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I feel like Garpocalypse has been making it a point recently to be as absurd as possible these days That's why the comparison is dumb in the first place. Because Freedom Planet isn't a self-aware experiment in game storytelling. It's a throwback side-scroller. Saying it's "better than Undertale" is an obvious tip to people that Freedom Planet somehow does what Undertale does but even better. Which couldn't be further from the truth, because it's a polar opposite to Undertale in style and mechanics. You may as well start a thread saying artistic games are bad and simple arcade-y ones are superior. At least then you're standing on a baseline value system and not just assuming everyone knows what the hell you're talking about.

General Overview: This is a great album for anyone who was ever a fan of classic Castlevania music. I do have to add that if you don't like rock arrangements, this album might turn you off, as most of the album fits in the rock genre one way or another. But if you like rock arrangements and Castlevania music, then you'll REALLY like this album. A little more than half of the tracks on the album I listened to all the way through. Less than half of the album was skipped because it wasn't for me. Not gonna say which tracks I skipped, but there was definitely more than enough content on this album to keep me satisfied till the end. Album Strengths (AKA Personal Favs): Track 3: Swamp Ripples (Stalker) by Viking Guitar Very Metallica inspired. So elegant, yet intense. Track 7: Vampire's Kiss (Vampire Killer) by Brandon Strader Great guitar work with clever integration of voice samples. I especially love the combination of voice sample and guitar at the 1:21 mark. Track 9: The Gate of Nightmares (Medley) by BONKERS feat. Viking Guitar I would absolutely love to see this performed live. It's just so wonderful, and fun with seamless transitions in between each section of the medley. Track 10: Underground Pulse (Underground) by Chernabogue Nothing but percussion instruments here. And the way they were performed is so uniform and interesting. Each percussion instrument used in this track was used very wisely. Track 11: Of Whips and Strings (Medley) by Super Guitar Bros. Two acoustic guitars creating six minutes of pure, simple Castlevania goodness. Absolutely incredible medley. Track 16: Edge of Darkness (Walking on the Edge) by The Dual Dragons I'm amazed that this is an arrangement of level BGM, because it sounds like an incredible and intense boss fight is going on when I hear this.

Hey, so this has been on my mind a little while, I want people's opinions on it. Ahem. There's been this great big push in the last few years for video games to be recognized as an artform, a method of expression for the developers and a way for people to explore experiences and worlds to be emotionally affected instead of simply having entertainment value. I pose these inquiries: Are the emergence of "art games" (walking simulators, introspective/immersive experiences, experimental stories) what we actually mean and want when we say games are art? Are older, arcade-y games valueless by comparison? Or, should we be looking at game design itself as an art, complete with all of the facets (mechanics, reward, risk, choices, challenges, exit points, first order strategies, etc.)? Are "art games" valueless by comparison? Or, do both kinds have separate value? Or, games have to be both to have value? Or, neither? (Please leave. :P) Use examples from games you've played to support why you think that way.

Hey guys, been visiting ocremix for a while but never posted here. I did a metal cover of haunted woods recently and I'd love some feedback. It would help me out on making next cover better. Hope you guys like it, thanks! https://youtu.be/RlfHI-mCp78

Yeah, but putting that in the topic is a bit clickbaity and screams of desperation and, honestly, can turn people off of wanting to play the game which is obviously not what you wanted, Gar.

I almost missed the fact that other instruments were present. The hi-hat, kick and bass were almost unnoticeable. The piano line (Nexus?) was pleasant though. Regarding the repetition: at the trap 'drop' you're going for, it may be a good idea to do a lot less with the piano, or remove it entirely so the other instruments have enough room to breathe. Like, chord stabs or something, just enough to float over the hi-hats and bass. Also the atmospheric pad you have from 1:13 on is dissonant enough, but it really does clash against the lilting piano. As far as mixing goes, I agree with Smooth4lyfe: definitely lower the piano a bit and raise everything else. And look up 'sidechain ducking', it's quite a useful tool. Keep making more, though! I look forward to more! :3

And double post, as I hit 200+ reviews before leaving for New Year with my family! Yay! Good job everyone, let's do it again next year!

This was a purely stylistic choice; we were going for an Elvish-esque vibe to complement the rock'n'roll feel. I suspect it would have blended more smoothly with better panning and a fuller rhythm section, but we wanted to keep this tune relatively simple and decided to stick with it.

What Emu said, basically. The album I directed was the fruit of a year and a half of hard labor, and wouldn't have been possible without the many relationships I'd built over the course of my tenure here at OCR. Mine was a short album, too, by OCR standards, and it was still intense enough that I'm being very careful about how I approach my next directorial effort. The Undertale OST is certainly a fabulous one, but just gauging interest isn't going to get it done, and you don't want to lock up people's time if you're not deadly serious about following things through. Definitely don't direct more than one album at a time, either.

Sneap forum from 2009 talking about what is arguably In Flames' worst or best album.. YAWN... I'd trust Sneap himself just due to his amount of experience but not the goobs on that forum. NOT AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME. That forum gave me a good leg up when I got into OCR but that was about it. As for the technique they mentioned, nothing seems wrong with it, doesn't seem all that necessary though. You could mic the crisp and the 45 degree angle or whatever, separately, or just meet somewhere in the middle with 1 mic. Or just get the crispy cup sound. I like the control of using 1 mic instead of 9. To each their own though. The last time I used 2 SM57s was on older remixes so there's no real way to judge from those against my newer stuff which one was better. Maybe experience is more important than technique in regards to that, since my olderstuff is buttpoo

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lemmy-kilmister-motorhead-singer-and-heavy-metal-legend-dead-at-70-20151228 Not a lot more to say beyond Rock In Peace, Lemmy. You might have repeatedly said your band wasn't of the genre, but Metal won't be quite as heavy without you.

circa August 2013: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13741915/motorhead.mp3 RIP

Here's my own opinion: I personally feel like "art games" on their own are not actually assisting the bigger picture. They show that games can be art if done in very specific ways (that often ignore entertainment value or involved game design). Essentially these games have a central concept of simple interactivity and immersion in a world, like an experimental film you can walk around in. These are your Gone Homes, your Everybody's Gone to the Raptures. You're supposed to think, and feel, while you play, but mechanically considered, there isn't really anything to them (not a bad thing, I'm just telling how it is). These games are artistic. But they kind of leave everything else behind if we only look to them. I think looking at game design itself as the artform has more substance to it. I think games like Undertale, games like Dark Souls, are extremely powerful examples of video games as an artform. Because these games are not just about the intellectual experience, and they are also not intellectual experiences with arcade gameplay thrown in. These are games where the game mechanics and play directly correspond to the expression and emotion the developers want to give the player. Within the confines of game design, the standards of "challenge, exit points, rewards, risks" etc. So the art isn't simply about what it means to make interesting things that now you can walk around in, but what it means when the developer(s) have this dialogue with the player, to manipulate how he feels through gameplay (considering very concrete things like how a player dies, or how hard it is for him to have agency and choices, or how the difficulty is designed), and how that gameplay affects and is affected by the narrative or central concept of the game itself. Spoiler example, when you kill the illusory goddess in Anor Londo in Dark Souls, the entire area loses its sun and it becomes cast in permanent twilight, and your bonfire keeper turns against you. When you kill her, the bonfire is put out, not allowing you to teleport there, or rest there. Additionally, being killed in Anor Londo makes you spawn there (so you can die and lose everything and also have no safe place to fall back on), so basically the game fucks you ever. It's a permanent consequence that actually frustrates the player because it's an irreversible difficulty increase (a bit of an absurd, unprecedented one at this point in the game) for playing the game impulsively. It's not just a sad or "sucks" story, it makes you frustrated in real life because it's manipulating your ability to play the game. It also reduces the sense of elation and power you get after beating Ornstein and Smough. It changes how you feel about yourself, whether you're powerful or powerless. I think that's artistic, and that's the expression I personally look for when looking at games as art. Maybe that's too heavy-handed, though, because if you look at it that way, that kind of makes art games not really have anything to them, since their game designs are fairly minimal. You have walking, you have a goal. That's... really it? If we talk about how the experience and/or narrative should be expressed through game design, aren't they actually kind of saying you can't really do that when your most popular ones are in fact what people would call "walking simulators"? Tales of Tales basically outright said this in their manifesto. They wanted to stop making "games" and wanted to start making interactive experiences. I think the line there is appropriate, because I don't think it is appropriate to remove the word "game" from its grounding in game theory. For popular example, I think Journey fits as an art game, but is also genuinely a video game as art too. It's fun to play because the movement is satisfying and there's clear gameplay, even if it's simple. You fly (well, glide, slide) around, collect scarves and light symbols, clear the stages. But the collecting is actually meaningful, it's a show of your building up (literally in the Hero's Journey) which is then dismantled later when you find out that you can actually take damage and lose part of your scarf in the lower cave. It's not just narrative there, that's narrative expressed through gameplay. So in my eyes, Journey shows that games are art. It's a simple game, but it is good, and fun, and it's a particular artistic one to boot.

I have to ask what your plan is to juggle the three albums you've started recruiting for... as someone who's directed and seen an album through to completion in the past, it took 3 years of constant effort in planning, recruiting, critiquing, and coordinating to get it done. To be blunt, you don't have much of a history with this community and from my perspective, you've posted several times starting up a remix project without really putting any thought into a cohesive tracklist, a theme or style for the album, or recruiting anywhere else within the community. Not to say that just posting a thread to gauge interest is against the rules or anything, but I've been down this road before and it literally consumed my life for 3 years while I was working on the Donkey Kong Country 3 project alone. Three albums at once is an insane and unmanageable undertaking for anyone, let alone someone who is pretty new to the community. It's not as simple as finding a nice soundtrack and waiting for the music to roll in. Not by any stretch. I don't want to discourage you if you really are serious about working on a community album project, but based on the fact that you've started up 3 separate projects over the past month, I get the feeling you haven't thought through just how much of a commitment it is. And at the very least, if you are going to do that, to be successful you really need to put a bit more effort into your post than you have here or on your other two projects, or work on establishing yourself in the community a bit more first. I'm sorry to be a dick but I feel like you need a bit of a reality check when it comes to the album projects you're starting. Hope I'm not overstepping my bounds and you understand where I'm coming from!

Popping in a bit late, I'm glad it kept the drive of the original. Though, I do agree that overall it felt a bit muddy. But I think that could be fixed without needing to cut out too much. The arpeggio in the background, in particular, sounds like it's taking up a lot of mid-range real estate. It might be better used to brighten up the high end. Still, I'm looking forward to hearing the next arrangement!

Congrats on the mixpost Gar! I'm not familiar with this game or source tune at all, but wow this is a beautiful piece of music. Everything just fits together so well, the guitar, flute, pads, etc. to create a very soothing and relaxing atmosphere. I love it!

Modus and I's schedules are mismatching this holiday season, however we have set up a Skype session this Jan 9, 2016 where we'll go over the overall scope of the project, the artwork style, pieces required, general direction of the art and more. You are more than welcome to join in on that. Get with Modus for the extra details for the meeting. As for the music, we have been steadily getting WIPs in however, there is still a good chunk unsent that is expected by the end of Dec 31, 2015. So hopefully the rest of the remixers slated for that deadline get one in.

saying Freedom Planet is better than Undertale is wrong by virtue of Undertale being a good game and Freedom Planet being a bad one

There is a arranger missing from the Super Cartography Bros album listing on the main site ( http://ocremix.org/album/70/super-cartography-bros ) The missing artist credits on the "Arrangers" credits are DJ EAR (Listed as just EAR on the album's dedicated site) and DJ RoboRob. This came to my attention when DJ EAR brought up mention the lack of his mention on Twitter. I then went and checked to see if anyone else was missing. So yeah, two people are missing from the OCR's main site listing for the album. The only reason I could see why they are omitted, is that they don't have any submissions onto the main site outside of the album. Which then begs the question on why the Desert Catz group (made of Flexstyle and KingTiger) got a dedicated mention outside of the individual members. So, the questions are 1. Was this just a mistake? 2. Was there an reason behind this? If it was 2, can we get an official explanation on it to clear up the confusion on the matter?

Lemmy wasn't allowed into Heaven until it got its liquor license is all. It also just got a whole lot louder up there \m/

Thanksgiving... more like Creativitygiving.

Correct. Rob & EAR should also be visible the next time we sync the site with the database.

What I'm curious about is if anyone actually won OA-as-a-dog BTW, pretty interesting to see all these reviews popping up in the new timeline feature. Great job everybody!

at about 0:46 you hear a major chord, D major. The bass plays D, while some arppegio track plays a broken D major chord. You can add some tense to it by letting it play a broken D7sus4...(D G A C) It will leave that question mark you create between 0:36 and 0:46, but will add more to the overall ambience on that moment. The vocals do sound a little bit out of place in my opinion, maybe cut the off before the end of the samples to give it a more glitchy/rhythmic effect, or reverb? Just a thought. I love the change in feel at 0:59 and the break at 1:28! Awesome work man!

1. Well, you could also listen to the ReMix for the musicality of it, without comparing to the original if you don't want to. 2. Because OCR hosts it in higher bitrate and at its original volume. And you can then bring it with you even when you don't have internet where you are.

Thank you Flexstyle! I love it. Sorry it took so long to post. Holiday stuff got in the way. These are some awesome albums. Eye of the Storm has been a favorite of my group of friends since it came out, and I've enjoyed RAM/Immersion for far too long without actually owning them. I've never listened to The Chemical Brothers so I'm pumped to try it! Haven't had much time to listen to it due to the holiday, but I'll be going through all my music soon. Again thank you! Hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Fixed PW issue by removing that old sig image, and corrected songs (will be fixed on site the next time it syncs with the database), though when Pixel first released names for the tracks, the corrupted English was there.

This was something I had planned to write out for, what feels like a long time but held back for various reasons. Also no means a promotion of anything, just someone wishing to share my personal enjoyment of things. Gaming in general, racing games (because we all love speed right?) and video game music! Game is available here by the way. Never really used the forums. Not out of fear so much really, but probably lack of need to. Anyways! Figured what best place to talk about this, since it involves video game music. Mainly from OCR of course, but other sources as well. I was going to do a video pretty much, as a personal promotion of both OCR (and others) music and the game itself. Never really came to fruition because, as I planned that out my USB cable failed on my headset (Logitech G633). Replaced that this month, but as I was waiting I did a bunch of videos in the meantime. So that became a priority to upload, even if it had no real views at all. It just felt like I did something useful, probably shows a lot about myself huh? Besides that anyways. I wanted to post on here, to kinda show off both. I did a couple one-off videos, mostly when I first started out. Found the game sound was a little high, and later changed that for future videos. Top 2 videos are here and here which I had fun doing, just noticed the drifting sound was a bit overpowering. Also I changed my video naming scheme, when I moved onto CEO 2015: Champion. Which shows up after on my channel, because it was unlisted for so long. Mostly holding back until I got things posted and such, but I couldn't help but continue playing. So in the end I organized on a playlist, all the videos as they were to be actually listed. I ended up covering Apex 2014 at complete random, when I was looking for music so that became my latest uploads. Super Cartography Bros was released, as I was in the middle of everything. So that was also done but sitting there on my drive, I also noted Undertale for it's great music as well. Which of course I bought the soundtrack, along with many other that fill out my music library. Mostly this became a thing of personal enjoyment, as I have enjoyed OC ReMix so long ago. Just never really posted on much when I was a kid, even when I got older I mostly avoided saying a whole lot. Mostly this became a sort-of thank you, to the artists who spend many hours on their music. Who are often unappreciated for all that work, and I wanted to showcase the music in a way I knew was possible. I randomly came across this game, as I was looking for something racing related. Found it was for music and enjoyed myself, just as I spend many hours often listening to game music. If there's any potential questions or likely requests, I'm here to answer since I'd like to share what I can with others who are missing out. P.S. Sorry this was a long post, just it took a lot to actually push myself into posting. It's like walking into a lion's den, and hoping not to get mauled.