searching for the identity of the player, and what it means to play.
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the union, 'saccidananda', was created to complement this 'concept blog', and for the purposes of delving deeper, into more specific areas of play and games. and we go as deep as you like.. (mmhmm) philosophy, art, anthropology? everything is relevant.
everyone is invited~
'talk talk - the colour of spring'
one of my favourite albums by talk talk, coming second to 'laughing stock'. you'll have to help me improve my music-describing ability, but i can't stop listening to 'april 5th' from this album.. it's just so peaceful and filled with light and the promise of nature. mark hollis's voice is often so haunting, but he's barely audible on this song, almost flooded by an overwhelming (but not overbearing) presence of light.
skinny puppy - vivisect vi
i love skinny puppy.. well, their earlier stuff anyway. i can't seem to get into their current music. their sound is harsh, industrial, and deep. i'm searching for words to describe it... it's good-sounding synth-pop, but it has a gothic/punk edge with voices taken from films, spliced into a lot their songs. my favourite from them is 'testure', and 'assimilate'. testure, a song about vivisection, animal experiments.. and well, death, sounds too good to be serious. like nine inch nails, they seem to balance a strong message or potent lyrics with a good beat and a catchy song. testure sounds as if i am falling through the night, while buildings collapse around me. the sound of the buildings crashing are the synthesizers, and the ambient space all around is dark, inevitable but gives a glorious high.
'the choke', and 'b1 addiction' are also ones i like.
sonny rollins - impulse compilation
**stretches** this is what wakes me up in the morning. heat up some coffee, look outside at the weather, feel the sunlight and listen to the perculator making strange coffee sounds. for some reason jazz helps me get my spirits up for the day ahead. it's not too reflective or personal.. it's just ireverant instrumental riffing. it's like.. "yeah, cool.. just put on some jazz baby.. and it's there, just in the background".
i found out about this artist on last.fm.. he does all sorts of harsh soundscapes.. eerie ambient sandstorms. remember the fire temple in zelda: ocarina of time? remember the music in that temple? well, that's the sound of this guy. i've been listening to 'june' the most lately. it sounds like a persistant brooding symptom, continually emerging under the drudgery of a black blanket of distortion, then dissapearing. i am at peace when listening to this, believe it or not.
another artist i found on last.fm.. another ambient soundscapist. this is so, so peaceful you could fall asleep listening to it. it's as if while you were listening, you have your eyes closed, and can only glint at the horizon. a soft piano plays a simple tune, while a strong resonance fills the aural space, warping your sense of time, and putting you at a strange, disjointed peace.
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those are just some songs i've been playing most everyday. i'm moving more and more towards minimalism and ambience in my musical choice, and mostly electronic sounds. who knows... but it doesn't really matter 'why' sometimes. 'why' is over-rated. ;P
tell me what you think of the music..
copying seth10's blog idea!
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you play a hot ninja babe in medieval japan. you have to assasinate some king. you have a fishing rod (without the rod) to acomplish this task.
it looks cool from the front of the box, and you think.. "awesome, it's really cheap and sounds innovative..", and then you play it to discover that the controls and camera are really too broken to play seriously. kurenai handles like a slippery fish, and feels weightless.
you might get some guilty pleasures from just tilting the camera to look up kurenai's kimono, and also play around with her fishing hook that is still really cool and can sever arms and heads of enemies with blood spirting out. kurenai also has a 'seduction' move, but i couldn't play far enough into the game to get it. ;-(
if you want to do a case study of a mediocre game, try this one out. i thought it would be a cool game ("a hidden gem") because it says you get to 'ride in the air' and stuff.. but what you'll mostly be doing is collecting gumblebum orbs, mashing ridiculously convoluted button combos just to defeat simple enemies, and sneaking about in painfully dull 'stealth' sections.
"kya" is the kind of sound you make when you need to clear your throat. that's how i remember this.
nights is deceptive.. not because it is gender-ambiguous, but because the game stinks. the cover makes it look so fun.. swirling through a colourful, tropical landscape.. clinging onto stuff and then spinning off; like a mid-air sonic the hedgehog.
what you're treated to is a patronizing and limited, bare-bones piece of software. as if it wasn't bad enough that the main character ('nights') has to interact with kids that look too, too human, and then guide them on a magical journey.. the game also thinks that 'kids = lazy design and patronizing instructions'. when you begin, you're 'greeted' by a bumbling old owl with a silly english accent that continually repeats "visitor...", "visitor..", "visitor.." if you stray too far or do anything that the game didn't predict. and you just go around collecting 'blue orbs' for no reason, in a barely interactive environment. that's in the 'hub world'.. when you get to the real levels, it's a little better but the wii remote controls are completely broken and stiff, and so you need to use a clas-sic controller, but when you plug the clas-sic controller in, the sticks are too close together, so when you're twirling about your thumbs knock into each other. it's at that point that you just give up. if you can still stomach this saccharine nonsense, then you can plug a GC controller in and proceed to get killed over and over by a big fish boss.
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just a few. just for fun. ;-)
just wanted to drop you guys a link to this amazing article i read on the 'hardcore & casual' debate...
birdmen and the casual fallacy
it really changed how i thought about the whole thing. in summary, it is down to ignorance and laziness on the part of developers, but the article is backed up by someone who knows more about the pure business side of the industry than most gamers.
i never knew that nintendo put its mario and zelda teams to work on stuff like nintendogs and wii fit though.. so that explains at least partly, the shortage of so-called 'core' games.
i like the world-view thing.. he replaces 'casual' with retard to show how developers/publishers see the people who play games on the wii.
it's a searing attack on the industry. i love it of course. ;-P
and look at this idiot, trying to turn the games industry into more of a 'hollywood' business model.. as if it isn't hollywood enough already. i thought he was cool, because he created lara croft, and his company (CORE) was based a few hours away from where i live. he's not interested in games. he's interested in money.
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