ambinate

i don't really play call of duty, and i dig halo and the gears of war series but they're not personal favorites of mine. i don't even own halo 3, and i only picked up gears of war 2 because i found it really cheap. i was never excusing other companies from the blame, and i wasn't saying that nintendo is the only company guilty of this. in fact, i was saying that because nintendo has innovated so much, the fact that they make so many shameless rehashes is disappointing. are they expected to perform on a completely new level every time they make a game? no, and that's not the point i was making, either. but i just find it unfortunate that they've been pulling this gimmick with so many of their console releases. gba had mario advance, ds had mario 64, wii had a rushed port of twilight princess, and now 3ds has star fox and ocarina of time. i sort of find the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" argument (in reference to dkc and goldeneye) that you mentioned in the post before that sort of irrelevant, too, because if that were the case, why would we even be playing the wii in the first place? there was nothing inherently "wrong" about gameplay in the last generation, so why would nintendo bother to change it at all? the difference is that they decided to try something different and it worked really well. the same goes for something like mario galaxy or the ds itself. the 3ds is a really good evolution of that. but i think it's lame that they use something like the ds or the 3ds as an excuse to show off the same games we played 10 or 12 years ago simply because it's on new tech now. i'm not really asking for complete overhauls, i just think that nintendo could put more effort into something like a new star fox 3ds launch title, considering that series has had very little development since 64 came out anyway. that was 97, and there have been 3 new star fox games since then, i think, right? why not use this opportunity to at least make a new game based on the same engine?

god damn it, it's like they want me to hate them

honestly i'm a little disappointed at how much of the stuff nintendo revealed this year was just straight up nostalgia baiting. kid icarus and kirby looked like the only games based on older franchises that weren't mostly prettier rehashes (metroid other m, too, but we've already known about that for a while). dkc4 and goldeneye are cool, obviously, but are they doing anything drastically different? and the 3ds is cool, but personally i don't really give a shit about playing games i've already played on much older systems (star fox, animal crossing, kingdom hearts, mario kart - i realize a couple of these might not be pure remakes but they certainly don't look like they're offering particularly new gameplay experiences). it's just kinda weak, especially for a company that has spent this entire generation priding themselves on their innovation. and it's also disappointing considering that they are very capable of reinvigorating their old franchises with new gameplay, which they proved with the galaxy series. it just seems lazy.

ohshit it looks good

medal of honor looks pretty dope tho

i missed a bunch of the other stuff but zelda didn't impress me too much. motion controls look fun but it doesn't look like they've changed much beyond that, which is a bit disappointing. goldeneye looks...alright? i'll probably be accused of being a graphics whore for saying this but it's not up to the visual standard i expect from shooters these days. obviously the wii doesn't have the same visual capabilities as the 360 or ps3, but if they're going for the "realistic" visual style then they're going to have to suffer some comparisons to other modern shooters. i'm sure it'll play really well. goldeneye rules. it just looks a little like butt.

ok this is a bit of a gross exaggeration. i like nintendo as much as the next guy but to say that they haven't made a huge business out of peddling remakes of older titles is just being silly. and those rehashes sucked a lot of the time, too.

hey man there's no need to bring down meshuggah here we can all be friends

This sounds fucking great, dude! Really nice job.

i meant to respond to this like a week and a half ago but i forgot to because i'm a fool. i really dig this - it's a totally different interpretation than i would have expected, which is always a plus. the soundscape never gets too cluttered and the sound choices are really interesting. the vibe is nice, too; it sits sorta between mellow and a little silly, which makes it a lot of fun to listen to. really slick production, too. great job, dude!

I'm trying to learn the basics of subtractive synthesis right now, and I've made some decent progress with making pad and lead-type sounds, but one thing that's lost on me is making a sound that has a short, heavy attack, almost like it's being plucked or hit with a mallet. There's a big spectrum of sounds that have the kind of thing I'd like to recreate - any type of bell, synths that go 'pop' ("Rose of Jericho" by BT is a good example), the really common trance pluck sound (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9k2FJ4HpB8 - about 2 and a half minutes in), all sorts of stuff. I realize these are all very different sounds (and are all made differently), I just wanted to give a bunch of examples to get my point across. I'm using Logic's ES2 mostly, if it makes a difference. I know I could just use Sculpture for some of this, but I feel I'd be cheating myself out of figuring out what the hell is going on. Thanks a lot in advance for the help!

A borrowed or altered chord.

Yeah...going along with what Gario said, modal music is definitely based around a certain important note, but as an actual musical term, the word "tonal" is often used to refer specifically to music based on the major/minor scale system. While tonality also has a general meaning, when it's discussed alongside modality, it usually is referencing a specific development in music history (the one Gario talked about) to show its contrast with modal music, which was popular before the tonal system was really solidified. Edit: I get what you're saying, SLyGenN, but the difference is that terms like "functional harmony" and "tonality" have taken on pretty specific meanings over the past couple hundred years, for the explicit purpose of differentiating it from modal music. I don't know if anybody is saying that modal music is "atonal," per se (although I have heard it discussed this way before), just that modal music exists in a separate category from both tonal music and atonal music.

forty bucks says the final countdown is on the setlist when it's released

there were more than 5 good games on the dreamcast but sonic adventure 2 is definitely not one of those games (because it's terrible)

some of these pokemon look like they could be in viva pinata, which means they will be incredible

shenmue is the slowest fucking game

I might be off-base here, but I think part of what Gario is saying is that writing in a mode involves more than just which notes you use. How you use those notes is also important. For example, if you wanted to take a tonal piece and make it truly modal, you'd probably have to make substantial changes to the harmony and chord progressions of the piece, because something like the tonic-dominant relationship that's so important in tonality isn't always a major aspect of modal music. Melodies in tonal pieces are written differently than modal pieces, as well - there are different leading tones, so melodies are structured differently. In the same way that there are basic rules that are followed in order to make sure something is in a certain key, there are some basic ideas that are usually involved in writing music in a certain mode. Gario will be a lot better at explaining this because I don't think I've actually said anything of value yet. Whoops!

itt we get hosed

This sounds really nice so far. I dig what you've done arrangement-wise, and your playing is very expressive, which is great. I will say that this might be a little too conservative for the judges the way it is right now, although I'm not positive. It can't hurt too much to mess around with it a little more in terms of interpretation. Maybe try changing up the chord progression in a few areas, write some counter-melodies or harmonies, or change around the rhythm in more places. You've already started to incorporate some of this into the piece already, so my only recommendation would be to keep going in that direction. Because the instrumentation you've chosen is the same as the original, you might be expected to be a little more daring with the arrangement than some other piano pieces that have already been posted here. Good luck, dude! It sounds really solid so far.

michael jai white has the best voice anyone has ever had

man, i liked it, but i wasn't crazy about it. it felt like there was a big disconnect between the first and second half of the movie. i thought the first part, which was more focused on the documentary motif, was way more compelling and interesting than the second half, which seemed sort of like a typical thriller. i was really impressed by the special effects (especially considering the budget) and it had some solid action, but i just felt like they wasted an opportunity to really get into some of the social themes that were used for the premise. it was still much more intelligent than most action/thriller movies, which is cool. not quite what i was looking for, though.

oh, man...they actually look kinda lame...i was hoping for something a little different with this game in terms of art direction and all that. whoops.

sorry dude i fixed it

Oh god, I totally thought those albums came out in the fall. This sucks! And holy shit, Periphery's album came out? I've been following their guitarist's soundclick page for like 4 years now and I had no idea. He posted a bunch of these tracks as instrumental demos over the last couple years. This is really cool. I need to pick this up.