The appeal of the Metroid series has long been the isolated adventure through uncharted worlds. It's surprising then in the final chapter of the Metroid Prime trilogy that Samus Aran spends so much time listening to other people tell her what to do and where to go. This is the case in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption because Samus is basically a federal contractor; a one-woman cleaning crew assigned to rid the universe of the glowing, corrosive element, Phazon.
While Retro Studios may have taken some of the implicit appeal of a Metroid game off the table with the tone of their third go-around, they have made additions in other places, most notably their informed integration of motion controls. One could look at the way MP3 asks you to interact with switches and levers by rotating and pushing the Wiimote as a concession to some kind of mandatory waggle clause, but I found these movements almost universally satisfying; none moreso than the Grapple Beam which is implanted in the Nunchuk controller. You can grasp onto labeled grapple points by locking onto them and them whipping the Nunchuk forward to unleash your electrified lasso. Then you can throw your wrist back to pull shields away from enemies, rip loose panels off of walls, or remove any other such precarious object from its perch. It's hard to call this motion a novelty when it comes in handy so frequently and feels like a natural part of the game.
I'm not one to berate games for being too easy if it still does a good enough job of incentivising me to keep playing. Corruption keeps pace on its main quest line pretty well (a little too narrowly perhaps), leaving the trickiest puzzle solving to missile pack and energy cell upgrade retrievals. While the additional life bars came in handy on a couple occasions, there is absolutely no functional need to have a stock of 200+ missiles since I never had an encounter where I used even 50. There's nothing inherently wrong with having collectibles, but when those items serve a purpose in the game world, it's a shame that their usefulness caps off so early.
Thankfully, shooting and double jumping through MP3's admittedly narrow corridors hits its Prime series high point here. There aren't much in the way of alternative weapons (your beam upgrades stack), which gives combat tactics precedent over pre-engagement strategy. Retro Studios must have known the Wii's weaknesses well enough to make sure their AI did not exploit them. The most prominent systemic hindrance is Samus' sluggish turn speed. For most traversal your stiff neck actually helps keep your trajectory steady, but when confronted with speedier foes, there's a delay in how quickly you can rotate to face them. Rarely in these cases will you be blindsided though, resulting in skirmishes that always seem fair.
This Saturday the 12th at Favorite Goods in Los Angeles, CA is the opening of 002, the gallery's second exhibition. The show contains a collaborative work from Dan Solberg and Jake Cruzen. along with solo works from Cruzen, Matthew Strauss, and Dashiell Manley. Check out the official Favorite Goods site for more details.
This Thursday the 22nd at Capitol Skyline Hotel in Washington, DC is the opening of the inaugural (e)merge Art Fair. The show contains new work from Dan Solberg and many other local and international contemporary artists. The reception will be held from 7-11PM, and the exhibition will be on view through Sunday the 25th. Check out the official (e)merge site for more details.
Unlike most of the games I review, I actually spent time playing Pokemon Puzzle League (PPL) back in 2000, when it was current. However, that was only a singular rental that, for whatever reason, didn't prompt me to purchase the full $60 game. On the Wii's Virtual Console, that price has been significantly reduced, effectively eliminating my barrier to entry on a title that I vaguely remembered being pretty fun. Turns out that faint inkling was pointing in the correct direction as PPL is a deceptively deep and satisfying puzzle experience.
Of course the big draw here is that this is a Pokemon game, right? OK, maybe not, but the game is enhanced if you can derive some sort of amusement out of that material, ironic or otherwise. Every time you turn on the game a FMV clip (extremely rare for a N64 title) featuring characters form the original Pokemon cartoon series prompts the "story" that sets up the game. There isn't much of a plot to speak of, though each mode does take a slightly different angle on the Pokemon world. In the 1P Stadium mode, you defeat a ladder of CPU competitors that are recognizable from the animated TV show, and in Spa Service, Team Rocket, appearing in various cross-dressed regalia, tries to trick you into something-or-other in between line clear challenges. The toon-representative, voiced audio during matches can be grating, but since sound is largely inconsequential to this game, I usually had it muted and listened to something else.
What I'm trying to get at is don't let the Pokemon name scare you away from this superb puzzle game. The PPL developers did everything short of retro-actively adding online multiplayer to expand and enhance the simple gameplay needed to justify this as a full retail product. Some of these work better than others but the range of options is encouraging since the game feels too easy at the outset. It became clear before long that I should have been utilizing those easy stages as training grounds for combo building because I hit a wall in the unlockable Very Hard difficulty where I could only win on pure luck. If you hit that wall or just want a change of scenery, you can check out Puzzle University instead and tackle block elimination puzzles at a more methodical pace. In this mode you are presented with a small amount of tiles and a limited number of swaps to clear them all from the board. In theory you could translate these combo triggering skills to the competitive modes, but the frantic nature of those battles just drove me into a mindless, button-mashing panic.
Other modes in PPL include Practice, Endless, Time Attack, and the aforementioned Line Clear. These can be nice distractions, but they aren't where the real action is, so I doubt much time will be spent there. Plus, with the lack of online leaderboards, these score-focused modes lose a lot of their incentive since I'm the only person with access to my copy of PPL that spends any time playing it. Additionally you can switch on 3D mode which turns your rectangular game board into a rotatable cylinder with tiles emerging from the bottom all the way around. The cylinder is clear so you can see through to the back if there's an area requiring immediate damage control. This, like the other modes, goes a long way in showing the effort that was put into extending the Panel de Pon play experience, but always feels like an aside to the "real" head-to-head mode. Sure, doing the puzzle thing with polygonal graphics in a 3D space works fine, but like Tetrisphere, it doesn't measure up to the addictive nature of the basic 2D structure.
For a long time I've been wanting to build an art piece that centers around "cave themes" from videogames. The eerie ambiance has been handled in many different ways over time, each composer setting the correct mood for the cave level from an individual game. This had me extra excited for Cave Story, as I imagined a boatload of variations on cave tunes I'd looked into previously. Going in with that expectation, I ended up a little disappointed to find that the cave-yness is often downplayed in the soundtrack in favor of a wider-spanning action/adventure score. Ultimately this plays to the strengths of the game's action, which is fast and frantic, instead of the sleepy, subterranean atmosphere of cave dwelling in itself.
On that line of thought, Cave Story actually feels pretty unique. Sure it looks and sounds retro, but they way it actually handles is unlike any side-scrolling colleagues I can put my finger on. I haven't played Super Meat Boy, but the two seem to stem from a similar school of thought about what it means to make a new old game. Parts of Cave Story are extremely difficult (I played on Normal), but save points are frequent, and the post-death reloads are snappy, making subsequent attempts at tricky boss encounters challenging exercises in learning from mistakes, instead of frustrating retreads (though that does happen on occasion).
One of the more outstanding aspects of Cave Story is the weapon system. Once you acquire a gun you can upgrade it by picking up the flashing triangles that drop out of defeated enemies. Seems simple enough, but the trick is that taking damage when attacked not only sucks your life bar, but also reduces the level of your equipped weapon. This places a premium on agility and long range shooting accuracy, since trudging through enemies will leave you twice as weak as other similar games. This lead me to play pretty conservatively, constantly topping-off my weapon stats to maintain their max level. The payoff is that the blasters are extremely satisfying to use. Beams and rockets burst out in rapid multiples, dwarfing their humble pea-shooter source. These blasts demolish enemies by turning them into animated tufts of cel-shaded smoke. The result is that gunplay is cartoonish, but weighty and believable within that cartoon setting.
Cave Story is also a game that pushes you towards multiple playthroughs in order to see all the weapons, and ultimately the best ending, assuming you didn't do everything perfectly the first time. I can say undoubtedly, that if you don't use a faq, it's very unlikely that you will get the best ending on your first try (Spoiler: there's and even meaner, more powerful guy behind it all!). I'm not one for multiple playthroughs unless the game is short and arcade-y or is Chrono Cross, thus I found the specificity of the win conditions to get the most out of the game needlessly contrived. I'm sure to the player that figures out the correct sequence of events to trigger the best outcome, he/she must beget some degree of grand satisfaction, but for me it's not worth the unfun trial and error process, especially when I'd rather just play a new, different game.
Having only ever played Super Mario World in brief spats on friends' SNESes, I went into my full playthrough with skepticism. Sure, I had confidence that this would be a satisfying game, but many enthusiasts herald this as the best Mario title to date. From what I had touched previously, this hardly seemed the case. Now, with numerous castles, ghost houses, and another Bowser battle under my belt, I can see where that stunning appeal comes from, even if it doesn't strike my fancy to quite the same degree.
What I liked best about SMW was the way it mixed elements of action, adventure, and puzzle solving in a fashion I don't recall another Mario game doing. The action side is largely what you'd expect if you've played a Mario game since Super Mario Bros 3. There are power-ups that let you fly and throw fireballs, and, for the most part, jumping on enemies heads still does them in quite well. That said, if you've somehow only ever played the original Mario Bros, you might be surprised at just how complex the action system has become. On the adventure tip, you navigate levels via an overworld map, complete with branching and reforming paths. The map is good at letting you know when there's something secret in a level without giving away the answers. Every level doesn't need to be completed to beat the game, but since you can save progress, you have the luxury of taking your time to explore and replay levels without fear that the electricity might go out. A significant part of the adventuring is intertwined with the heinous puzzles that meter out the exploration phases in ways that require strategic item gathering. The most difficult puzzles are totally optional, but are pretty satisfying brain teasers that taunt you to give them a shot. Part of the reason I like the puzzles so much is because at their core, they can be solved by intelligent platforming. Thus SMW doesn't balloon it's gameplay by bolting on other genre mechanics, but instead, expounds upon the intricacies of its core conceit. The result is a game that justifiably places itself on top of the platformer pile, and serves as a substantial step forward for game design at the time.
This dedication to form is what often makes Nintendo games great, but I could have done with some tweaking to particular elements of SMW. In comparison to SMB3's raccoon tail, the feather cape seems needlessly complex to control, especially in parachute mode. Coupled with the fact that none of the puzzles I completed seemed to require the gliding function (82% completion), it seems unnecessary. Then of course there's Yoshi, who I do not outright dislike, but find that I prefer not using him unless I have to. For me, using Yoshi changes the game a little too much, to the point where I'd rather just have a Yoshi game instead of putting him in a Mario one. I ended up more or less using Yoshi as a shield since you can sustain a hit while riding him and not take any damage other than losing your mount. You can wager a guess that I don't care for using the feather cape in conjunction with Yoshi either. Maybe it's the blatant disregard for physics, but, yeah, not a fan. As a small aside, the designs of most of the new enemies unique to SMW seem pretty uninspired, and it's no wonder that they haven't really shown up again since.
I appreciate Nintendo taking these risks though. They wanted to increase the complexity of their platform hopping game while also iterating on the blockbuster success of SMB3, all while positioning itself as the killer app for Nintendo's new 16-bit console. The list of games that have even been in that situation is pretty small, and shorter still for those that actually deliver on the bulk of their ambitions. SMW is such a game, but in some ways it actually feels remarkably humble. This feeling could have more to do SMW standing in contrast to the modern Mario's franchise-driven market saturation. Name a genre and there's a Mario version of it. SMW was Nintendo building upon an already solid foundation, but also venturing into innovative territory that so much iterative design is afraid to do. Sure, not everything works perfectly, but a lot of that is user preference. The brilliance of SMW's design is that there are multiple options for how to play a level, and one of those almost always feels spot on.
My latest mix is full of many of my favorite tracks from last year from the bass music family. It's around 72 minutes long and I called it Gluestick because the it sounds like a very UK, dubstep-y word and it inspires the visual of a slowed-down, sticky lurch, which I think plays into the momentum of a lot of the songs included here. Hope you like it, and thanks for listening.
Zelda games don't come around terribly often, and when they do it's with extremely high expectations. Looking at Twilight Princess now, it's easy to forget what this game's release was in response to, and why it was framed as the "mature" Zelda the way it was. Though the previous GameCube Zelda, Wind Waker, was highly regarded, series purists discounted its cell-shaded cartoonish style as childish. Thus Nintendo, in a move reminiscent, but thankfully not as extreme, of Ubisoft's Prince of Persia sequel (Warrior Within), gave Zelda nerds what they wanted in a grown-up, more darkly toned game. At least that was the billing. The reality is that TP pretty well matches the teen-Link portions of N64 favorite Ocarina of Time in terms of "maturity" and "grittiness," which is to say, it's a better looking version of what you've seen before.
Not that TP doesn't throw interesting change-ups your way, it's just that they simply add to the formula rather than innovating it. The most distinctive new feature of TP is that you'll spend part of the game as a wolf version of Link. Playing in lupine form is fun for a little while, but since you can't use items or alternative weapons, I found myself racing through these portions as quickly as possible to return to my full arsenal. Once you reach the point in the game where you can shift between human and wolf on the fly, being a beast is a little more fun to mess around with, but I often wished I could just have used my wolf abilities without having to change shape since it becomes just another item, albeit a multifunctional one.
TP's aesthetic style turns out to be one of the game's highlights, and is for more subtle and nuanced than labels like "mature" or "dark" imply. One of my favorite visual components was the Twilight Realm, a light-bloom filled, desaturated world of eternal dusk. It might not seem like much, but the very idea that there aren't antithetical light and dark worlds, but instead two dimensions that correlate with a more complex relationship was quite refreshing. The Twilight Realm feels bizarre but not entirely foreign since it's just a different version of the regular one. The beings that reside within are a combination of Metroid Prime 2's Ing and computer glitches straight out of Tron. Creatures emit sounds of formerly organic beings that at some point mutated and had their vocal cords filtered through computer garble. There's a part of the game where you have to flee from a group of gigantic "birds" in the Twilight Realm that squawk hair-raising bellows akin to a modulated foghorn, to terrifying effect.
I sincerely hope the next console Zelda game (Skyward Sword) significantly changes the way we play this series the way Ocarina did, because I don't think another incremental addition to the franchise is going to do it any favors. At TP's best it's as smart and polished a product as one would expect. But at it's worst, that expectation is met to a very predicable end. I hope this review doesn't sound overly harsh, since I genuinely enjoyed playing through this game for 50+ hours. I just think with Twilight Princess, Nintendo gave fans exactly what they asked for, instead of something they didn't know they even wanted. That sense of wonder is important to Zelda games, and when it shows up in TP here and there, that's when the game felt like something special.
Jacques Renault is an artist on the rise these days, most notably for his classic disco infused French house numbers. This remix of John Talabot plays more to the original's style and strengths than trying to make the track sound like a typical Renault tune. That said, the best part of this song is the pitter-patter drum breaks, which are entirely Jacques' addition. Nothing revolutionary here, just fine work.
It's a good problem to have when you produce a track that people are pining for so hard before it's even released that a radio rip version is getting played out in clubs, forcing an early official release of the track. That's what happened with Girl Unit's "Wut," which possesses one of the strongest hooks of the year. The full track turned out to be slightly disappointing at 7 minutes long, and barely any variation in its loop. It seems perfectly suited for a DJ mix, seeing as you can pull a strong 3-4 minutes out of anywhere with it. The Night Slugs label is pushing bass music in pretty interesting directions, keeping tempos up in dubstep territory, but breaking most of the other guidelines that normally classify music clocking in at 140BPMs as dubstep.
I don't remember what the last instrumental hip-hop album I heard that I genuinely loved was, but let's just say it's been awhile (I put Flying Lotus in a different category). OK so, there are some tracks with vocals here, but nonetheless, leave it to the French to bring me back into the fold. Onra's latest is constructed in classic form: 20+ tracks, most of which last a mere 2-3 minutes. These productions know how to hit your brain's pleasure center, leaving you both satisfied and wanting more. Some great music, often lyrical in my case, bores me on repeat listens once I have a thorough knowledge of the plot (see Kanye's latest), but I'd seriously consider Long Distance as a desert island record for its unbridled replayability.
Scuba's latest is the sound of the cold, wet city. I can't help but visualize raindrop-splattered metal sheets clinking into one another when I listen to it. Perhaps if 90s-era Photek would have taken his minimal drum 'n bass style and slowed it to more of a dubstep saunter, you'd get something similar. Not that there aren't warm elements here, like the vocals on "Before," but they don't alter the palette despite their more organic nature. This record makes me reimagine my time slogging through dank city streets with a certain degree of fondness and enrichment. This is not something easily accomplished, even if the next real experience I had in said environment resets the scale back to regular levels of resentment.
Best Caribou album to date right here. It's clear Dan Snaith and Kierren Hebden get along well seeing as they both have tendencies to employ literal bells and whistles, and they both released the closest thing to a techno record of either of their careers this year. Where unfortunately Four Tet's LP never came close to reaching the heights of its first single "Love Cry," Caribou's effort is both rife with variation and constant surprises. Somehow the band manages to pull off sounding like a techno act and a psychedelic jam band. Actually Caribou sounds like neither one at a given time, but rather a seamless fusion of the two. In the same way that LCD Soundsystem brought dance and rock together like no one before, let Caribou be considered the precedent for any psych-tronic music to come.
James Blake really had an all out stellar year in 2010, showing his exponential development from the relatively amateur-sounding Bells Sketch EP not all that long ago. The hype has built up the expectations for what is my most anticipated release of 2011 with Blake's self-titled debut LP. Blake isn't an artist to rest on his laurels or even be content to shack up for a while in the new subgenres he invents for more than a couple months. "CMYK" is a swirling convalescence of blips, warped synths, rhythmic, yet off-setting beats, and distorted Aaliyah samples. On paper it might sound like a gimmick to appropriate "R U That Somebody?" but the vocal clips aren't the trick. It's how much they feel like Blake's own creations, matching the frenzy of the rest of the track, thus actually downplaying the pop reference, that really impresses.
If I were to pick a band on this column that I was supposed to list as a guilty pleasure, I suppose it'd be the Klaxons, but I don't really feel the guilt. Heck they're pretty much the only real rock band on this list, so interpret that how you will. Just like Klaxons' debut, Surfing The Void did not strike me at first. It did maintain a place on my iPod though, and eventually got more listens to the point where I was deleting everything else off the device leaving it as the only survivor. This process probably happened about 4 times. The record itself might not have quite as hard of an edge as its predecessor, but it has enough heavy riffs to keep it from feeling like straight pop music. The catchy melodic sing-a-long style that's become synonymous with the band is in full infectious bloom here as well. Throw in my soft spot for absurd astronomy/ology concept albums (there aren't many!) and Klaxons have yet another winning product that I can't resist.
Using a sample that was implemented not-so-long ago by the posterboy of your given musical genre sounds, on paper, like a recipe for failure, but Dark Sky ignored the warning signs and created a must-dance-now dubstep floor-filler with "Something to Lose." It really helps that the sample in question is a series of piano stabs (one of my favorite sounds). That said, there's no way this song could go toe-to-toe with Zomby's "Float" like it does if it wasn't bringing something more to the table than informed appropriation. Dark Sky seems to understand how to successfully build momentum and highlight the strengths of the audio snippets being brought in from the outside. I like to think of a track like this as a continuation of a story, knowing the same sample was also used by early ravers Bizarre Inc on "Playing with Knives." It adds another layer to the meta-musical postmodern context that sampling has been said to have made manifest. Did I mention this track is a banger and also contains a killer B-side?
The reason I have so many "dubstep" entries on this list is because it's a genre that seems more exciting that most other kinds of music these days. The sounds are evolving and progressing in very interesting ways, outputting music that sounds like nothing else. I even find myself putting the word dubstep in quotes when referring to such acts (here, Pariah), because these bass music subgenres might not fit that original mold; not that categorization matters all that much. Pariah has come a really long way since his initial single to his Safehouses EP this year. If I was giving out awards for most improved, this would be it. Not that Detroit Falls/Orpheus was a bad single, but it pales in comparison to the vision and execution of Safehouses. Take in the ghostly atmospherics of Burial or Scuba, combine it with the nonconformist streak of James Blake, and splice that with the new school club sound and vocal sampling style of Joy Orbison, and you've got the match made in heaven that is this EP. There's not a track on here that doesn't shine, and yet they all come together in support of each other in a well-rounded package. Pariah is definitely an artist to keep an eye on.
For a long time this year I thought my favorite track of 2010 was on lock with Danger's "3h11." It didn't pull it off, but did give a rather impressive showing. Sometimes I get really bored of the grind of making new mixes, downloading tons of music, deleting most of it, categorizing everything and then making more mixes. "3h11" pulled me right out of that hole. Actually you could say it pulled me out of my chair, because it absolutely compels you to dance. The main synth loop reminds me of the backing melody from Inner City's "Good Life," and that's a very positive thing. The melody is accented by a fist-pumping baseline, filtered through some videogame buzz, that's catchy in an almost primal way. Danger illustrated the attached EP's release with 16-bit River City Ransom callbacks, meant to flesh out his comic-book persona. As a soundtrack to that fake game, "3h11" is also a perfect fit. This is basically the best Sega Genesis-era soundtrack rework you could ask for. French filter-house lives on, apparently.
I really love Robyn's "Dancing On My Own," but limiting this entry to just that individual song doesn't do justice to one of the most successfully productive years I've ever seen from a musician. With two full LPs and then the 3rd "best of" compilation, listed here, which itself includes new tracks that actually belong on the highlight reel as well, I don't know how someone could have avoided Robyn in 2010. Body Talk might come off as a string of excellent singles more so than a narratively structured album, but the diversity of Robyn's sound keeps things interesting throughout. Sure she can hit the pop-ballad highs with "Dancing On My Own," and "Indestructible," but then when she turns to dub tempos on "Dancehall Queen," or plays with traditional pop song structure on "Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do" and "We Dance To The Beat," she's also showcasing the producers behind her tunes as much as herself. These actions are in service to the music at hand, and the results are all the stronger for those creative decisions. Body Talk might not be on the top of this list, but it does deserve the title of greatest quantity of quality.
Let it be known, when Hyperdub presses a full-length album from their talent pool, they're bringing their A-game to the party. If Danger's "3h11" was a ravey slice of 16-bit homage, consider the debut LP from Ikonika the full arc of the best 8-bit action/adventure title you never played. Of course the production values are considerably higher than anything coming out of the chiptune arena, but clearly Ikonika herself wants to make the gaming connection explicit, titling tracks "Ikonoklast (Insert Coin)," "Continue?," and "Look (Final Boss Stage)," among others. For anyone else whose mind takes on the illustrative when they listen to music, they'll have a lot of pictures to compose with this record. Ikonika occasionally evokes similar emotions to Scuba (see #10), but instead of extrapolating the intricacies of one particular color, she opts for the whole palette. I don't know how much having a depth of experience with videogames adds to this since I can only speak for myself, but it would seem to me that a long journey is being implied, across a variety of different lands. In other words, it feels like the album moves from level to level, even sometimes along standard gaming conventions like a desert ("Sahara Michael") or underwater ("Fish") world. What makes this trip engaging is the forward momentum, and the feeling of fighting against the odds. Contact, Love, Want, Have doesn't simply evoke games, it calls upon the the best moments games can offer; be it an epic boss battle, the uncovering of a new world never before seen, or the rush to the climax of a character arc that would normally take 40+ hours to reach. That alone is an impressive feat, but Ikonika's rhythmic aptitude and ear for driving hooks are what round this debut out as a complete package.
Blue Daisy is taking bass music in some interesting directions these days, often in the realm of more classically ambient fare like contemporaries, Nosaj Thing and Mount Kimbie. "Raindrops" marks Blue Daisy's second collaboration with a vocalist (Anneka here, who also lent her pipes to Vex'd this year), but neither track comes off as decidedly vocal. Somehow Blue Daisy retains a feeling of precision amongst all the static and drone, making for pretty stunning experiments. As much as I can applaud those efforts, John Talabot is the one who really seals the deal here. Anneka's faint vocal is brought forward but still remains beautifully transient. Similarly to Basement Jaxx's "Raindrops" last year, the track reads as a deluge, and is texturally wet as a result of both a cascading rhythm section, drippy synth plucks, and the noisy source material. Talabot also reconditions the track into his cosmic house mold in most dramatic fashion. He turns the propulsion way up, but knows when to kill the bass to setup the build-up and climax of the year. When the ensuing wave reaches its tipping point, splashy cymbals accent the reinvigorated, more powerful bassline as Anneka's coos are stretched out like heartstrings about to snap. We're talking tears on the dancefloor here. The palpable feeling of yearning combined with the explosive payoff is hands-down to most satisfying musical moment of 2010.
