Game Music I Love: Plants vs. Zombies

Music might be the most overlooked aspect of video games by game creators and game players alike. Unless its the star of the show in a music game, music is often perceived as audio wallpaper. Game makers generally aren’t as successful in implementing music as they are with other elements of their products, such as graphics and gameplay. Nowadays, licensed music and slapped-in “Hollywood-like” orchestral scores are the norm. With the advent of voice chat, custom soundtracks and other diversions, game players in general I think are paying less attention to game music than ever before, too.

I’m still paying attention though. I grew up in an era where video game music had its own distinct sound due to technological limitations. An era when the Super Mario theme was still hot and new. Where the awesome work of game composers shone through the primitive beeps and bloops. Game music has evolved dramatically over the years, but we as gamers have had our ears blessed with some truly great music.

I wanted to take the time out to write about some of my favourite pieces of video game music in a series of posts. There are some amazing tunes that have not only had an impact on my gaming, but my life as well in some way or another. There were more obvious choices I could have gone with to start this series, but I wanted to give credit to a game that has recently eaten up a lot of my time (and my brains). Besides being super fun to play, it has some of the best video game music I’ve heard in a while.

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Pick Up Post: Capcom Takes My Mobile Money

Capcom is one of my all-time favourite developers and publishers. I have fond memories of playing a bunch of Capcom games outside of their obvious choices, such as Street Fighter and Megaman. This week, they followed Gameloft’s lead and put a bunch of their iDevice games on sale. I highlight a few that I picked up and one you should avoid.

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Pick Up Post: Gameloft Dollarama and an iPad Adventure

I have to hand it to Gameloft and their iDevice pricing strategy. Their aggressive $1 sales have won a lot of good will with me, which I have returned by buying almost a dozen of their games. I have generally found their games to be of relatively good quality for mobile, and their games on sale for $1 are much more in-depth and content-rich than the majority of $1 games available on iTunes.

Hit the break to see what two Gameloft games (and one non-Gameloft adventure) I just picked up. From what I know about these three games, they’re all good buys at regular price, but really are a steal at their sale price.

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My iPhone/iPad Pile of Shame

My video game hoarding ways have recently transcended the console space and into my iPhone/iPad life. Over the last few weeks, I’ve picked up a number of games at discounted prices mainly because they were cheap. Some of the games I have written about of late are the games I’ve put at least some time into. However, the following pile of games are currently taking up space on my iDevices and I’m not exactly sure when I’m going to get around to them.
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Backbreaker for iPhone and iPad Isn’t What You Think

The console versions of Backbreaker have not fared well. Having spent many years in development, the final product came off more as a proof-of-concept rather than a polished football game. While it featured arguably the most advanced physics system in gaming development, the lack of real NFL teams and poor implementation of its key gameplay mechanics made it a stinker.

Going into the universal iPhone/iPad app version of Backbreaker, I was expecting a scaled-down version of the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 game. However, what Natural Motion gave gamers instead is a game that almost isn’t football at all. Surprisingly, this $0.99 offering may actually be more fun, too.
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iPhone Games: I’ll Buy That For a Dollar

Historically, we haven’t been able to get very much for a dollar when it comes to video games. Games on physical media sold for $1 at a store are likely not worth the materials they’re made from. At the arcade, a dollar in this economy will get you one play on most games, which will likely last you no more than two minutes.

Over the past few weeks, the majority of my gaming purchases have cost me only a dollar on the iTunes store. If you’ve got an iDevice, a dollar can go a long way.

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NFL 2010 HD Review: An NFL Game Not Made By EA? What?

A number of years ago, EA locked up exclusive rights to make NFL video games. Because of that, I was very confused as to how Gameloft could release their own NFL football game on the iPad. Apparently, EA didn’t lock up mobile games, which allowed for this release to happen.

I haven’t played a football video game since 1996 with Madden 64. However, the release of Backbreaker has whet my interest in something meatier and there aren’t any other NFL licensed football games on the iPad on sale for $0.99. With all of that going for it, I decided to give NFL 2010 HD a shot.
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Beat It! Turns My Musical Passion Into A Game

Since the early 2000’s, I have spent countless hours in front of music sequencers, creating music of varying quality. While my sequencer of choice has been FL Studio (better known as Fruity Loops), I also have experience triggering samples on Reason, GarageBand, Ableton Live as well as hardware samplers such as the Akai MPC and assorted Roland/Boss drum machines.

Why does any of this matter? Because Beat It! takes the sequencer experience and turns it into a game. Beat junkies like me will have a blast with this game. However, if you don’t have experience laying down tracks, you may still enjoy this as a different take on the music game genre.
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Mobile Me

I used to hate mobile gaming with a passion. Before I go into my little rant, let me say that when I mean mobile, I don’t mean dedicated portable gaming systems like the DS or PSP. I mean mobile like cell phone games. I looked down upon that entire segment of gaming. I hated the lack of graphical horsepower. I hated how weird it was to get games on your phone. I hated the poor quality games. I hated the controls. I don’t think any game controls well on a number pad. There was a point in the early-to-mid 2000s when analysts were predicting the cell phone market would expand tremendously, and I scoffed at that notion for all of the problems I mentioned above. Up until the release of the iPhone, I was absolutely right.

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A Dragon You May Not Want to Enter

During the apex of my fascination with ninjas as a child, my dad went out of the way to sit me down to watch Enter the Dragon. My dad hyped up Bruce Lee to me as the best karate guy ever. Yes, even better than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now that’s serious.

Years later, I still idolize the only person to ever beat Chuck Norris. Seeing his name on this game for iPhone and iPad did pique my interest, but Bruce Lee games historically suck. Really bad. Even at $5, I was reluctant to give it a go. However, it went on sale last week on the iPad for $0.99, which is low enough for me to try almost anything.

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