSP looks like it's optimally suited for the sorts of gaming experiences I already enjoy on consoles. Sign me up.
Sony's PSP looks like it's optimally suited for the sorts of gaming experiences I already enjoy on consoles. Sign me up.

On the one hand, the DS represents Nintendo's unwavering commitment to innovate for the sake of innovation--a noble pursuit if such a thing can exist in the gaming industry, but one that I'd argue Nintendo hasn't really justified yet. It's strange to think that the Nintendo DS's design--two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and can be manipulated with a penlike stylus--might have been finalized before any truly exciting game designs had been proposed and demonstrated. And yet, having seen the DS's lineup at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo, I couldn't help but feel like none of those games made especially effective use of the system's layout and functionality. They all seemed like technology demonstrations, instead.

One could easily (and perhaps cynically) draw an analogy between Nintendo's stubborn commitment to GameCube/Game Boy Advance connectivity as an alternative to online play and the upcoming DS system. Nintendo was touting "connectivity" as a buzzword to rival that whole "online" thing that Sony and Microsoft kept prattling on about, and, let's face it, Nintendo just flat-out lost that bet. It took years for Nintendo itself to even begin to realize the benefits of its own technology; recent games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures have finally made good on some of those old promises. I'd hate to think it'll take that long for the Nintendo DS's defining game to finally appear.

Meanwhile, Sony's PSP seems to have been designed with an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mind-set. The system is shaped more or less like the familiar, comfortable DualShock controller that Sony itself invented, perfected, and made industry-standard. The PSP game demos we got to see didn't exactly look like strange, offbeat experiences like some of the DS offerings, but they looked technically impressive, and they seem like they could end up being good, solid games.

Games like Metal Gear Acid may not signify a paradigm shift in game design, but who cares? They seem pretty exciting all the same.
Games like Metal Gear Acid may not signify a paradigm shift in game design, but who cares? They seem pretty exciting all the same.

I don't know about you, but I don't sit there playing games and thinking to myself, "Man, I'm so sick of these buttons." It's not that I'm against innovations to the physical interfaces we use to interact with our games. I hope I'll live to see the day when display technology goes through a paradigm shift--when I can dip my face into a huge bowl-shaped monitor and feel fully immersed in my gaming experiences. But I really don't have much of a problem with the way I interface with my games at the moment. Game pads, mice, and keyboards are precise, responsive, and multifunctional. I do happen to think that game interfaces have generally grown too complicated for the sake of inexperienced game players. But the solution to that isn't necessarily a touch-sensitive screen and a stylus.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that the Nintendo DS is a reactionary device that lacks focus. The fact that Nintendo has clearly stated that the system is due out this fall, yet its design and even its name have yet to be finalized, demonstrates that the company is desperate to get it out there. The company has also contradicted itself with its messaging about the DS, first by claiming that the system will not compete with the Game Boy line, and then by pointing out that the DS will be backward compatible with the Game Boy and announcing games starring Mario, Wario, and Samus Aran for the device. Sounds an awful lot like a new Game Boy to me. And while I'm all in favor of a powerful, new Game Boy model, I'd be fine with just one nice, crisp screen on it.

To be fair, Sony has also done its fair share of double-talking with respect to the PSP. In particular, there's a lot of confusion out there about the system's battery life and price point--facts that haven't been clarified as yet. But they're undoubtedly still being defined, and that's OK, because the system itself isn't done and is months away from release.

Of all the dozens of games that have been shown, if just briefly, for the DS and the PSP, the one game that's most exciting to me is Darkstalkers Chronicle, a Capcom fighting game for the PSP that combines the monster-themed Darkstalkers fighting game series all into one. The game will hopefully support over-the-air multiplayer via the PSP's Wi-Fi functionality, and that, to me, is just about the most exciting game idea I can think of--a great fighting game I can play against other people anywhere and anytime. The DS is going to have Wi-Fi support too. But I can't imagine playing a two-screened fighting game with a pen. That's either my problem or Nintendo's problem, and it's clear by now which of the two possibilities I'm currently leaning towards.

Tim Tracy
Senior Producer, GameSpot Live
Now Playing: The Legend of Zelda (GBA), The Chronicles of Riddick (Xbox), GrillMaster (Weber BBQ)

A Viking Burial

When I awoke from my slumber, I was practically naked, stripped of all my worldly possessions. I was in a far-off land, miles from home. After getting reacquainted with my surroundings, I made the long, cold journey back to my homeland and started to pick up where I had left off so many weeks ago. It was great to be reunited with my first World of Warcraft character again, who had been locked away in a weird beta test purgatory several months ago, but something just wasn't the same.

Lolol Baggins, I'm going to miss you, old buddy.
Lolol Baggins, I'm going to miss you, old buddy.

After putting in so many hours of play only to have everything ripped away was kind of a letdown. I know I probably shouldn't complain. I know that there are thousands of people out there who would give anything to get their hands on the game, and I'm grateful that I've been given the opportunity. I've really never been part of a beta test before, much less a beta test for such a huge MMORPG, so the whole thing came as quite a shock. But hey, I'll get over it soon enough.

If you didn't already know, the latest "push" in the World of Warcraft beta added a slew of new features, most notably the addition of PvP combat, which promises to totally change the dynamics of the game as we, the beta testers, have known it. I simply can't wait to see what kind of chaos is going to ensue once people from the opposing factions start gathering forces and waging all-out war. At this point, I think the best course of action is to start over fresh, rather than bring my old characters back up to speed, knowing full well that they're probably all going to be wiped out at some point in the coming months.

Thank You, Golden Gate Transit, for allowing me to walk down memory lane.
Thank You, Golden Gate Transit, for allowing me to walk down memory lane.

For a diehard MMORPG player, having something go horribly awry with your character is tantamount to being stabbed in the heart. Even after just a couple of weeks of playing several hours a day--a meager amount of play time by most conventional standards--I really became attached to the characters I'd created. I can't even begin to imagine how I would have felt if I'd put months or even years of time into those characters. Perhaps I should take this as a sign that I shouldn't play these types of games regularly.

In other news, I moved a couple of weeks ago, which has seen me rekindling my love affair with the Game Boy Advance SP. Now that I have a slightly longer commute time, I've been able to give all the GBA games that I pack around with me a little more attention, and I promptly bought the rerelease of The Legend of Zelda as soon as I could. Maybe I just didn't realize it before, but the Game Boy Advance SP is simply one of the best consoles ever made. You've not only got the ability to play all the great Game Boy games you've collected over the years, but considering the Classic NES series and all of the awesome GBA games on the market, you've got a huge chunk of classic Nintendo history in your hands. Here's to hoping that the Classic NES series keeps growing.

I do have to admit, though, that I've made my way through Zelda a little quicker than I'd hoped. Maybe spending an entire summer of my youth indoors, exploring every nook and cranny of Hyrule, has stuck with me permanently. It almost makes me wonder how many other games I've subconsciously memorized over the years. At any rate, if it weren't for the GBA, I'd probably be just like all the other commuters on the bus, reading the newspaper or dozing off on the way to work. For that, Nintendo, I thank you.

James Yu
Senior Editor, Hardware
Now Playing: World of Warcraft

From Azeroth to AMD: Adventures in Hardware

I didn't notice it at first. Once in a while my system would crash hard while running the World of Warcraft beta, thus requiring a system reboot. I chalked up the crashes to part of the beta-tester experience, since there were a handful of bugs and certain areas of the world map that could knock a player out of the game.

It didn't take very long to observe that most of my guildmates would pop back on the server very shortly after getting disconnected from it or very shortly after crashing out of the game. Everyone else could reconnect very quickly, because their sudden exits only forced them back to the Windows desktop, but it always took me a couple of minutes to get back on the server, since I had to manually reboot my PC.

The crashes were infrequent at first, so I was lackadaisical in my troubleshooting efforts, only reinstalling drivers and trying a few tests to pin down the problem. I finally set aside a few hours to properly diagnose the problem when the instability worsened to the point that I became a liability to my guildmates, sometimes crashing out during crucial encounters.

My primary suspects were the processor and video card, because the problems only occurred while running a challenging 3D application for an extended period of time. I focused on heat first, cleaning the dust from the heat sinks and fans for my CPU and video card. I also removed and then reapplied a new layer of Arctic Silver thermal compound on the processor, since this solved the problem the last time I had system issues. The cleaning didn't cure the instability, but I did end up with heat sinks free of unsightly dust.

I moved on to examine my processor and memory settings. I had, of course, tweaked all of my memory settings and overclocked my Athlon XP processor when I first put together the PC. Since I recently added new memory to the system, I had already reduced my memory timings to less aggressive settings and lowered the voltage in past troubleshooting attempts.

While the system passed the Prime95 stability test when I first built the system, perhaps time and the hard driving had taken its toll. I have never had a successfully overclocked processor fail after extended use, but I have also usually upgraded my processor or entire system every 12 to 18 months. My current Athlon XP setup was pushing two years, so I decided to bring my clock speed back down to its default specifications just in case. After several crash-free WoW sessions, it looked like I had found the problem. Unfortunately, the solution required me to run the processor at default settings.

Fortunately, one of the most popular CPUs for overclocking happens to be the Athlon XP Mobile 2400+ processor. Almost all of today's processors have multiplier locks that severely limit overclocking options, but the Mobile Athlon XP is a throwback-type processor--an unlocked chip able to hit massive overclock speeds around 2.4GHz or more. An Athlon XP 3200+, in comparison, has a 2.2GHz default clock speed. Best of all, this mobile chip will work in desktop systems, including my current rig. My old Athlon XP 1700+ only reached 1.8GHz (166MHz x 11) from the default 1.4GHz (133MHz x 11) speed Now, armed with this new processor, my World of Warcraft character is no longer the cowardly rogue that seems to disappear at the most inopportune of times.

There are times when putting together your system might seem like it's more trouble than it's worth, especially when something breaks. Building your own system means that you'll have to handle your own technical problems, but it also means that you'll have a tremendous amount of control. You can choose the exact components you want in the system, and if problems ever occur, you can reduce system downtime from days or weeks to mere hours. And you'll also never be short of excuses to upgrade.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives/Games

When I'm not neck-deep in gaming and have the opportunity to pursue other interests, music is generally where most of my free time tends to be spent. Not just playing it but listening to it as much as possible. I'm even what one might consider something of a music snob--though I prefer to think of myself as simply having passionate opinions about what I do and do not listen to. You can call it whatever you like. Anyway, it is perhaps primarily for this reason that I tend to go to great pains to judge the quality of a soundtrack in a game I happen to be reviewing. Especially since, in the last few years, licensed soundtracks have become all the rage for games ranging from Grand Theft Auto to hockey games. It's a trend I fully support, since I often find that good music can really complement a good gaming experience nicely. Unfortunately, I also think that very few developers, if any, have really gotten it right up to this point in time.

This is an example of a game soundtrack done right in every conceivable way.
This is an example of a game soundtrack done right in every conceivable way.

So, for starters, why have licensed soundtracks become all the rage over the last couple of years? It's pretty simple, really. For as far back as I can recall, the film industry has been using music licensing as a means for both artistic and marketing opportunities. Directors often use music they have some affection for in their films, and when it isn't the director's doing, usually musical supervisors and marketing reps are finding ways to get hot, new artists into the fold, strictly to help market the product better and to make the ensuing soundtrack album more appealing. With all the line-blurring these days between the game industry and the film/television industry, it's only logical that the film and television industries' practice of using licensed music for their respective mediums would eventually be adopted by the gaming industry. Games, after all, are becoming bigger and bigger projects, and with that come greater opportunities for things like music licensing. The problem is that it seems as though the folks who make the games that use licensed soundtracks mostly don't have the slightest clue as to what to do with them.

This is a multifaceted problem, ranging from artist selection to specific usage of music throughout a specific game. Let's start with artist selection. Now, in some cases, I understand that it isn't always possible to go out and get the biggest bands for your game, because licensing fees are rather hefty. But when a major publisher puts out a listing for an upcoming soundtrack for a presumably major game, and you don't recognize more than 80 percent of the names on the list, you've got a problem. Such is the case for Atari's Driver 3 and its announced soundtrack. I'm looking at this list, and I'm thinking, "OK. Phantom Planet I like. I know Iggy and the Stooges. Aren't the Raveonettes that weird Swedish band? Mkay... So what the hell is the rest of this crap?" Seriously, do you know any of the artists on this list? Hey, maybe the music is great, but it's pretty clear that this soundtrack is designed to be a part of the game's marketing, and when you don't recognize any of the names on the list, it seems like that marketing effort is for naught. This is also often a problem when companies aren't worried at all about the bands they get making any sort of contextual sense in the game. Tsunami Bomb in Disgaea anyone? I like the punk rock as much as the next guy, but what the crap?

And then there's the case of great artist selection but lousy placement. Electronic Arts' whole "EA Trax" thing is one of the most problematic examples of this. EA obviously has the clout to go out and grab the biggest artists they can find for their games--especially in their sports games--and they don't hesitate to do it. The problem is, while the music is usually pretty good and is spread across multiple genres, rarely does it ever show itself beyond menu screens and as marginal background fodder. Yay, I'm listening to the Deftones while I'm selecting a game mode in NHL 2004, or I'm listening to them as background noise while I'm messing around with Madden's minigames. I'm stoked...I think.

For all the negative examples I've cited here, there are some developers and games that are moving in the right direction. The last couple of Grand Theft Auto games have really revolutionized how we look at music in games. It all started with GTA III's radio feature and then moved on to the huge licensing armada that was GTA: Vice City. The music in that game was not only great to listen to, but it played a huge part in making the game truly feel like it took place in the '80s. Same thing goes for Battlefield Vietnam and its incredibly well-implemented soundtrack. Heck, for Red Dead Revolver, Rockstar went out and licensed a bunch of little-known but immediately recognizable and perfectly fit spaghetti Western tunes, which helped solidify that game's atmosphere instantly. And then there's True Crime. Sure, it wasn't a spectacular game, but the soundtrack was huge and filled with great hip-hop artists, which fit perfectly with the game's decidedly rugged theme. Also, the placement of the music during specific types of scenes, based on mood and style of action (such as the cruising, slow-action, and fast-action scenarios), was a really inspired move. And then there's SSX 3, which, while still featuring licensed music as background ambience, managed to do something interesting with the concept by altering the volume and the mixing of the music based on your performance. It might seem like a small feature, but it makes a world of difference.

But maybe you're not on board with me so far. Maybe you don't give a damn how licensed music is presented to you in a game, let alone how any music is presented to you in a game. Maybe having Blink 182 and P.O.D. songs on repeated play during your game is plenty enough for you. Maybe you don't understand why any of this matters at all. If so, that's your prerogative, but I won't let you get away from this column without explaining why it matters to me.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no better way to grab someone and invoke an emotional reaction in him or her than through music. When I'm watching an action movie and some ridiculous special effects sequence or major fight scene appears, while my eyes may be on the action, much of my emotional investment in it comes from the soundtrack. You can make the coolest, most-well-choreographed fight scene on earth, but if you pick out a completely wrong song to go along with it, it's going to kill the scene. However, if you pick a song that can create a parallel level of excitement to go along with the action, it just makes the scene that much more enthralling. Think about that scene in The Matrix when everything's all crazy and in slow motion inside that government building lobby, with the main characters flipping around shooting all those security guards. Right as it begins, that Propellerheads song kicks in, and suddenly you're sucked into the action. That scene is certainly cool on its own, but it's really the song that makes it memorable. Hell, why do you think the Crystal Method are so popular? It's because their music works so incredibly well in this type of context. Hell, their business cards might as well read "Crystal Method: We make action movie techno."

I'm sure I would find this a lot more interesting if there were a Radiohead or Crystal Method song playing in the background.
I'm sure I would find this a lot more interesting if there were a Radiohead or Crystal Method song playing in the background.

The same concept applies to more-emotional scenes. When those two crazy kids are on the verge of breaking up in the latest teen romance, what better way to make the audience really feel it than by playing that Coldplay song the kids love so much? Hell, even the most banal and dull activities can be made to seem cool by putting the right music to them. Just look at the TV show CSI. Half of that show involves people pouring liquids into test tubes and rubbing powder on stuff. And yet, these sequences are almost always put to some kind of popular music track. The result? You actually sit there watching them both pour liquids into test tubes and rub powder on things with great interest, rather than flipping the channel. Maybe if the CSI game had employed this methodology, it might have fared better.

When it comes right down to it, any emotional reaction you can think of can be conjured up, and the ability to captivate your audience is immediately heightened when you pick the right soundtrack. Despite the strides that have been made since licensed soundtracks first became the big thing in gaming audio, I still think that a lot of game developers have yet to understand how they can use their soundtracks to draw the player deeper into what they're playing, be it emotionally or purely from a visceral, more excitement-based perspective. I think that with time, developers are going to catch onto this. When they do, it will make our gaming experiences that much better.

The Impact of Storytelling

Storytelling in video games has evolved radically since the days when Pac-Man first floated around black-lit mazes, evaded ghosts, and munched little yellow dots simply because that's what had to be done. This much has already been said numerous times right here in GameSpotting. However, one thing that I think hasn't been paid enough attention is the variety in which storytelling has evolved.

If we're going to talk about storytelling in games, then we should probably first discuss the role-playing game genre, which has arguably subsisted on plot and character development for longer than any other. Some of gaming's most fondly remembered stories have come from this genre, and the complexity and detail found in these stories has grown significantly since the days of Saving the Princess and Slaying the Dragon Lord. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to focus on a more modern RPG, Xenosaga.

Xenosaga: Episode I is an interesting case as far as RPGs are concerned. All RPGs focus a lot of care and attention on the story and the characters, but few have taken it as far as Xenosaga. The storyline is given so much weight, its presence regularly overshadows the gameplay entirely. No other game has ever used cutscenes as extensively as Xenosaga, with noninteractive cinematic sequences sometimes running as long as half an hour. The level of commitment to the plot and the characters is ambitious, as its creators plan to tell the whole story in a series of games. This sort of singular focus has made the game the butt of jokes and a target of derision. GameSpot's editors themselves declared Episode I the "Most Pretentious Game of 2003" and poked fun at its Nietzsche-referencing German subtitle, "Der Wille zur Macht."

Pretentious or not, Xenosaga's fans can't wait to find out what happens to KOS-MOS in Episode II.
Pretentious or not, Xenosaga's fans can't wait to find out what happens to KOS-MOS in Episode II.

I'm not going to declare the complete Xenosaga epic to be the greatest video game story ever told--at least not yet--but the potential displayed in Episode I promises excellent things to come. In basic structure, Episode I introduced all of the main players, presented questions and gave hints of things that are sure to be answered in later episodes, and ties it all up with the solving of a crisis while leaving the loose ends ready for the next game. It's for these reasons that I'm hopeful for what Xenosaga will eventually become, even if it means that GameSpot will declare future episodes "Most Pretentious Game of 20XX."

Of course, complex storytelling in games isn't limited to RPGs, and sometimes the best storylines aren't always immediately apparent. Take the original Castlevania, for example. In it, we were presented with the villain Dracula, the hero Simon Belmont, and a basic reason for why Simon had to go get all up in the vampire lord's grill. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was pretty much the same story, Simon vs. Dracula, but in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, there was a changing of the guard. The game focused on Trevor Belmont, Simon's grandfather, and a cast of helpers that included Dracula's son Alucard. From then on, with the exception of Super Castlevania IV, which focused on Simon one more time, the series followed other characters in the Belmont lineage in their fight against Dracula. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night took it even further, making Alucard the protagonist and directly linking the story to the previous game in the series, Dracula X. The series even went on to include Bram Stoker's original novel Dracula as a part of the timeline, and within the past year, Konami established the official beginning of the Castlevania saga in Lament of Innocence (though it did, in the process, kick the Game Boy title Castlevania Legends out of the Castlevania canon).

If only Leon Belmont knew what he was getting his family into.
If only Leon Belmont knew what he was getting his family into.

Did I just use the word "saga" to describe a series of video games? I did, and I think it fits. As a whole, the Castlevania series has built up a timeline that stretches from the 11th century to the 21st, and each game that has come along has provided more history. Whether by accident or by design, Konami has turned what began as a simple side-scrolling action game about slaying Dracula into an expansive epic in gaming from both a plot-based perspective and the perspective of video game history as a whole.

In Ikaruga, Shinra proves he's a hero with no regrets.
In Ikaruga, Shinra proves he's a hero with no regrets.

I'd like to talk about the plot of one last game: Ikaruga. In terms of plotting, the top-down space shooter genre is most commonly known for the single ship with the nameless pilot fighting against an entire fleet of insurmountable enemy forces--more a premise than a plot, really. In Ikaruga, the enemy force is known as the Horai Empire, but in an unusual move, the pilot is given a name: Shinra. Putting his life on the line repeatedly, Shinra wants to bring the Horai forces down and is aided by the people of a small village who entrust their most powerful aircraft to him.

The thing about Ikaruga's plot is that all the exposition I've just related is nowhere to be found in the game itself, but rather it's buried in the game's instruction manual. The only hints of plot in the actual game are the short, simple ending cinema and the unlockable character art for Shinra and the second player character, Kagari, a former Horai assassin ordered to kill Shinra; Amanai, the designer of the Ikaruga fighter; and Kazamori, the leader of the village of Ikaruga.

This is a case where the minimalism of the storytelling works to the story's advantage. If you already know the backstory, the ending cinema is so elegant, so tragic, that, when combined with the sheer intensity of the game itself, it can leave you emotional. Just turn on the game, open up Gallery 2, and look at that red and black image of Shinra. This may be only my interpretation, but it appears as if he's pleading with so much frustration and so much emotion that it doesn't require an elaborate cutscene to understand what he's feeling. Ikaruga is solid proof that even the simplest games can have emotional resonance.

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