So, I imagine most people who have been coming back to this blog regularly have been wondering whether this blog is going to ever get updated again.
Honestly, I'm glad that people are still coming back to this blog. I never started it intending for it to be a big thing: I just did what I liked doing and that was it! So checking back and finding that there's still interest in it is actually quite a nice find. So thank you so much for your patience and dedication to my blog and please accept my apologies that it took so long for me to finally provide something since last time!
I'd love to say that my silence has been entirely down to workload issues (I've been doing stuff for another website, albeit under my birth name, not my scene name, and I've had a local radio show and a few other things happening over the last few weeks which have taken up more of my time than I expected), but the truth is there's been A LOT of behind the scenes stuff happening over the last bit of time. Most of it's behind me now, but it's fair to say that I've just not had the fire to be angry about the metal scene any more and, since I've been doing reviews for another site, I've not felt the need to write reviews for here.
That's not to say there's not been anything that's got me angry or that I've not wished I could write a review for here due to the lack of a word count limit here, obviously! However, I've not had a reason to put pen to paper (well, keyboard to word document, if you want to be completely accurate) for here, so this blog has been neglected a bit.
This is something I would like to change, though. So what I'm going to do is start using this blog for the stuff I can't do for the other site and maintain a more analytical examination of various things. I'm wanting to start by giving a wider look at what lead to the death of thrash metal in the eyes of the mainstream in the 90s, but I have other ideas, such as an examination as to why Spawn could be the basis for a very interesting superhero film (before you point out Spawn already has had a film, I meant a very interesting AND GOOD superhero film), why there's still a lot to be learnt from H P Lovecraft with regards to making horror works that aren't just gore fests and jump scares, why lumping animation as a medium only suitable for children is a completely inaccurate and unfair disregarding of the potential such a medium provides, why the gaming industry is badly sabotaging itself to non-gamers due to the behavior of various indie developers and those involved in both sides of the GamerGate discussion, why the return of the Squats is not likely to work in the current Warhammer 40,000 setting and why the entertainment industries as a whole, while not in the best of states, are not actually as out of ideas as you might think they are.
So, that's my plan with this blog from now on. No longer will I be doing reviews on here or angrily picking bones with the metal scene over everything I find aggravating about it, but, instead, I'll be aiming for something that is simultaneously thought provoking and discussion focused. What I plan to present from now on is not intended to be the be-all-end-all on a topic (not that I ever felt I was an authoritative voice on any topic in the first place), merely my observations and thoughts on these topics which I encourage you all to read, consider and respond to as you feel is appropriate (in a civil discussion sort of way, obviously!). Maybe I'll say something you had never thought of that gets you to look at something in a new light, maybe I'll just be preaching to the choir or maybe I'll be talking a lot of rubbish, but, in any case, I hope you'll enjoy my new direction and approach to stuff.
I'll aim to do these at least once a month (mostly because I have other stuff to focus upon and I have to do that before I focus on blog stuff), with the first article planned to be ready before the 19th of May. I've not quite decided what I want to cover for then, in all honesty, but I'm wanting to start off with something small, so I probably will start with the Squats (joke not intended!). Maybe I'll expand it to include why the Lost & Damned should get their own codex, but the main focus at the moment is the Squats!
Thanks for your time and I hope you're looking forward to seeing me return back to doing stuff here!
As a side note, I'm debating opening a dedicated e-mail address for you guys to message me at, as I want to be able to be more open with the people reading my blog. If you want me to do that, then let me know in the comments section to this blog!
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Thursday, 19 February 2015
Man Listens To Rock Band For A Week, Rock Band Detractors Give Him $18,000 In Two Days
...God, am I really having to talk about Nickelback and their "worst band in the world" reputation again?
...Ugh, fine, let's just get this over with.
I make no secret of the fact that I don't think Nickelback live up to their reputation of being the worst band in the world. I do make jokes about them and their music, but that's all it is for me: jokes. I have just about all of their studio albums (only one I don't have is The State) and I will play them whenever I want to have something on in the background while writing stuff that isn't reviews (heck, I'm currently writing this with "She Keeps Me Up" from No Fixed Address on) because, really, sometimes you just need some music for background listening and Nickelback works as that for me. That's really the thing with Nickelback: if you approach them like any other radio rock band and view them as casual listening material, they're actually not that bad. Unfortunately, most people who are rock fans tend to take the viewpoint that rock music MUST be something that you focus on and try to look for deeper meanings in the band's music, only to be shocked that there's nothing deeper to Nickelback's music.
Which is kind of dumb when you think about it hard enough: most people don't approach most pop music expecting to hear something deeper than what is on most pop radio stations. Popular music isn't exactly noted for depth, so trying to approach Nickelback as anything other than how most people would approach pop music (which is basically "is it an enjoyable listen? Is it catchy? THAT'S ALL I NEED TO KNOW!") is kind of missing the point a bit. It's kind of like trying to approach glam metal expecting to hear a progressive metal song underneath the outfits: you can rage about it not being deep all you want, but most people will still go "since when has glam metal been about deeper meanings than "you were good in bed"?" and say that you're being harsh for it not living up to a set of standards that it wasn't focused on hitting anyway. This is not to say that you should not approach glam metal (or Nickelback) with the viewpoint of it being just listenable and love it for that reason, just that you should judge it on what it's trying to do, not necessarily what you WANT it to do. Nickelback aren't trying to offer deep music, they're trying to offer enjoyable music that you listen to in the background of other stuff (like most radio stuff is), so, in that aspect, I think they do an admirable job.
Yet it seems that most people who are music listeners haven't received that memo or lit it on fire and danced on the ashes while cackling insanely, as Nickelback hatred is just as strong as ever from rock fans, despite attempts from non-Nickelback fans to point out that the hatred has stopped being funny and now comes across as a refusal to take a "live and let live" attitude, which also serves to give the band MORE exposure to keep them going than if everyone who hated them had just shut up about them.
...Why am I being reminded of Anita Sarkeesian with that last paragraph?
Anyway, this week brought out a tale that just made me want to repurpose my desk as a club and forcefully erase the stupidity that I had just read out of my memory. Unfortunately, my desk is too heavy for me to lift above my head and I don't want to risk accidentally breaking my neck while dropping it on my head, so I went for plan B: pointing out the flaws in this bout of stupidity while being a snide git.
Hey, might as well stick with what I'm good at!
Anyway, some guy who I'm not going to bother to name has decided to listen to only music by Nickelback for a week, claiming it to be "the ultimate test of endurance", because apparently traveling to the South Pole on foot, training to go to space or climbing Mount Everest is nothing compared to listening to Nickelback. Sorry, captain Scott, because you never listened to Nickelback for a week, you don't know what true struggle is, according to the internet!
I'm sorry if I'm sounding really bitter about that, but anyone who has even the slightest indication of what people have to go through before they can go into space, climb Mount Everest or travel to the South Pole will back me up that those are not things you can just do. They take months, if not years, of hard training, require you to be in the peak of physical health and cope with conditions that most people today have no idea of before they can go do them. By comparison, what is listening to a band for a week require you to do? Nothing. Forgive me for being less-than-sympathetic to the guy if his hatred for Nickelback is so much that he actually considers this a test of endurance, but I think the astronauts, climbers and polar explorers out there would like a word with him about the hard work they have to go through to do those impressive feats that, even now, are some of the most difficult things that you can do as a human being.
I will be fair, the guy is doing it for charity...but that only makes me want to point out two obvious things that make me not be amused with the guy making a big deal about this. First of all, his comments on doing this challenge are making this out to be a challenge on an epic scale. These are actual comments from his Twitter feed about the challenge:
The second thing I want to point out is that, well, acting like nobody has listened to Nickelback for a large period of time is completely forgetting the fact that Nickelback do have fans (heck, one of my college friends is a big Nickelback fan!) and people who aren't necessarily fans, but who don't have a problem with them (like myself). It's not like the guy is listening to Lulu for a week non-stop or something which has next to no defenders: this is a popular band that the guy just doesn't like and is an easy target to make digs at on the internet. Me and my friend could probably go through this "ultimate test of endurance" without a single complaint, but, for this guy, it's psychological torture after two days? Yeah, sorry, I'm not buying it.
But here's the thing that lights my fuse and made me come at this with the tone I have: the guy has made $18,000 in two days already and there are people taking this as a serious challenge. It's great that folks are supporting charities through this, but that much in two days? And giving the guys words of support as if this is a challenge of the ages? What the actual fuck, internet, have you thrown your brain out just to continue sticking to the "Nickelback sucks" bandwagon?
First of all, a key point that has been missed: the guy didn't say he had to listen to Nickelback non-stop, so what's to stop him from just not listening to music entirely for a week and claiming he did it? I'll be fair, his tweets do indicate that he is at least taking that part of the challenge seriously, but you'd have all looked kind of stupid if it turned out he'd used that loophole to avoid actually listening to Nickelback's music for the whole week. $18,000 dollars for doing absolutely nothing, basically.
Second of all, really think about how tough it actually is to listen to a Nickelback song. You might find it bad, but put it on in the background on fairly reasonable volume while you do something else and tell me what you remember from it. Not a lot outside of the chorus? Hate to point this out again, but THAT'S THE SAME THING WITH MOST POPULAR MUSIC. Even iconic bands aren't exempt from this: how many of you know the lyrics to "It's The End of the World as we Know it" aside from the chorus and the very beginning of it? The lyrics to "Jump" by Van Halen? "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (heck, do you know ANY lyrics to that one? I know I don't!)?
...Oh, want more modern examples from the radio? OK: "Roar" by Katy Perry. "Applause" by Lady Gaga. "I Cry" by Flo Rida (heck, anything by Flo Rida!). "Maps" by Maroon 5. "Shots" by Imagine Dragons. That...thing that sampled Heart's "Alone" which I'm trying to forget ever happened for the sake of my already heightened blood pressure. All of those came out in the last two or three years and got listened to by a lot of people. Give me proof that you remember more than the chorus of any of those songs.
Can I officially rest my case now or do you want me to keep this up all day?
Nickelback are basically stuck in the position of being an easy target because they conform to the trappings of modern pop music, but are also a rock band at the same time. I'm not going to raise my flag in the Nickelback camp at all, as I don't like them enough to want to do it, but, at this point, I've got more reasons to defend Nickelback than I do to hate them and the "Nickelback sucks!" bandwagon is just making me want to support them just to spite the overly vocal hatedom who hasn't got the hint that they're retreading the same ground so hard that you could practically plant crops in it by now.
Make this guy's charity thing be the last time Nickelback hatred causes dumb things to happen, guys. I'm seriously getting tired of seeing Nickelback jokes and comments everywhere, but this is just ridiculous, short sighted and proof that those of you who don't like Nickelback haven't thought at all about how to deal with them. You're not forced to say how much you hate them whenever they get mentioned and doing it only makes news about them more profitable on websites and gets them trending on stuff, so how about you do the smart thing and just DON'T TALK ABOUT THEM AT ALL? That way, news about them becomes less profitable to post on websites (because you're not clicking on it, so it's not registering as potential profits), so they get less media coverage and they might sink away from the popular eye because you're not constantly putting them back in it through stuff like this guy's thing.
I will be nice enough to hope the guy gets through the challenge and hope he does donate all of the money he gets to charity, but, for everyone else reading this, please keep what I've said in mind and, for the love of all that is holy, try to take it to heart the next time an artist comes up that you don't like. We're supposed to be an intelligent species, for God's sake, not a bunch of children with an inability to think beyond their first reaction to seeing something they don't like!
...Ugh, fine, let's just get this over with.
I make no secret of the fact that I don't think Nickelback live up to their reputation of being the worst band in the world. I do make jokes about them and their music, but that's all it is for me: jokes. I have just about all of their studio albums (only one I don't have is The State) and I will play them whenever I want to have something on in the background while writing stuff that isn't reviews (heck, I'm currently writing this with "She Keeps Me Up" from No Fixed Address on) because, really, sometimes you just need some music for background listening and Nickelback works as that for me. That's really the thing with Nickelback: if you approach them like any other radio rock band and view them as casual listening material, they're actually not that bad. Unfortunately, most people who are rock fans tend to take the viewpoint that rock music MUST be something that you focus on and try to look for deeper meanings in the band's music, only to be shocked that there's nothing deeper to Nickelback's music.
Which is kind of dumb when you think about it hard enough: most people don't approach most pop music expecting to hear something deeper than what is on most pop radio stations. Popular music isn't exactly noted for depth, so trying to approach Nickelback as anything other than how most people would approach pop music (which is basically "is it an enjoyable listen? Is it catchy? THAT'S ALL I NEED TO KNOW!") is kind of missing the point a bit. It's kind of like trying to approach glam metal expecting to hear a progressive metal song underneath the outfits: you can rage about it not being deep all you want, but most people will still go "since when has glam metal been about deeper meanings than "you were good in bed"?" and say that you're being harsh for it not living up to a set of standards that it wasn't focused on hitting anyway. This is not to say that you should not approach glam metal (or Nickelback) with the viewpoint of it being just listenable and love it for that reason, just that you should judge it on what it's trying to do, not necessarily what you WANT it to do. Nickelback aren't trying to offer deep music, they're trying to offer enjoyable music that you listen to in the background of other stuff (like most radio stuff is), so, in that aspect, I think they do an admirable job.
Yet it seems that most people who are music listeners haven't received that memo or lit it on fire and danced on the ashes while cackling insanely, as Nickelback hatred is just as strong as ever from rock fans, despite attempts from non-Nickelback fans to point out that the hatred has stopped being funny and now comes across as a refusal to take a "live and let live" attitude, which also serves to give the band MORE exposure to keep them going than if everyone who hated them had just shut up about them.
...Why am I being reminded of Anita Sarkeesian with that last paragraph?
Anyway, this week brought out a tale that just made me want to repurpose my desk as a club and forcefully erase the stupidity that I had just read out of my memory. Unfortunately, my desk is too heavy for me to lift above my head and I don't want to risk accidentally breaking my neck while dropping it on my head, so I went for plan B: pointing out the flaws in this bout of stupidity while being a snide git.
Hey, might as well stick with what I'm good at!
Anyway, some guy who I'm not going to bother to name has decided to listen to only music by Nickelback for a week, claiming it to be "the ultimate test of endurance", because apparently traveling to the South Pole on foot, training to go to space or climbing Mount Everest is nothing compared to listening to Nickelback. Sorry, captain Scott, because you never listened to Nickelback for a week, you don't know what true struggle is, according to the internet!
I'm sorry if I'm sounding really bitter about that, but anyone who has even the slightest indication of what people have to go through before they can go into space, climb Mount Everest or travel to the South Pole will back me up that those are not things you can just do. They take months, if not years, of hard training, require you to be in the peak of physical health and cope with conditions that most people today have no idea of before they can go do them. By comparison, what is listening to a band for a week require you to do? Nothing. Forgive me for being less-than-sympathetic to the guy if his hatred for Nickelback is so much that he actually considers this a test of endurance, but I think the astronauts, climbers and polar explorers out there would like a word with him about the hard work they have to go through to do those impressive feats that, even now, are some of the most difficult things that you can do as a human being.
I will be fair, the guy is doing it for charity...but that only makes me want to point out two obvious things that make me not be amused with the guy making a big deal about this. First of all, his comments on doing this challenge are making this out to be a challenge on an epic scale. These are actual comments from his Twitter feed about the challenge:
The Nickelback onslaught is wearing me down ... I now know why no human has attempted such a feat
Only two days in & I'm already feeling the effects of such huge quantities of Nickelback. We're in unexplored psychological territory hereMay I point out that all the guy is doing is LISTENING TO A BAND'S MUSIC! He's not being wired up to a chair and checked to see how much electricity he can cope with being shocked with or being subjected to actual torture. Even if it's just the guy is deliberately hamming it up for the sake of being funny and exaggerating for comic effect (I've done it in the past: whenever we run out of coffee at home, my first reaction is to jokingly pretend that it's the end of the world, with as much overacting as I can manage for the sake of a laugh), it's still not something really worth overreacting about!
The second thing I want to point out is that, well, acting like nobody has listened to Nickelback for a large period of time is completely forgetting the fact that Nickelback do have fans (heck, one of my college friends is a big Nickelback fan!) and people who aren't necessarily fans, but who don't have a problem with them (like myself). It's not like the guy is listening to Lulu for a week non-stop or something which has next to no defenders: this is a popular band that the guy just doesn't like and is an easy target to make digs at on the internet. Me and my friend could probably go through this "ultimate test of endurance" without a single complaint, but, for this guy, it's psychological torture after two days? Yeah, sorry, I'm not buying it.
But here's the thing that lights my fuse and made me come at this with the tone I have: the guy has made $18,000 in two days already and there are people taking this as a serious challenge. It's great that folks are supporting charities through this, but that much in two days? And giving the guys words of support as if this is a challenge of the ages? What the actual fuck, internet, have you thrown your brain out just to continue sticking to the "Nickelback sucks" bandwagon?
First of all, a key point that has been missed: the guy didn't say he had to listen to Nickelback non-stop, so what's to stop him from just not listening to music entirely for a week and claiming he did it? I'll be fair, his tweets do indicate that he is at least taking that part of the challenge seriously, but you'd have all looked kind of stupid if it turned out he'd used that loophole to avoid actually listening to Nickelback's music for the whole week. $18,000 dollars for doing absolutely nothing, basically.
Second of all, really think about how tough it actually is to listen to a Nickelback song. You might find it bad, but put it on in the background on fairly reasonable volume while you do something else and tell me what you remember from it. Not a lot outside of the chorus? Hate to point this out again, but THAT'S THE SAME THING WITH MOST POPULAR MUSIC. Even iconic bands aren't exempt from this: how many of you know the lyrics to "It's The End of the World as we Know it" aside from the chorus and the very beginning of it? The lyrics to "Jump" by Van Halen? "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (heck, do you know ANY lyrics to that one? I know I don't!)?
...Oh, want more modern examples from the radio? OK: "Roar" by Katy Perry. "Applause" by Lady Gaga. "I Cry" by Flo Rida (heck, anything by Flo Rida!). "Maps" by Maroon 5. "Shots" by Imagine Dragons. That...thing that sampled Heart's "Alone" which I'm trying to forget ever happened for the sake of my already heightened blood pressure. All of those came out in the last two or three years and got listened to by a lot of people. Give me proof that you remember more than the chorus of any of those songs.
Can I officially rest my case now or do you want me to keep this up all day?
Nickelback are basically stuck in the position of being an easy target because they conform to the trappings of modern pop music, but are also a rock band at the same time. I'm not going to raise my flag in the Nickelback camp at all, as I don't like them enough to want to do it, but, at this point, I've got more reasons to defend Nickelback than I do to hate them and the "Nickelback sucks!" bandwagon is just making me want to support them just to spite the overly vocal hatedom who hasn't got the hint that they're retreading the same ground so hard that you could practically plant crops in it by now.
Make this guy's charity thing be the last time Nickelback hatred causes dumb things to happen, guys. I'm seriously getting tired of seeing Nickelback jokes and comments everywhere, but this is just ridiculous, short sighted and proof that those of you who don't like Nickelback haven't thought at all about how to deal with them. You're not forced to say how much you hate them whenever they get mentioned and doing it only makes news about them more profitable on websites and gets them trending on stuff, so how about you do the smart thing and just DON'T TALK ABOUT THEM AT ALL? That way, news about them becomes less profitable to post on websites (because you're not clicking on it, so it's not registering as potential profits), so they get less media coverage and they might sink away from the popular eye because you're not constantly putting them back in it through stuff like this guy's thing.
I will be nice enough to hope the guy gets through the challenge and hope he does donate all of the money he gets to charity, but, for everyone else reading this, please keep what I've said in mind and, for the love of all that is holy, try to take it to heart the next time an artist comes up that you don't like. We're supposed to be an intelligent species, for God's sake, not a bunch of children with an inability to think beyond their first reaction to seeing something they don't like!
Friday, 9 January 2015
Ant-Man Trailer: Thoughts & Speculations
So, I'm sure most people reading this will be wondering where I've been for the last month and a half. Well, put simply, I've joined a website where I'm the resident music reviewer (it opened on New Year's Day) and, as there wasn't anything I really needed to cover that wasn't music reviews, I had nothing I needed to write. That said, I did check back every few days and I was truly astonished by how much support I was getting while I was away: I went past the 2,000 views mark before Christmas, which was something I didn't expect to happen at all! Since this blog is no longer going to cover music reviews, I can use this blog to look at other stuff, so let's start with the trailer for the upcoming Ant-Man film.
I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother has heard about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but, for the benefit of those who haven't, let me give you the basics. Basically, in the 90s, Marvel Comics had been purchased by the company Andrews Group and their owner, Ronald Perelman, was pushing for a lot of stuff that, on paper, looked like a good idea to help make Marvel more money: lines were relaunched as new number 1's, cards were included in the comics, holographic covers were made for comics and stuff like that. Unfortunately, Ronald Perelman appeared not to understand economics as well as he thought he did, as his reason for relaunching the lines was that old comics were capable of making a lot of money, but he forgot to remember that comics weren't made in large amounts back when comics were young and that most of the copies which survived to the 90s were in poor condition, so they would be expensive because they were VERY rare. So, obviously, the gain from this turned out to be a short term thing when the comics market crashed, although it is worth noting that other factors did lead to the crash of the comics market. However, one of the things Ronald Perelman did before he was removed from Marvel was sign a bunch of deals to allow the company to make movies and, well, those deals were still active when Marvel decided to start making movies the way it wanted to...
Yep. Ronald Perelman, the guy who basically caused Marvel's bankruptcy in the first place, is the guy we have to thank for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also had a knock on effect, too: during this period of time, a certain company decided to put out a collectable card game onto the market that, thanks to the audience caused from comics having collectable cards in them, had a very large market to become interested in it. Don't know who the company is and what the card game is? Well, here's a hint: you might know the company for now also publishing Dungeons & Dragons...
Anyway, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been in planning since 2005, thanks in part to Kevin Feige realizing that Marvel still had the rights for the core members of The Avengers and basically going "Hey, why don't we have all of these characters share the same universe as each other, like the comics originally did in the 60s?" and...well, if you're even slightly familiar with the cinema since 2008, you almost certainly have at least heard of the films in the MCU. While Marvel Studios isn't responsible for some of the Marvel films released in the last few years (they have nothing to do with the two Ghost Rider films, the X-Men films, the Spider-Man films, the upcoming Fantastic Four film and technically only got The Hulk because they helped fund it), for the most part, every Marvel film released since 2008 has been done by Marvel Studios and with their full backing. And, while I will say there are films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which I don't particularly like much (I've never been big on the first Captain America film, although it worth noting that I am a British citizen, so a character intended to represent America is unlikely to catch on with me simply because I'm not part of America at all. There IS a Captain Britain, incidentally, and I'm hoping he does get his own film, if only because it would actually be pretty interesting to see him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...), I would struggle to say that I find any of the films bad. Even at my most cynical and jaded, the only film in the MCU that I could actually dislike is The Hulk, and even that's more a polite disinterest than anything else.
So, Marvel is looking fairly good right now in terms of their films. But here's the thing: when you look at the wider superhero movies market, it's overflowing right now. You've got DC making films of their characters, you have characters from a few other smaller companies appearing on the big screen, you've got Marvel properties that are not actually from Marvel Studios making it onto the big screen and you even have a few completely original (in terms of appearing in previous media) superhero characters appearing. I'm hardly a prophet of doom, but I simply feel that superhero films are at serious risk of going under again simply because the market is so crowded that it is very easy to lose interest in it (heck, I'm already suffering a minor burn out and I'm just keeping up with the news for these films!) and all it takes is one particularly awful film to become this generation's Batman & Robin...and, if you were to ask me to take bets on which film is likely to be that, I'd not even have to hesitate before I said "Fantastic Four reboot". I'm calling it now because there's so little about it which I feel is defendable at this point that it's hard for me to even want to watch it, but it should be noted that I'm not convinced that it is going to be so bad that it could destroy superhero films again: just be SERIOUSLY disappointing.
But let's get all of that history and discussion out of our minds for now. For now, let us focus on the present. We all know (or should know, at least) that Avengers: Age of Ultron is a few months away, so Ant-Man is having to be the follow up to that film and introduce Ant-Man to a mainstream audience. At the minute, all we have is this trailer to go on, but I do have to say that I have both good things to say and bad things to say about the trailer. Since I want to cover my nitpicks first, I'll do that now, but do bear in mind that all I say is just that: nitpicks.
First of all, I have to question the fact that it's an unknown character following up Avengers: Age of Ultron rather than a well known character. Maybe it's because I'm a grumpy git at heart, but I think having a character who we already know to follow up Avengers: Age of Ultron would simply be the more sensible choice: if the character fails to catch on with the general audience, then it's going to put more pressure on making Phase 3 start off well. Since Ant-Man is closing off Phase 2 and isn't starting off Phase 3 (which is still a risky decision, admittedly), I guess there's a bit less pressure, but it's still going to be a tough sell, regardless of which way you look at it.
Secondly, I have to question Ant-Man's costume. On its own, it isn't bad at all: it's a fairly good costume that is distinctive in its own right. The problem, unfortunately, is that it bears FAR too much resemblance to that of Star-Lord (or Peter Quill) from last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, to the extent that, if it was another company doing it, I'd be accusing them of plagiarizing from Guardians of the Galaxy. As it is, I feel that someone goofed up in Marvel, as the costume just is too much like Star-Lord's for me to consider him a distinct enough character in his own right. I just feel like writing a fan fic where Star-Lord and Ant-Man meet just because I imagine their first response to each other will be "Hey, you stole my look!"
...No, internet, I do not want you to write that as a slash fic. Star-Lord and Ant-Man screwing each other is not something I particularly want to read, no matter how well written it is!
Thirdly, I do feel that there wasn't really enough of tiny sized Ant-Man in the trailer. Don't get me wrong, there was some cool moments in it, but I'd personally have liked a bit more of it in the trailer. Ant-Man doesn't need to be all about tiny Ant-Man, but showing next to nothing about tiny sized Ant-Man just feels like a mistake to me. It's like doing a film about Batman and having the trailer focus entirely on Bruce Wayne!
Wait...
Anyway, for those of you preparing your comments, yes, I do accept that a superhero involving a character's alter ego CAN work (despite my joke against it, I did like The Dark Knight Rises, and Iron Man 3 did the same basic thing and I enjoyed it), so I can't say that this kind of thing is always doomed to failure. However, as an introduction to a character, I do feel that it doesn't work very well if we're not given a chance to see the character in action as their superhero self, especially if the character is one that most people are not likely to know a huge amount about. What was provided told us that he can shrink down to a tiny size and is capable of riding a wasp (which probably means he can talk to wasps, as it did slow down near him). That's...not really enough to tell us what he can actually do, when you think about it hard enough.
I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother has heard about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but, for the benefit of those who haven't, let me give you the basics. Basically, in the 90s, Marvel Comics had been purchased by the company Andrews Group and their owner, Ronald Perelman, was pushing for a lot of stuff that, on paper, looked like a good idea to help make Marvel more money: lines were relaunched as new number 1's, cards were included in the comics, holographic covers were made for comics and stuff like that. Unfortunately, Ronald Perelman appeared not to understand economics as well as he thought he did, as his reason for relaunching the lines was that old comics were capable of making a lot of money, but he forgot to remember that comics weren't made in large amounts back when comics were young and that most of the copies which survived to the 90s were in poor condition, so they would be expensive because they were VERY rare. So, obviously, the gain from this turned out to be a short term thing when the comics market crashed, although it is worth noting that other factors did lead to the crash of the comics market. However, one of the things Ronald Perelman did before he was removed from Marvel was sign a bunch of deals to allow the company to make movies and, well, those deals were still active when Marvel decided to start making movies the way it wanted to...
Yep. Ronald Perelman, the guy who basically caused Marvel's bankruptcy in the first place, is the guy we have to thank for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also had a knock on effect, too: during this period of time, a certain company decided to put out a collectable card game onto the market that, thanks to the audience caused from comics having collectable cards in them, had a very large market to become interested in it. Don't know who the company is and what the card game is? Well, here's a hint: you might know the company for now also publishing Dungeons & Dragons...
Anyway, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been in planning since 2005, thanks in part to Kevin Feige realizing that Marvel still had the rights for the core members of The Avengers and basically going "Hey, why don't we have all of these characters share the same universe as each other, like the comics originally did in the 60s?" and...well, if you're even slightly familiar with the cinema since 2008, you almost certainly have at least heard of the films in the MCU. While Marvel Studios isn't responsible for some of the Marvel films released in the last few years (they have nothing to do with the two Ghost Rider films, the X-Men films, the Spider-Man films, the upcoming Fantastic Four film and technically only got The Hulk because they helped fund it), for the most part, every Marvel film released since 2008 has been done by Marvel Studios and with their full backing. And, while I will say there are films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which I don't particularly like much (I've never been big on the first Captain America film, although it worth noting that I am a British citizen, so a character intended to represent America is unlikely to catch on with me simply because I'm not part of America at all. There IS a Captain Britain, incidentally, and I'm hoping he does get his own film, if only because it would actually be pretty interesting to see him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...), I would struggle to say that I find any of the films bad. Even at my most cynical and jaded, the only film in the MCU that I could actually dislike is The Hulk, and even that's more a polite disinterest than anything else.
So, Marvel is looking fairly good right now in terms of their films. But here's the thing: when you look at the wider superhero movies market, it's overflowing right now. You've got DC making films of their characters, you have characters from a few other smaller companies appearing on the big screen, you've got Marvel properties that are not actually from Marvel Studios making it onto the big screen and you even have a few completely original (in terms of appearing in previous media) superhero characters appearing. I'm hardly a prophet of doom, but I simply feel that superhero films are at serious risk of going under again simply because the market is so crowded that it is very easy to lose interest in it (heck, I'm already suffering a minor burn out and I'm just keeping up with the news for these films!) and all it takes is one particularly awful film to become this generation's Batman & Robin...and, if you were to ask me to take bets on which film is likely to be that, I'd not even have to hesitate before I said "Fantastic Four reboot". I'm calling it now because there's so little about it which I feel is defendable at this point that it's hard for me to even want to watch it, but it should be noted that I'm not convinced that it is going to be so bad that it could destroy superhero films again: just be SERIOUSLY disappointing.
But let's get all of that history and discussion out of our minds for now. For now, let us focus on the present. We all know (or should know, at least) that Avengers: Age of Ultron is a few months away, so Ant-Man is having to be the follow up to that film and introduce Ant-Man to a mainstream audience. At the minute, all we have is this trailer to go on, but I do have to say that I have both good things to say and bad things to say about the trailer. Since I want to cover my nitpicks first, I'll do that now, but do bear in mind that all I say is just that: nitpicks.
First of all, I have to question the fact that it's an unknown character following up Avengers: Age of Ultron rather than a well known character. Maybe it's because I'm a grumpy git at heart, but I think having a character who we already know to follow up Avengers: Age of Ultron would simply be the more sensible choice: if the character fails to catch on with the general audience, then it's going to put more pressure on making Phase 3 start off well. Since Ant-Man is closing off Phase 2 and isn't starting off Phase 3 (which is still a risky decision, admittedly), I guess there's a bit less pressure, but it's still going to be a tough sell, regardless of which way you look at it.
Secondly, I have to question Ant-Man's costume. On its own, it isn't bad at all: it's a fairly good costume that is distinctive in its own right. The problem, unfortunately, is that it bears FAR too much resemblance to that of Star-Lord (or Peter Quill) from last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, to the extent that, if it was another company doing it, I'd be accusing them of plagiarizing from Guardians of the Galaxy. As it is, I feel that someone goofed up in Marvel, as the costume just is too much like Star-Lord's for me to consider him a distinct enough character in his own right. I just feel like writing a fan fic where Star-Lord and Ant-Man meet just because I imagine their first response to each other will be "Hey, you stole my look!"
...No, internet, I do not want you to write that as a slash fic. Star-Lord and Ant-Man screwing each other is not something I particularly want to read, no matter how well written it is!
Thirdly, I do feel that there wasn't really enough of tiny sized Ant-Man in the trailer. Don't get me wrong, there was some cool moments in it, but I'd personally have liked a bit more of it in the trailer. Ant-Man doesn't need to be all about tiny Ant-Man, but showing next to nothing about tiny sized Ant-Man just feels like a mistake to me. It's like doing a film about Batman and having the trailer focus entirely on Bruce Wayne!
Wait...
Anyway, for those of you preparing your comments, yes, I do accept that a superhero involving a character's alter ego CAN work (despite my joke against it, I did like The Dark Knight Rises, and Iron Man 3 did the same basic thing and I enjoyed it), so I can't say that this kind of thing is always doomed to failure. However, as an introduction to a character, I do feel that it doesn't work very well if we're not given a chance to see the character in action as their superhero self, especially if the character is one that most people are not likely to know a huge amount about. What was provided told us that he can shrink down to a tiny size and is capable of riding a wasp (which probably means he can talk to wasps, as it did slow down near him). That's...not really enough to tell us what he can actually do, when you think about it hard enough.
Fourthly, while I do like the narration by Hank Pym (that's who the old guy is, if you didn't already know), I do feel the "huh" response to it wasn't particularly well delivered as a line. I get what they were going for, but I just found it bugged me, for some reason. I don't know, maybe it's just that I'd have liked the music to cut out just before he said it as a sort of comic moment, but it just bugged me enough for me to zero in on it.
Now that I've got my main issues out of the way, let me stress that those, for me, are nitpicks: I did still like the trailer! Despite my complaints, the vast majority of the tailer was very good: the special effects were very good (I do think a bit more work could have been done on the wasp, but it was still very nicely done), the lines we were provided were delivered to a decent standard (I do feel that they could have been better, but they were not delivered terribly by any measure), the trailer provided a decent insight into the main character of the film without feeling like it was trying too hard to lay down stuff we didn't need to know and it had an amusing line or two. The lack of action still feels like a misstep for me, but, beyond that, I wouldn't say anything struck me as missing that I'd have said was essential to include.
Overall, it was a fairly good trailer that did everything it needed to do, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this film turns out. I'm guessing it will be a disappointment compared to Avengers: Age of Ultron (although, let's be fair, ANYTHING following Avengers: Age of Ultron was likely to be a disappointment anyway: the quality of that film is likely to be very good indeed!), but will still be an enjoyable film. So long as it isn't the most disappointing superhero film of 2015 and is still enjoyable to watch, that's all I can really ask of it, and that is going to be my expectations going into it.
Friday, 21 November 2014
Sonata Arctica "Ecliptica Revisited: 15th Anniversary Edition" Review
...Well, this album has taken a drubbing in recent times, hasn't it? Wherever I look to see comments on this album, all of them basically say the same basic thing: "This isn't as good as the original, it sucks, RIP Sonata".
Woah, woah, woah, hold your fucking horses, guys: the original is still out there and this was not an attempt to replace it in the slightest. You don't have to like this re-recording, but I fail to see where all of the anguished screams of "RUINED FOREVER!" are coming from and why people are treating this as the final betrayal from the band when there were far more valid targets for this reaction...like, you know, there is an album like Stones Grow Her Name out there which is just downright indefensible (and makes me wish I was allowed to purchase and own a flamethrower, as the punishment for this album deserves to be more severe than being condemned to gather dust in my record collection...and I can't be assed to carry a sledgehammer halfway across town), and that's not even touching the snoozefests (to me) that were Unia and The Days Of Grays. To borrow (and very slightly rephrase) something from Yahtzee's review of Aliens: Colonial Marines, your sweetums has been putting it out for a good while, guys. The betrayal ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe and returned to port laden with exotic spice: I think there's far more vile betrayals out there than THIS!
Hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! And at least I attribute my sources properly...
Anyway, I think the important thing that most people seem to have forgotten in their determination to obliterate this album is that, technically, they're destroying THE SAME ALBUM THAT THEY LOVE. Seriously, it's exactly the same material on that classic album, just in a lower tuning and with a admittedly less impressive (on some levels) vocal performance. It's the same high quality songs, just not as well performed and with a different (I don't say "worse" because I found the original version of Ecliptica was far too heavy on the keyboards and made the rhythm guitar nearly inaudible, so having the positions reversed is not something that I personally object to too much!) production. Even if you're judging the complete package of the album and not just the material on it, I think the word "overreaction" springs to mind, and the fact that even professional critics have had this overreaction just makes me wonder whether I'm the only sane fucking reviewer out there when it comes to this album (and Exodus' Let There Be Blood, but that's a discussion for another time...)!
Now that every Sonata Arctica fan who reads this blog probably wants my head on a pike (sorry, Derek!), let's get started with the cover art, shall we? Well, I really like it! It's got the kind of feel to it that makes me think of it being a perfect way of updating an old bit of artwork. If you will, it's new, but it's old at the same time...and that's really all that I could have expected it to be like, so this is just brilliantly handled! I'm actually kind of disappointed that the band didn't make this cover art available as a poster, as I'd have seriously loved to get it on one!
Well, with that said, let's move to the album itself.
To be totally honest, most of what I could say was what I said when I looked at the re-recorded version of "Kingdom For A Heart", as just about everything is pretty much the same as it was on the original, just given a different (not necessarily worse) production job, lower (and more emotional when necessary) vocals and tuning...and that's really it. The band perform the songs with only a few variations in the quiet moments and with some slightly different vocal melodies that fit in with Tony's more natural vocal range than the Timo Kotipelto impression he was basically using on the original album. To the die hard fans, those differences are a horrific betrayal of the original songs and worthy of flaming the album to death...but, if you take the nostalgia glasses off and look at the differences with as unbiased a viewpoint as possible, the differences actually make the songs a bit better. Let's be honest, as good as the emotional moments of the songs were on the original, the band have gotten far better at those moments since then, so hearing those song now being given the more emotional moments that the band can do with ease now shows just how far the band have come. "Different" does not automatically mean "Bad", if you get the point I'm raising: there's nothing wrong with looking at the issues with a classic and fixing them, providing that what you do does actually make it better, and I feel that the band do that here. The original does has a reputation for being one of the best power metal albums out there, but that doesn't mean it's exempt from having the issues with it pointed out and rectified by either the band itself or future bands. In the majority of cases, I do feel that the band does this.
Blasphemy, I hear you cry? Well, look no further than the production to see an arguable improvement. The original production was far too keyboard heavy in the mix. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but the guitar and bass were too far back in the mix and it could be nigh on impossible to hear them properly. In the re-recording, the keyboards are pushed back (TOO far back, if I'm totally honest) and so, at last, the guitar (and, to a lesser extent, the bass) get their chances to shine. Now, this does open up newer problems (I think that the production on the re-recording sounds a bit TOO studio sounding, if you get the point I'm raising), but, in terms of the overall mix, I feel that a real improvement has been made.
Another issue that is rectified is in the vocal performance. Now, this is going to be a very subjective point, but I personally found that Tony on the original recording had a habit of sounding like he was singing in a part of his voice that was not comfortable for him (in a few cases, audibly straining to hit the notes he was pulling off: anyone remember the part of "My Land" after the second chorus where he sounded almost off key?). While it was impressive to hear some of the high notes he was hitting, I ultimately thought that the guy was trying to sing something nearly outside of his vocal range and, while I do still like his voice from that album, his more recent singing style is more to my liking because he just sounds more comfortable singing like that. So hearing him take on the songs and NOT sounding like his voice is at risk of turning in on itself and dying was a marked improvement for me. He also has a much better English pronunciation compared to the debut, so understanding him is far easier, and his voice on the more emotional parts of the album does sound much better. That said, I do agree that his voice has deteriorated over the years, his current vocal style doesn't really fit in with the songs properly (although it's nowhere near as bad as some people like to make it out to be) and the fact that he doesn't really try to go for the highest notes properly on this album does feel a bit disappointing. However, if you were seriously expecting him to try to hit those notes, I have to ask what reality you've been living in or whether you've even bothered to listen to a Sonata Arctica album since Silence, as Tony's not been going for screams like that for a good while now, so it's not like there was no precedent to go "Well, that note's not going to happen any more"!
So, thus far, it looks like the re-recording remedies the worst issues of the original album, makes the songs more emotional than they were adds a few issues which can ultimately be attributed to the effects of time (because, you know, we don't live in a place where time and space aren't important) and is ultimately better than the original album, right?
Well...no.
Most of the album is played in a lower tuning compared to the original album, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but some of the songs don't quite work in the lower tunings to the extent that they did in the original tunings. Most aren't as affected as most people like to say they are (or, if they are, it's only a minor step down in quality), but some songs suffer quite noticeably from the lower tuning. In particular, "UnOpened" (which wasn't one of my favourite songs on the original album in the first place) sounds pretty dull on the re-recorded version of the album, "Picturing The Past" feels like it's lacking some enthusiasm in the chorus and "Fullmoon" feels a bit too restrained compared to the original and, even when viewed on its own and actually suffers from the more guitar heavy mix, as the end result feels like the guitar is constantly interrupting the music. I also feel that Tony's vocal performance on the chorus of this song is far too stilted for my liking (as it is on "My Land"), as he sounds like he's just singing the chorus one word at a time instead of doing it as a proper chorus. If this is what the old school metalheads mean when they say modern production sounds too tame, then...well, it's nowhere near that bad, but I feel like the big issue with this version of the song is that it lacks energy and seems a bit forced.
Actually, now I mention that, I do feel that the vocal performance by Tony is a bit lacking in terms of energy. I wouldn't say that he is on autopilot over the course of the album, as he is clearly trying to do the songs well, but I get the vibe that Tony wasn't as eager about re-recording this album as the rest of the band was, for some reason. I know he was eager to do it from interviews, but this doesn't translate across very well in his performance on the album. In fact, his most audibly enthusiastic performance is actually on the cover of Genesis' "I Can't Dance" (which is kind of bizarre to listen to, but I'm not familiar with the original song, so take my thoughts on that with a pinch of salt), not one of the re-recorded songs, which really says a lot.
Anyway, the production...well, pushing back the keyboards in the mix as far as was done does here is going to split people down the middle and, in some cases, does hurt the songs, but I feel that the only issues which hurt this album are the mastering and the drum recording. It is a bit loud in the mastering for me and I can't escape the feeling that the drums feel like they're hitting an invisible wall which shouldn't be there in the first place (which doesn't help with the feeling that the record sounds a bit too much like the product of a studio), but the rest of the album is perfectly fine.
So, what do I think of this album? Well...the big problem with this re-recording is that, while it sorts the most pressing issues from the original album, it does create a few newer ones and it feels like it's lacking some enthusiasm when it really needs it. Which puts this album in a bizarre state where I can't recommend it over the original, but can't say it's completely worth skipping at the same time. I mean, one could make the case that the whole album is pointless when the original is still out there and is basically a better version of what is on offer here, but I wouldn't call it outright bad either. The material is still very enjoyable, if lacking compared to the original album, and I do like most of the changes to the actual songs. I guess the best way to sum up this album is that it's a curiosity: if you're a huge fan of Ecliptica, then it's really interesting to listen to this and see how the band does the album today. You'll need to be open minded when approaching this album and not go into it expecting it to be a flawless recreation of Ecliptica, as not doing so will just result in this not impressing you, but, if you do, you'll probably find it a fairly acceptable listen.
When I do my rating system, I usually place Ecliptica as an 8 out of 10 (the Stratovarius worship really gets to me, the keyboard heavy mix does make me grateful for artists who can include keyboards in prominent positions in their mixes without forgetting that there are other instruments which deserve to be heard and I think there's some songs which just don't do anything for me, but the rest of the songs are really good and the performance on the record are pretty great!), so placing this on the same scale, my feeling is that this is a noticeable step down compared to the original, but it is still fairly enjoyable and the few things it does improve compared to the original, while arguably minor compared to the things which aren't as good as the original album, are enough to push it up a little bit more in my opinion. So, after some hard thought, I've come to the conclusion that my final rating is that this is a bit above an average album. Compared to the original album, it's not great, but, on its own, it's certainly not a bad listen. You might want to stick to the original album for general listening, but, as an accompaniment to going to see the band live today, it gives a far better indication of what to expect to hear, so...yeah, I guess the best way to sum this album up is "for the Sonata Arctica fan who never misses a gig by them", as this is about the closest you're going to get to hearing these songs done like the band does them now without getting a live album (none of which have all of the tracks from this album on them) or going to see them live (which has the same problem).
...That's not really high praise when put like that, is it?
Final Rating: 6 Out Of 10
Favourite Tracks: "Blank File", "8th Commandment", "Kingdom For A Heart" and "Destruction Preventer"
Woah, woah, woah, hold your fucking horses, guys: the original is still out there and this was not an attempt to replace it in the slightest. You don't have to like this re-recording, but I fail to see where all of the anguished screams of "RUINED FOREVER!" are coming from and why people are treating this as the final betrayal from the band when there were far more valid targets for this reaction...like, you know, there is an album like Stones Grow Her Name out there which is just downright indefensible (and makes me wish I was allowed to purchase and own a flamethrower, as the punishment for this album deserves to be more severe than being condemned to gather dust in my record collection...and I can't be assed to carry a sledgehammer halfway across town), and that's not even touching the snoozefests (to me) that were Unia and The Days Of Grays. To borrow (and very slightly rephrase) something from Yahtzee's review of Aliens: Colonial Marines, your sweetums has been putting it out for a good while, guys. The betrayal ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe and returned to port laden with exotic spice: I think there's far more vile betrayals out there than THIS!
Hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! And at least I attribute my sources properly...
Anyway, I think the important thing that most people seem to have forgotten in their determination to obliterate this album is that, technically, they're destroying THE SAME ALBUM THAT THEY LOVE. Seriously, it's exactly the same material on that classic album, just in a lower tuning and with a admittedly less impressive (on some levels) vocal performance. It's the same high quality songs, just not as well performed and with a different (I don't say "worse" because I found the original version of Ecliptica was far too heavy on the keyboards and made the rhythm guitar nearly inaudible, so having the positions reversed is not something that I personally object to too much!) production. Even if you're judging the complete package of the album and not just the material on it, I think the word "overreaction" springs to mind, and the fact that even professional critics have had this overreaction just makes me wonder whether I'm the only sane fucking reviewer out there when it comes to this album (and Exodus' Let There Be Blood, but that's a discussion for another time...)!
Now that every Sonata Arctica fan who reads this blog probably wants my head on a pike (sorry, Derek!), let's get started with the cover art, shall we? Well, I really like it! It's got the kind of feel to it that makes me think of it being a perfect way of updating an old bit of artwork. If you will, it's new, but it's old at the same time...and that's really all that I could have expected it to be like, so this is just brilliantly handled! I'm actually kind of disappointed that the band didn't make this cover art available as a poster, as I'd have seriously loved to get it on one!
Well, with that said, let's move to the album itself.
To be totally honest, most of what I could say was what I said when I looked at the re-recorded version of "Kingdom For A Heart", as just about everything is pretty much the same as it was on the original, just given a different (not necessarily worse) production job, lower (and more emotional when necessary) vocals and tuning...and that's really it. The band perform the songs with only a few variations in the quiet moments and with some slightly different vocal melodies that fit in with Tony's more natural vocal range than the Timo Kotipelto impression he was basically using on the original album. To the die hard fans, those differences are a horrific betrayal of the original songs and worthy of flaming the album to death...but, if you take the nostalgia glasses off and look at the differences with as unbiased a viewpoint as possible, the differences actually make the songs a bit better. Let's be honest, as good as the emotional moments of the songs were on the original, the band have gotten far better at those moments since then, so hearing those song now being given the more emotional moments that the band can do with ease now shows just how far the band have come. "Different" does not automatically mean "Bad", if you get the point I'm raising: there's nothing wrong with looking at the issues with a classic and fixing them, providing that what you do does actually make it better, and I feel that the band do that here. The original does has a reputation for being one of the best power metal albums out there, but that doesn't mean it's exempt from having the issues with it pointed out and rectified by either the band itself or future bands. In the majority of cases, I do feel that the band does this.
Blasphemy, I hear you cry? Well, look no further than the production to see an arguable improvement. The original production was far too keyboard heavy in the mix. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but the guitar and bass were too far back in the mix and it could be nigh on impossible to hear them properly. In the re-recording, the keyboards are pushed back (TOO far back, if I'm totally honest) and so, at last, the guitar (and, to a lesser extent, the bass) get their chances to shine. Now, this does open up newer problems (I think that the production on the re-recording sounds a bit TOO studio sounding, if you get the point I'm raising), but, in terms of the overall mix, I feel that a real improvement has been made.
Another issue that is rectified is in the vocal performance. Now, this is going to be a very subjective point, but I personally found that Tony on the original recording had a habit of sounding like he was singing in a part of his voice that was not comfortable for him (in a few cases, audibly straining to hit the notes he was pulling off: anyone remember the part of "My Land" after the second chorus where he sounded almost off key?). While it was impressive to hear some of the high notes he was hitting, I ultimately thought that the guy was trying to sing something nearly outside of his vocal range and, while I do still like his voice from that album, his more recent singing style is more to my liking because he just sounds more comfortable singing like that. So hearing him take on the songs and NOT sounding like his voice is at risk of turning in on itself and dying was a marked improvement for me. He also has a much better English pronunciation compared to the debut, so understanding him is far easier, and his voice on the more emotional parts of the album does sound much better. That said, I do agree that his voice has deteriorated over the years, his current vocal style doesn't really fit in with the songs properly (although it's nowhere near as bad as some people like to make it out to be) and the fact that he doesn't really try to go for the highest notes properly on this album does feel a bit disappointing. However, if you were seriously expecting him to try to hit those notes, I have to ask what reality you've been living in or whether you've even bothered to listen to a Sonata Arctica album since Silence, as Tony's not been going for screams like that for a good while now, so it's not like there was no precedent to go "Well, that note's not going to happen any more"!
So, thus far, it looks like the re-recording remedies the worst issues of the original album, makes the songs more emotional than they were adds a few issues which can ultimately be attributed to the effects of time (because, you know, we don't live in a place where time and space aren't important) and is ultimately better than the original album, right?
Well...no.
Most of the album is played in a lower tuning compared to the original album, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but some of the songs don't quite work in the lower tunings to the extent that they did in the original tunings. Most aren't as affected as most people like to say they are (or, if they are, it's only a minor step down in quality), but some songs suffer quite noticeably from the lower tuning. In particular, "UnOpened" (which wasn't one of my favourite songs on the original album in the first place) sounds pretty dull on the re-recorded version of the album, "Picturing The Past" feels like it's lacking some enthusiasm in the chorus and "Fullmoon" feels a bit too restrained compared to the original and, even when viewed on its own and actually suffers from the more guitar heavy mix, as the end result feels like the guitar is constantly interrupting the music. I also feel that Tony's vocal performance on the chorus of this song is far too stilted for my liking (as it is on "My Land"), as he sounds like he's just singing the chorus one word at a time instead of doing it as a proper chorus. If this is what the old school metalheads mean when they say modern production sounds too tame, then...well, it's nowhere near that bad, but I feel like the big issue with this version of the song is that it lacks energy and seems a bit forced.
Actually, now I mention that, I do feel that the vocal performance by Tony is a bit lacking in terms of energy. I wouldn't say that he is on autopilot over the course of the album, as he is clearly trying to do the songs well, but I get the vibe that Tony wasn't as eager about re-recording this album as the rest of the band was, for some reason. I know he was eager to do it from interviews, but this doesn't translate across very well in his performance on the album. In fact, his most audibly enthusiastic performance is actually on the cover of Genesis' "I Can't Dance" (which is kind of bizarre to listen to, but I'm not familiar with the original song, so take my thoughts on that with a pinch of salt), not one of the re-recorded songs, which really says a lot.
Anyway, the production...well, pushing back the keyboards in the mix as far as was done does here is going to split people down the middle and, in some cases, does hurt the songs, but I feel that the only issues which hurt this album are the mastering and the drum recording. It is a bit loud in the mastering for me and I can't escape the feeling that the drums feel like they're hitting an invisible wall which shouldn't be there in the first place (which doesn't help with the feeling that the record sounds a bit too much like the product of a studio), but the rest of the album is perfectly fine.
So, what do I think of this album? Well...the big problem with this re-recording is that, while it sorts the most pressing issues from the original album, it does create a few newer ones and it feels like it's lacking some enthusiasm when it really needs it. Which puts this album in a bizarre state where I can't recommend it over the original, but can't say it's completely worth skipping at the same time. I mean, one could make the case that the whole album is pointless when the original is still out there and is basically a better version of what is on offer here, but I wouldn't call it outright bad either. The material is still very enjoyable, if lacking compared to the original album, and I do like most of the changes to the actual songs. I guess the best way to sum up this album is that it's a curiosity: if you're a huge fan of Ecliptica, then it's really interesting to listen to this and see how the band does the album today. You'll need to be open minded when approaching this album and not go into it expecting it to be a flawless recreation of Ecliptica, as not doing so will just result in this not impressing you, but, if you do, you'll probably find it a fairly acceptable listen.
When I do my rating system, I usually place Ecliptica as an 8 out of 10 (the Stratovarius worship really gets to me, the keyboard heavy mix does make me grateful for artists who can include keyboards in prominent positions in their mixes without forgetting that there are other instruments which deserve to be heard and I think there's some songs which just don't do anything for me, but the rest of the songs are really good and the performance on the record are pretty great!), so placing this on the same scale, my feeling is that this is a noticeable step down compared to the original, but it is still fairly enjoyable and the few things it does improve compared to the original, while arguably minor compared to the things which aren't as good as the original album, are enough to push it up a little bit more in my opinion. So, after some hard thought, I've come to the conclusion that my final rating is that this is a bit above an average album. Compared to the original album, it's not great, but, on its own, it's certainly not a bad listen. You might want to stick to the original album for general listening, but, as an accompaniment to going to see the band live today, it gives a far better indication of what to expect to hear, so...yeah, I guess the best way to sum this album up is "for the Sonata Arctica fan who never misses a gig by them", as this is about the closest you're going to get to hearing these songs done like the band does them now without getting a live album (none of which have all of the tracks from this album on them) or going to see them live (which has the same problem).
...That's not really high praise when put like that, is it?
Final Rating: 6 Out Of 10
Favourite Tracks: "Blank File", "8th Commandment", "Kingdom For A Heart" and "Destruction Preventer"
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Archievement Unlocked: 100 Views
Just a quick update article: my review of McBusted's single "Air Guitar" has just passed 100 views today.
...I have to be totally honest, I'm really surprised it's that article which is the first to have gained 100 views for me: it was pretty much just written in a few hours by myself because I thought "Well, I might as well talk about this". I wasn't even going to do it originally, as I had other stuff to do which I was working on and that just happened to come up! I also wasn't completely impressed with the final article when I looked back over it: I feel that I could have been a bit more descriptive with my review and I do feel that I missed some potential for a few more bits of humour in my review now that I feel like I'm writing with a (slightly!) better eye for where to place humorous comments. It's a good article, but I feel kind of like I've gotten famous on the back of a filler song from an album: it wasn't me trying to write at my best, just trying to get something done as soon as I could! I genuinely feel that I've written far better articles than that one, even in more recent times (...OK, maybe not the GamerGate and Anita Sarkeesian ones, I'll admit: those ones spawned from the gaming scene hitting a berserk button for me and I actually feel kind of embarrassed about the first article in particular connected to them due to just how angry and intolerant I sounded in it, with only the last two of the four articles feeling like they had some degree of professional writing ability connected to them!), so the fact that my most popular article to date is my McBusted review just feels kind of odd for me. It's not quite to the extent of me looking at it like my blog's "Cherry Pie", but the same basic thought process is behind it: I didn't write it intending it to be a big thing, it was just something I wrote because I thought "Well, McBusted have a new song out...eh, I might as well talk about it!" There was no expectation of being the first person to have a review up about it or anything like that: I just wanted to talk about it. That was really it: it was an article that I wrote just because I felt that I had to talk about the song, with no deeper thought behind it. I won't deny that I saw that there were very few reviews about it when I was writing my review of it, but I wasn't aiming to be the first voice about the track to be heard: I just thought it would be another article which would go up, get about 10 views (maybe 15 at most) and then be quietly forgotten like so many other articles before it. So having an article go past the 100 views mark which I didn't think would be any more popular than anything else I've done before...it's really bizarre, as I'm not sure why it's become such a big deal in terms of views compared to my usual stuff! And, with no viewer feedback (not even a "BEST REVIEW EVAR!"), I'm honestly sitting here going "What the heck is going on?"
Still, it's obvious that something about that article has caught on with people (what it is, I honestly haven't a clue: for all I know, everyone kept coming back because they thought it was so entertainingly bad that they wanted to keep re-reading it in the same fashion that most people watch The Room!) and it's great to see that I've finally managed to pass 100 views for one of my articles after so long stalling in the 10's (sometimes not even that!), so huge thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read that article! As dismissive and rude as I probably sound in this article (I'm genuinely not trying to be, I'm just kind of bemused by the whole situation and trying to be as honest as I can be about the whole thing from where I'm sitting!), it's truly great to see that at least someone out there is interested in what I have to say and, while I still don't get why it's that particular article that has caught on with so many people, it's not like I can complain too hard about getting views when I normally barely get any! So thanks to everyone who has read that article: as bizarre a choice of article to keep revisiting as I think it is from my perspective as the writer of it, you're still managed to brighten up my day and I'm really glad to have people coming back to this blog!
...I have to be totally honest, I'm really surprised it's that article which is the first to have gained 100 views for me: it was pretty much just written in a few hours by myself because I thought "Well, I might as well talk about this". I wasn't even going to do it originally, as I had other stuff to do which I was working on and that just happened to come up! I also wasn't completely impressed with the final article when I looked back over it: I feel that I could have been a bit more descriptive with my review and I do feel that I missed some potential for a few more bits of humour in my review now that I feel like I'm writing with a (slightly!) better eye for where to place humorous comments. It's a good article, but I feel kind of like I've gotten famous on the back of a filler song from an album: it wasn't me trying to write at my best, just trying to get something done as soon as I could! I genuinely feel that I've written far better articles than that one, even in more recent times (...OK, maybe not the GamerGate and Anita Sarkeesian ones, I'll admit: those ones spawned from the gaming scene hitting a berserk button for me and I actually feel kind of embarrassed about the first article in particular connected to them due to just how angry and intolerant I sounded in it, with only the last two of the four articles feeling like they had some degree of professional writing ability connected to them!), so the fact that my most popular article to date is my McBusted review just feels kind of odd for me. It's not quite to the extent of me looking at it like my blog's "Cherry Pie", but the same basic thought process is behind it: I didn't write it intending it to be a big thing, it was just something I wrote because I thought "Well, McBusted have a new song out...eh, I might as well talk about it!" There was no expectation of being the first person to have a review up about it or anything like that: I just wanted to talk about it. That was really it: it was an article that I wrote just because I felt that I had to talk about the song, with no deeper thought behind it. I won't deny that I saw that there were very few reviews about it when I was writing my review of it, but I wasn't aiming to be the first voice about the track to be heard: I just thought it would be another article which would go up, get about 10 views (maybe 15 at most) and then be quietly forgotten like so many other articles before it. So having an article go past the 100 views mark which I didn't think would be any more popular than anything else I've done before...it's really bizarre, as I'm not sure why it's become such a big deal in terms of views compared to my usual stuff! And, with no viewer feedback (not even a "BEST REVIEW EVAR!"), I'm honestly sitting here going "What the heck is going on?"
Still, it's obvious that something about that article has caught on with people (what it is, I honestly haven't a clue: for all I know, everyone kept coming back because they thought it was so entertainingly bad that they wanted to keep re-reading it in the same fashion that most people watch The Room!) and it's great to see that I've finally managed to pass 100 views for one of my articles after so long stalling in the 10's (sometimes not even that!), so huge thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read that article! As dismissive and rude as I probably sound in this article (I'm genuinely not trying to be, I'm just kind of bemused by the whole situation and trying to be as honest as I can be about the whole thing from where I'm sitting!), it's truly great to see that at least someone out there is interested in what I have to say and, while I still don't get why it's that particular article that has caught on with so many people, it's not like I can complain too hard about getting views when I normally barely get any! So thanks to everyone who has read that article: as bizarre a choice of article to keep revisiting as I think it is from my perspective as the writer of it, you're still managed to brighten up my day and I'm really glad to have people coming back to this blog!
Sunday, 16 November 2014
Video Game Review: "Rayman Legends"
Well, it's been a while since I've done one of these...
Over the past month or so, rather than the vast collection of games which I SHOULD be playing for review work, I've been playing the two Rayman games that Ubisoft have released in the 2010's, 2011's Rayman Origins and 2013's Rayman Legends. And I do have to say that both games are really good, but tell me to pick a favourite and I will not hesitate in saying Rayman Legends is the better game...but that doesn't mean that I think it's perfect. Let me try and break it all down for you.
Rayman is one of those icons from the console era of gaming to surprisingly buck the trend a bit in that, instead of being popular on the Sega Genesis (or the Sega Megadrive in some aspects of the world) like Sonic The Hedgehog was or on arcade systems and on handheld systems like Mario (originally under the name Jumpman) was, he came around when the Atari Jaguar did (although he did come out on the PS1 around the same time) in 1995, which arguably makes Rayman the youngest of the iconic console gaming heros. Now, Rayman was a REALLY difficult game: I think it took me a few years on and off before I finally managed to beat the game, and I still had to cheat a bit by using the internet to help me find some of the hardest ones just because I never could find them! However, it was a very rewarding game as well, as it felt great to finally beat the last level and it kept me entertained for many years, so I guess one could argue that it is mission accomplished for that game. My only question is what happened to Betilla after you defeat Mr. Dark, as I don't think I remember that ever being answered in the game itself...
Anyway, I surprisingly missed a lot of the games that came out after Rayman did. I did hear about Rayman 2 and kept meaning to pick up a copy, but I didn't manage it until earlier this year, so my next encounter with Rayman was with Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, which I found...well, I didn't dislike it at all, but the Knaaren levels had me creeped out for a long time (and they still do, in all honesty) and playing the game, while fun, didn't feel as rewarding as Rayman did. It felt like it was lacking something which made Rayman so great. I loved some of the touches in the game, though: the power ups were really nice, the villains were all really memorable (Razzoff springs to mind at the minute!) and the level design was all rather good. I also quite like the music from it, the humour in the game itself did get a few chuckles out of me and the "tutorial lessons" on how to kick Rayman all got a good laugh out of me (with my favourite ones being when the hoodlum instructor gets HIMSELF killed instead of "Rayman"!). My next experience with Rayman was with Rayman Raving Rabbids...which I thought was disappointing. I liked the music mini-games and the shooting mini-games and found the costume variety to be really great, but most of the rest of the mini-games didn't grab me much or just struck me as uninteresting. I'll admit, I'm interested in seeing what Rabbids Go Home is like now, but, after playing through Rayman Raving Rabbids, I just found myself going "When is the next proper Rayman game coming out?"
And then the PS3 came out and, being stuck with my PS2, I forced myself to accept that, with my copy of Rayman lost to the mists of time, the only Rayman games I would be playing would be Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc and Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Disheartening to read that, isn't it?
Well, this is where my best friend comes into the equation. See, in our last few months in college, he was selling one of his two PS3's (his dad and him had separate ones) and he offered me it. I took him up on that offer and, to cut a long story short, I've now played Rayman 2: The Great Escape and the two Rayman games of the 2010's. I've not yet re-picked up Rayman yet, but I probably will do that once I've finished writing this review. And I might see what other Rayman games are out there which I missed...
The point of all of this? Well, Rayman, to me, is just one of those icons who I loved from my childhood (I'm not going to lie, there were times that I wished I WAS Rayman!) and being able to finally catch up with him after years has honestly been really great. Yet, if I'm totally honest, I feel sad about it because I now realise that there has never been a definitively perfect Rayman game. Rayman suffered from ridiculous difficulty that, while fun, could be off putting if you weren't used to it (and, even if you were, there were more than a few points which would have been incredibly frustrating) and didn't really have a plot (although, in fairness, most games from the 90's didn't have a lot of plot), Rayman 2: The Great Escape has graphics which don't stand up well now and suffers from rather awkward controls, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc got a bit too caught up in poking fun at itself and felt like it was lacking something to make it truly great and the less said about Rayman Raving Rabbids, the better. The 3D addition to the Rayman series arguably hurt the series because it stopped playing to its strengths and tried to be something that Rayman wasn't. Now, I'm not saying EVERY 3D Rayman game has been bad, but, like with Oddworld: Munch's Oddysse and Sonic Heroes (although I did actually like that one), the 3D addition to what had previously been a very successful 2D platformer just didn't work for me. Maybe it's because most of the games I loved as a kid were 2D platformers (and I will admit that a 2D platformer is still like catnip for me now, even if it's on the premise of being 2.5D) and shooters only took over that spot because so few people seemed to bother making them on a noticeable scale, but, in my mind, a 3D platformer usually tends to mess up on the fact that what made a platformer fun was the fact that it didn't need a complex plot. What made them good was that getting through them properly took skill (...well, assuming the controls were fluid and responsive, of course!) and that what helped to sell it was the visuals: if they were really good to look at and were creative, then the lack of a proper plot didn't really matter. In the 3D age, however, games seem to need a plot, and that rarely meshes well with platforming games for me. I don't need to know that I'm chasing a guy down because he blew up my house, murdered my wife and ate my sandwich (although it certainly is nice to have context if you wish to provide some...), just give me a fun game to play and I'll be happy!
That's why Rayman Origins struck a chord with me when I finally got to play it: it was fun to play, had great artwork and didn't force a story onto me that I wasn't interested in. The characters were all great, so unlocking them felt like a great experience, the mosquito levels were great fun and I liked the challenge of the game. HOWEVER, I still had issues with it: some of the cages were a pain to find, a distressingly large amount of the challenge felt a bit too much in the vein of Rayman, the replayability of the game feels a bit forced due to having to reply levels just to unlock the final level and the teeth levels...let's just say that I've never bothered to replay those levels since I beat them the first time. I also cannot escape the feeling that Rayman Origins was made in an attempt to see if Rayman still had any appeal in today's gaming scene, as, though it was good and clearly had effort put into it, I still felt a bit like the game was treading water. It felt like Ubisoft weren't sure Rayman had the potential to be viable today in the same way that Mario and Sonic are, but still were willing to give it a go just for the sake of the fans like me who longed for a return to the 2D platforming days of the character's early life...and, while I certainly commend them for their hard work and thank them for it, I still cannot shake the feeling that they weren't completely confident in the game.
No such doubts see I in Rayman Legends. This is the work of a games company who knew they had it in them to make a great game and worked their hardest to make it the best game they could. And I think they did it perfectly, to the extent that I would not be afraid to say that Rayman Legends might just be the best Rayman game ever, if not the best Rayman game since Rayman itself! Yes, it still has issues, but, in the vast majority of them, I consider them nitpicks.
Let us start with the visual style of the game. It's just beautiful! I imagine that, even if you're a member of the Glorious PC Master Race and, as such, think 30fps is unplayable, you'd struggle to disagree that the art style for Rayman Legends is still one of the most artistically stunning styles that has been seen in a video game for a good while, and it certainly casts doubt on the accusation that video games cannot be art! The overall effect can be summed up as making the whole game look like it's been painted, which gives it a very interesting effect that is similarly retro and unique, with some impressive lighting effects work that would put many 3D games to shame! Rayman Origins certainly looked good, but I think that Rayman Legends actually looks better than it does...and I thought Origins looked pretty damn good in and of itself, so let that speak for itself!
The overall controls are really great. They're pretty fluid and responsive, in addition to being fairly intuitive if you've played a platformer before now. I do have one point of contention, however: you don't seem to move towards the ground quite as quickly as you'd expect that you should. It's not a serious issue, but it does mean that there will be occasions where you'll overshoot a jump by a tiny bit because you take longer to land back on the ground than you think you will. I adjusted to this fairly quickly, but I would recommend that you not play this game immediately after you play another platformer, as this will throw you off a bit until you've mentally adjusted to it. This is an issue which has carried over from Rayman Origins, so it could be argued as being a stylistic choice for the games, but I think the games could have done with being a bit stronger with the gravity, as it feels a bit like Rayman is on Uranus (which is VERY close of the gravity of Earth, but is a bit less stronger than it).
Yes, I know, Uranus is funny when said out loud, now can you please stop giggling at the inevitable assortment of immature jokes that you've come up with before I have to tell you to stick them somewhere that the sun doesn't shine?
...Wait, that didn't help at all, did it?
Anyway, the number of characters in the game is pretty impressive. I've not made an overall count, but I know that there are ten princesses in the game who can be unlocked simply be rescuing them (there's two per world, with the obvious exception being the final sixth world) and you start the game out with six characters...and there's MORE than that which can be unlocked simply by collecting enough Lums, with one available if you rescue all 700 Teensies. I mostly stuck with the princesses because I thought they all looked badass, but, as all of the characters play the same, there's not really a lot that needs to be discussed with them.
I didn't get a chance to play the game with anyone else and I was playing on the PS3 version of the game, so I can't talk about the multiplayer very well in the actual game, but I can talk about the challenge mode...and it's a HUGE amount of fun! While I personally liked the story missions more than the challenges, there was a lot of variety to them and they are varied in terms of challenge: you've got the standard daily challenges, the standard weekly challenges, the extreme daily challenges and the extreme weekly challenges, and all of them are addictive in just how fun they are! I will say that having to unlock each challenge mode is arguably a bit of a moot point (I'd have personally said having them all available from the start would have been a better idea), but the requirements to unlock them aren't too tough, so it's only an issue if you've not got a lot of free time or you're speedrunning the game (which isn't as easy as you'd think it is: all of the worlds aside from the first have minimum Teensie requirements to unlock them, with the final world requiring 400 of them, which is pretty much all of the ones available in the main game without playing levels from the remade levels mode!).
The overall level design is great! While I do feel disappointed that there are no new mosquito levels in the game, you do spend two levels playing as a duck (yes, really!) and the music stages are really great: definitely some of the best levels of a game that I've played in a long time, as they're great fun and challenging enough to make you feel epic for beating each stage without dying once! There are also some challenge levels (noted in the game as invaded levels), which are races to rescue Teensies from being killed via firework and (in a VERY nice move that makes me feel nostalgic) being chased by a shadow version of Rayman which kills you upon contact (people who remember the final world of Rayman will be going "Hey, that sounds familiar" and getting nostalgic, I imagine...). They're all pretty challenging, but their unique level designs prevents any accusations of lazy design: none of the challenge levels are lifted from the levels and getting the golds on most of them is one of those frustrating challenges where, instead of wanting to throw the controller away, you find yourself gripping the controller tightly and gritting your teeth...although I REALLY don't like one of them just because the timing on it is so tight on it! That's not to say that the actual levels outside of those are dull, though: they're all seriously great, with each world having a very interesting theme to it. My personal favourite has to be the fourth world, 20,000 Lums Under The Sea, due to it basically being an extended reference to Jules Verne and his novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (which I have actually read! Great novel, highly worth checking out if you like novels from the 19th century!), but my favourite level overall would probably be the music world from the third world.
Why, I hear you cry? How does the thought of mariachi version of "Eye Of The Tiger" sound to you?
Absolutely hilarious? Well, that's the background music for that level...and it's coupled with some AMAZING level design to boot! In fact, I'll go one step further and say that ALL of the music is absolutely great for the game! While some songs are clearly taken from Rayman Origins (the music you get for getting a gold medal at the end of every level is the disco music you hear when you get a medal in Origins), the music overall is still brilliant!
What about the plot of this game? Erm...about the closest you get is sending the villain of each world into space at the end of it, but you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole game has no plot. I'm not too bothered by this personally (it's a 2D platformer with occasional 2.5D moments, so long as the game plays great, I'm happy!) and this was something that was admitted as being the case in pre-release promotion for the game (with the guy who first created Rayman, Michael Ancel, even saying that the plot was like that of a porno: going straight for the important part without worrying about the context of it), but I can imagine that some people will find the absence of a real plot kind of frustrating!
Now, all of this sounds really great, I imagine...but I do still have some sticking points. I feel that the final world being mostly made up of 8-bit remixes of the previous music levels, only with additional (and annoying) screen effects to make the levels even harder AND the absence of checkpoints (which can make the fifth world's remix particularly frustrating!) do make me feel that the development team ran out of ideas about then. I also feel that, for the most part, the challenge of the levels is a bit too easy. If you're patient, don't mind taking your time and you're willing to check a few things that you'd normally go right past, it's not too tough to find most of the Teensie cages and, in most of the levels, there's more than enough Lums for you to get a gold medal without too much extra effort than what you'd usually put into getting through the level. Now, this isn't to say that all of the levels are easy, but, for most of the game, the challenge doesn't really feel like enough for me to feel like I'm being challenged by the game...although I DID manage to beat "The Land Of The Livid Dead" level from Rayman Origins with far less difficulty than you'd have thought I'd have managed it in (the only real challenge for me being the boss of that level!), so I'm probably not the best person to judge the difficulty of the game! I also think that the absence of new powers to be unlocked during the game, while a sensible decision, does mean that it's a bit too easy to get 100% completion of the main game. My last issue is that, if you're going for 100% completion (read: unlocking every character and attaining the highest level of Awesomeness), you're going to be playing the game for a LONG time: beating the main game only just got me about 100,000 Lums, (with about 20,000 of them coming from lucky tickets) and 440 Teensies (a few of which from lucky tickets). While I've not played the Back To Origins levels yet (so I could feasibly get all 700 Teensies), getting a million Lums and the eleventh level of Awesomeness are probably going to be out of my range for a while now, so, if you're a person who likes to get 100% completion on stuff, be aware that you're going to be in for the long haul!
That said, the only ones that I think drags the game down are the last world being remixed versions of the music worlds and the huge amount of time and effort required to attain 100% completion (and the second one will ultimately depend on what type of gamer you are as to whether that's a bad thing or not). So, while it's not a perfect game, it's certainly a fantastic game that is really worth playing! If you've not played this game yet, then I would suggest remedying that, as this is a game which is truly worth playing. With this game, I feel that Rayman is finally in a position to reclaim his oft forgotten place as an icon for platform gaming, and it's truly a shame that the game (and Rayman Origins) didn't get the sales that such a titan of platform gaming deserved, as it is a game which could prove that platform gaming is not dead to anyone who has played it.
So go play it if you haven't yet, and see why I consider this game to be a missed classic of the modern games industry and probably the best Rayman game to date. I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed!
Final Rating: 8.5 Out Of 10
Over the past month or so, rather than the vast collection of games which I SHOULD be playing for review work, I've been playing the two Rayman games that Ubisoft have released in the 2010's, 2011's Rayman Origins and 2013's Rayman Legends. And I do have to say that both games are really good, but tell me to pick a favourite and I will not hesitate in saying Rayman Legends is the better game...but that doesn't mean that I think it's perfect. Let me try and break it all down for you.
Rayman is one of those icons from the console era of gaming to surprisingly buck the trend a bit in that, instead of being popular on the Sega Genesis (or the Sega Megadrive in some aspects of the world) like Sonic The Hedgehog was or on arcade systems and on handheld systems like Mario (originally under the name Jumpman) was, he came around when the Atari Jaguar did (although he did come out on the PS1 around the same time) in 1995, which arguably makes Rayman the youngest of the iconic console gaming heros. Now, Rayman was a REALLY difficult game: I think it took me a few years on and off before I finally managed to beat the game, and I still had to cheat a bit by using the internet to help me find some of the hardest ones just because I never could find them! However, it was a very rewarding game as well, as it felt great to finally beat the last level and it kept me entertained for many years, so I guess one could argue that it is mission accomplished for that game. My only question is what happened to Betilla after you defeat Mr. Dark, as I don't think I remember that ever being answered in the game itself...
Anyway, I surprisingly missed a lot of the games that came out after Rayman did. I did hear about Rayman 2 and kept meaning to pick up a copy, but I didn't manage it until earlier this year, so my next encounter with Rayman was with Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, which I found...well, I didn't dislike it at all, but the Knaaren levels had me creeped out for a long time (and they still do, in all honesty) and playing the game, while fun, didn't feel as rewarding as Rayman did. It felt like it was lacking something which made Rayman so great. I loved some of the touches in the game, though: the power ups were really nice, the villains were all really memorable (Razzoff springs to mind at the minute!) and the level design was all rather good. I also quite like the music from it, the humour in the game itself did get a few chuckles out of me and the "tutorial lessons" on how to kick Rayman all got a good laugh out of me (with my favourite ones being when the hoodlum instructor gets HIMSELF killed instead of "Rayman"!). My next experience with Rayman was with Rayman Raving Rabbids...which I thought was disappointing. I liked the music mini-games and the shooting mini-games and found the costume variety to be really great, but most of the rest of the mini-games didn't grab me much or just struck me as uninteresting. I'll admit, I'm interested in seeing what Rabbids Go Home is like now, but, after playing through Rayman Raving Rabbids, I just found myself going "When is the next proper Rayman game coming out?"
And then the PS3 came out and, being stuck with my PS2, I forced myself to accept that, with my copy of Rayman lost to the mists of time, the only Rayman games I would be playing would be Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc and Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Disheartening to read that, isn't it?
Well, this is where my best friend comes into the equation. See, in our last few months in college, he was selling one of his two PS3's (his dad and him had separate ones) and he offered me it. I took him up on that offer and, to cut a long story short, I've now played Rayman 2: The Great Escape and the two Rayman games of the 2010's. I've not yet re-picked up Rayman yet, but I probably will do that once I've finished writing this review. And I might see what other Rayman games are out there which I missed...
The point of all of this? Well, Rayman, to me, is just one of those icons who I loved from my childhood (I'm not going to lie, there were times that I wished I WAS Rayman!) and being able to finally catch up with him after years has honestly been really great. Yet, if I'm totally honest, I feel sad about it because I now realise that there has never been a definitively perfect Rayman game. Rayman suffered from ridiculous difficulty that, while fun, could be off putting if you weren't used to it (and, even if you were, there were more than a few points which would have been incredibly frustrating) and didn't really have a plot (although, in fairness, most games from the 90's didn't have a lot of plot), Rayman 2: The Great Escape has graphics which don't stand up well now and suffers from rather awkward controls, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc got a bit too caught up in poking fun at itself and felt like it was lacking something to make it truly great and the less said about Rayman Raving Rabbids, the better. The 3D addition to the Rayman series arguably hurt the series because it stopped playing to its strengths and tried to be something that Rayman wasn't. Now, I'm not saying EVERY 3D Rayman game has been bad, but, like with Oddworld: Munch's Oddysse and Sonic Heroes (although I did actually like that one), the 3D addition to what had previously been a very successful 2D platformer just didn't work for me. Maybe it's because most of the games I loved as a kid were 2D platformers (and I will admit that a 2D platformer is still like catnip for me now, even if it's on the premise of being 2.5D) and shooters only took over that spot because so few people seemed to bother making them on a noticeable scale, but, in my mind, a 3D platformer usually tends to mess up on the fact that what made a platformer fun was the fact that it didn't need a complex plot. What made them good was that getting through them properly took skill (...well, assuming the controls were fluid and responsive, of course!) and that what helped to sell it was the visuals: if they were really good to look at and were creative, then the lack of a proper plot didn't really matter. In the 3D age, however, games seem to need a plot, and that rarely meshes well with platforming games for me. I don't need to know that I'm chasing a guy down because he blew up my house, murdered my wife and ate my sandwich (although it certainly is nice to have context if you wish to provide some...), just give me a fun game to play and I'll be happy!
That's why Rayman Origins struck a chord with me when I finally got to play it: it was fun to play, had great artwork and didn't force a story onto me that I wasn't interested in. The characters were all great, so unlocking them felt like a great experience, the mosquito levels were great fun and I liked the challenge of the game. HOWEVER, I still had issues with it: some of the cages were a pain to find, a distressingly large amount of the challenge felt a bit too much in the vein of Rayman, the replayability of the game feels a bit forced due to having to reply levels just to unlock the final level and the teeth levels...let's just say that I've never bothered to replay those levels since I beat them the first time. I also cannot escape the feeling that Rayman Origins was made in an attempt to see if Rayman still had any appeal in today's gaming scene, as, though it was good and clearly had effort put into it, I still felt a bit like the game was treading water. It felt like Ubisoft weren't sure Rayman had the potential to be viable today in the same way that Mario and Sonic are, but still were willing to give it a go just for the sake of the fans like me who longed for a return to the 2D platforming days of the character's early life...and, while I certainly commend them for their hard work and thank them for it, I still cannot shake the feeling that they weren't completely confident in the game.
No such doubts see I in Rayman Legends. This is the work of a games company who knew they had it in them to make a great game and worked their hardest to make it the best game they could. And I think they did it perfectly, to the extent that I would not be afraid to say that Rayman Legends might just be the best Rayman game ever, if not the best Rayman game since Rayman itself! Yes, it still has issues, but, in the vast majority of them, I consider them nitpicks.
Let us start with the visual style of the game. It's just beautiful! I imagine that, even if you're a member of the Glorious PC Master Race and, as such, think 30fps is unplayable, you'd struggle to disagree that the art style for Rayman Legends is still one of the most artistically stunning styles that has been seen in a video game for a good while, and it certainly casts doubt on the accusation that video games cannot be art! The overall effect can be summed up as making the whole game look like it's been painted, which gives it a very interesting effect that is similarly retro and unique, with some impressive lighting effects work that would put many 3D games to shame! Rayman Origins certainly looked good, but I think that Rayman Legends actually looks better than it does...and I thought Origins looked pretty damn good in and of itself, so let that speak for itself!
The overall controls are really great. They're pretty fluid and responsive, in addition to being fairly intuitive if you've played a platformer before now. I do have one point of contention, however: you don't seem to move towards the ground quite as quickly as you'd expect that you should. It's not a serious issue, but it does mean that there will be occasions where you'll overshoot a jump by a tiny bit because you take longer to land back on the ground than you think you will. I adjusted to this fairly quickly, but I would recommend that you not play this game immediately after you play another platformer, as this will throw you off a bit until you've mentally adjusted to it. This is an issue which has carried over from Rayman Origins, so it could be argued as being a stylistic choice for the games, but I think the games could have done with being a bit stronger with the gravity, as it feels a bit like Rayman is on Uranus (which is VERY close of the gravity of Earth, but is a bit less stronger than it).
Yes, I know, Uranus is funny when said out loud, now can you please stop giggling at the inevitable assortment of immature jokes that you've come up with before I have to tell you to stick them somewhere that the sun doesn't shine?
...Wait, that didn't help at all, did it?
Anyway, the number of characters in the game is pretty impressive. I've not made an overall count, but I know that there are ten princesses in the game who can be unlocked simply be rescuing them (there's two per world, with the obvious exception being the final sixth world) and you start the game out with six characters...and there's MORE than that which can be unlocked simply by collecting enough Lums, with one available if you rescue all 700 Teensies. I mostly stuck with the princesses because I thought they all looked badass, but, as all of the characters play the same, there's not really a lot that needs to be discussed with them.
I didn't get a chance to play the game with anyone else and I was playing on the PS3 version of the game, so I can't talk about the multiplayer very well in the actual game, but I can talk about the challenge mode...and it's a HUGE amount of fun! While I personally liked the story missions more than the challenges, there was a lot of variety to them and they are varied in terms of challenge: you've got the standard daily challenges, the standard weekly challenges, the extreme daily challenges and the extreme weekly challenges, and all of them are addictive in just how fun they are! I will say that having to unlock each challenge mode is arguably a bit of a moot point (I'd have personally said having them all available from the start would have been a better idea), but the requirements to unlock them aren't too tough, so it's only an issue if you've not got a lot of free time or you're speedrunning the game (which isn't as easy as you'd think it is: all of the worlds aside from the first have minimum Teensie requirements to unlock them, with the final world requiring 400 of them, which is pretty much all of the ones available in the main game without playing levels from the remade levels mode!).
The overall level design is great! While I do feel disappointed that there are no new mosquito levels in the game, you do spend two levels playing as a duck (yes, really!) and the music stages are really great: definitely some of the best levels of a game that I've played in a long time, as they're great fun and challenging enough to make you feel epic for beating each stage without dying once! There are also some challenge levels (noted in the game as invaded levels), which are races to rescue Teensies from being killed via firework and (in a VERY nice move that makes me feel nostalgic) being chased by a shadow version of Rayman which kills you upon contact (people who remember the final world of Rayman will be going "Hey, that sounds familiar" and getting nostalgic, I imagine...). They're all pretty challenging, but their unique level designs prevents any accusations of lazy design: none of the challenge levels are lifted from the levels and getting the golds on most of them is one of those frustrating challenges where, instead of wanting to throw the controller away, you find yourself gripping the controller tightly and gritting your teeth...although I REALLY don't like one of them just because the timing on it is so tight on it! That's not to say that the actual levels outside of those are dull, though: they're all seriously great, with each world having a very interesting theme to it. My personal favourite has to be the fourth world, 20,000 Lums Under The Sea, due to it basically being an extended reference to Jules Verne and his novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (which I have actually read! Great novel, highly worth checking out if you like novels from the 19th century!), but my favourite level overall would probably be the music world from the third world.
Why, I hear you cry? How does the thought of mariachi version of "Eye Of The Tiger" sound to you?
Absolutely hilarious? Well, that's the background music for that level...and it's coupled with some AMAZING level design to boot! In fact, I'll go one step further and say that ALL of the music is absolutely great for the game! While some songs are clearly taken from Rayman Origins (the music you get for getting a gold medal at the end of every level is the disco music you hear when you get a medal in Origins), the music overall is still brilliant!
What about the plot of this game? Erm...about the closest you get is sending the villain of each world into space at the end of it, but you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole game has no plot. I'm not too bothered by this personally (it's a 2D platformer with occasional 2.5D moments, so long as the game plays great, I'm happy!) and this was something that was admitted as being the case in pre-release promotion for the game (with the guy who first created Rayman, Michael Ancel, even saying that the plot was like that of a porno: going straight for the important part without worrying about the context of it), but I can imagine that some people will find the absence of a real plot kind of frustrating!
Now, all of this sounds really great, I imagine...but I do still have some sticking points. I feel that the final world being mostly made up of 8-bit remixes of the previous music levels, only with additional (and annoying) screen effects to make the levels even harder AND the absence of checkpoints (which can make the fifth world's remix particularly frustrating!) do make me feel that the development team ran out of ideas about then. I also feel that, for the most part, the challenge of the levels is a bit too easy. If you're patient, don't mind taking your time and you're willing to check a few things that you'd normally go right past, it's not too tough to find most of the Teensie cages and, in most of the levels, there's more than enough Lums for you to get a gold medal without too much extra effort than what you'd usually put into getting through the level. Now, this isn't to say that all of the levels are easy, but, for most of the game, the challenge doesn't really feel like enough for me to feel like I'm being challenged by the game...although I DID manage to beat "The Land Of The Livid Dead" level from Rayman Origins with far less difficulty than you'd have thought I'd have managed it in (the only real challenge for me being the boss of that level!), so I'm probably not the best person to judge the difficulty of the game! I also think that the absence of new powers to be unlocked during the game, while a sensible decision, does mean that it's a bit too easy to get 100% completion of the main game. My last issue is that, if you're going for 100% completion (read: unlocking every character and attaining the highest level of Awesomeness), you're going to be playing the game for a LONG time: beating the main game only just got me about 100,000 Lums, (with about 20,000 of them coming from lucky tickets) and 440 Teensies (a few of which from lucky tickets). While I've not played the Back To Origins levels yet (so I could feasibly get all 700 Teensies), getting a million Lums and the eleventh level of Awesomeness are probably going to be out of my range for a while now, so, if you're a person who likes to get 100% completion on stuff, be aware that you're going to be in for the long haul!
That said, the only ones that I think drags the game down are the last world being remixed versions of the music worlds and the huge amount of time and effort required to attain 100% completion (and the second one will ultimately depend on what type of gamer you are as to whether that's a bad thing or not). So, while it's not a perfect game, it's certainly a fantastic game that is really worth playing! If you've not played this game yet, then I would suggest remedying that, as this is a game which is truly worth playing. With this game, I feel that Rayman is finally in a position to reclaim his oft forgotten place as an icon for platform gaming, and it's truly a shame that the game (and Rayman Origins) didn't get the sales that such a titan of platform gaming deserved, as it is a game which could prove that platform gaming is not dead to anyone who has played it.
So go play it if you haven't yet, and see why I consider this game to be a missed classic of the modern games industry and probably the best Rayman game to date. I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed!
Final Rating: 8.5 Out Of 10
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Pink Floyd "The Endless River" Review
Pink Floyd...what can I possibly say about this band that hasn't been said by so many other critics? They are one of the best loved British rock bands of all time, they are one of the biggest names in progressive rock, they released one of the best rock operas in music history...there is so much history connected to this band, and there is so little that hasn't been said by so many that I feel that, even if you were to give me a year to cover the band, I would still end up saying nothing that nobody knew already. From the Sid Barrett-led psychedelic rock of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets, the Waters-led progressive rock masterpieces of Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and, of course, The Wall and the Gilmore-led atmospheric direction of A Momentary Lapse Of Reason and The Division Bell, Pink Floyd have done a lot in their time.
...And yet Pink Floyd, surprisingly, have never been a band that I've really liked. Don't get me wrong, I never hated Pink Floyd, but I was more fond of punk and simpler styles of music as a kid, so progressive music and me have always been more like that weird neighbour you have who you never speak to, but keep hearing about in passing: you know that they're well liked and keep meaning to give them a chance, but you still know that you're not likely to get along, so you don't give them a shot. While I will admit that progressive music has SLOWLY been gaining some interest from me in recent times (Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Seventh Wonder, Kansas and Rush have been making their way up my list of favourite bands in the last year or two), Pink Floyd simply have never gained my interest before now.
So, why am I looking at this, their long awaited fifteenth studio album? Two reasons: one, my mum's a Pink Floyd fan and I figured she would want to get the album anyway, so I got it to stop her from complaining about how much music I get and two, I've been checking out a few of their songs like "Pigs On The Wing (Part 1)" and found them at least enjoyable, so I figured it would be worth taking the plunge into a full on album by them, and where better to start than with the album that the band themselves seem convinced will be their last one?
...Stop typing that message calling me an idiot, I know it's dumb logic as well!
Anyway, this is going to be an interesting album to review for several reasons. Not only am I coming to this album as a relative outsider to the band's music, but I also have little knowledge or interest in ambient music, which is what this album is mostly made up from. Since this is also somewhat new territory for the band as well, this means that I not only have to review an album that many would have a valid reason to say is one which I am unqualified to give an opinion upon, but it is also one which is breaking new ground for the band in question.
...This could well be the worst review I've done to date, bearing that in mind. Ah well, I'm nothing if not a brave fool, so let's do this!
Anyway, let us start with the cover art for this album. It's...well, really plain, in all honesty. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it leaves me asking a lot of questions like "who's the guy on the gondolier?" and "Why is there a boat travelling across clouds?", none of which, admittedly, are essential questions! I guess one could say that the idea is based upon the imagery of the River Styx combined with the typical image of heaven being a bunch of clouds and the man is presumably meant to be Rick Wright sailing over the clouds, but I'm not sure how accurate that would all be. It's possible I'm over-thinking it a bit. Anyway, the idea is certainly interesting, I just think it feels like it's lacking something.
Now, before I start, I'm going to discuss the box the album comes in, as I got the CD and DVD two disc set. You can confidently skip the next two paragraphs if you just want information about the album, but I feel that I should review the set.
The outside of the set is a fairly large white box (about the same size as the set that Kamelot did for Silverthorn) with the cover art on the front and, on the back, the track listing on the album, as well as the full contents of the set. I do find it a bit odd that the track listing of the album is noted down as four sides in the same fashion as a vinyl record, considering this is the CD version of the set, but I imagine vinyl fans will get a kick out of it, so take that complaint with a pinch of salt.
The contents of the set is comprised of several things which will be of interest to most Pink Floyd fans. There is a small 40 page book that mostly is made up of photos of the band, presumably during the original recording sessions for the album in the 90's due to Rick Wright being present in most of the photos. I imagine that fans of Pink Floyd will find this great to look through, but none of the photos have captions, so, for a person like me who isn't familiar with the band, it's not going to be much help at all. It also makes it hard to confirm when the photos were taken, so having a larger book with some information related to the photos would have probably been the better idea. The book also includes the details of the songwriting credits and all of the other stuff you'd expect to see in the liner notes of the album. Also included in the box (aside from the DVD and CD themselves, but I'm getting to them) are three postcards with interesting designs. I don't get why they're described as being for collectors, as it's not like they're rare or anything like that, but, for what it's worth, the designs on them are very enjoyable. One of them is an image of two members of the band (presumably David Gilmour and Nick Mason), one of them is a shadow of the statue from the cover of The Division Bell and the final one is one of those weird ones where, if you move the postcard, it changes what is on it. While I doubt most people who buy the set are likely to ever use the postcards as postcards, they're certainly a very nice addition to the set. Finally, we get to the CD and DVD. It is the way that the CD and DVD have been provided in the set that I have to make my biggest complaints, as they're provided in cardboard sleeves. For a set like this, I feel that this is maybe a bit cheaply done, as they don't really provide much protection for the CD and DVD and don't really give the feeling of a set made with proper care and attention to making it a high quality set. I'm not necessarily demanding that they be done in digipack forms, but a more secure way to store the CD and DVD would have been a better idea for a set like this, as even recessing their container into the set doesn't necessarily make them more secure. So, as an overall set, it's actually not too bad, I just think that there are a few things that a bit more care and attention to detail should have picked up upon and improved for the sake of making a set worthy of mention in and of itself.
Well, now I've got my gripes out about the set itself (and, no doubt, proven myself to be the TotalBiscuit of music reviews...), let's start with the material on the album! I'm not going to review the DVD, as I imagine most people aren't interested in that much, so consider this a review of the CD only from this point onwards!
With the exception of the final track ("Louder Than Words"), the whole album is instrumental, which places the emphasis on the band's music in a very interesting way that I'm not sure the band have done before now (or, at least, not for the majority of an album!). Now, the problem with instrumental music is that it's very tough to do it right, which is why most bands tend to avoid writing them simply because they're actually far harder to write than you'd think: you have to make the music interesting, but make it able to avoid sounding like a song. This means avoiding common music structures that you hear in songs (you know, the verse-chorus pattern) and often writing the music to be memorable in ways which do not sound so melodic that people can picture it as a song (which may well require writing with an almost progressive viewpoint on the structure of the music and, as such, will require not writing anything that repeats enough to count as a chorus). That's a surprisingly tough thing to get right, even if you're doing stuff with an emphasis on atmosphere like ambient music, and even a skilled musician is going to struggle to write an instrumental properly, ESPECIALLY if they're used to writing songs.
Pink Floyd seem to get around this simply through not having a structure to ANY of the music on the album. The end result feels more than a bit like a long jam session than anything else, which is perfectly fine if you like that kind of thing, but I personally just found it somewhat dull. In fact, I found myself yawning while listening to the album whenever I tried to listen to it more than once in one sitting. Granted, the ambient style of music is generally a style which implies a heavy amount of atmosphere and a soothing sound to it, so you could argue that the band pulled the style off perfectly by making me start to feel sleepy while listening to the album, but I'm not sure that the band aimed for the album to be a cure for insomnia! It's all incredibly pleasant, but I feel that it mostly lacks anything of real interest to make it become actually memorable. There are various moments which are certainly interesting, but they don't stand out enough to prevent the whole album from blending together and becoming a bit of a bore, if I'm totally honest. Again, I'm not really knowledgeable about ambient music and Pink Floyd were never a band who I held to be among the bands that I felt I had to listen to, so this could all be me speaking from a lack of experience, but the whole album feels like it's trying to do something which it simply can't deliver on. I've read some other reviews which indicate that there are quite a few hints towards earlier songs in Pink Floyd's history, but I honestly couldn't pick them up at all! For most of this album, the album simply goes in one ear and out of the other, leaving no real impression upon you. Even repeated listens don't help it to improve the songs memorability: most of them simply don't improve much with repeated listens. It's hardly bad, but I think most people would be forgiven for losing interest very quickly while listening to the album, as there's just not a lot that's really going to stand out to most people.
The performances, luckily, are still incredibly good! While I don't think the music is really that memorable, it's certainly very well performed and I imagine that hardcore Pink Floyd fans will be pleased with the performances on the record. The only performance that I think will be questionable is Gilmore's vocals (and the lyrics to the same song, come to think of it) on "Louder Than Words", as his voice is...I hesitate to say that his vocals are band, but they're certainly not that great. I think the true star of the album, though, is Rick Wright. Now, this is going to sound odd if you've not heard the album, but Wright manages to support the music on the album perfectly while still managing to stand out in his own very interesting way. As a tribute to the guy, this album's only flaw in the lack of memorability: I otherwise feel that this is an album which truly highlights the ability of the late musician and makes his contributions to the band heard in a way which cannot be missed!
The production on this album is really great: it's got dynamics, it's got audible bass, all of the instruments are placed great in the mix...no complaints at all! I'd really love to hear more albums with production like this, as it's just great to hear an album with this type of production.
So, overall, what do I think of this album? Well, it's just...there. I wouldn't call it a terrible album by any measure and, with this being so far out of my comfort zone, I accept that my opinion on this album is going to be useless to most people (and, in fact, I would really encourage you to take my review on this album as just a bemused outsider's opinion on the album instead of that of a real critic), but I ultimately don't see this being an album that most people are going to want to listen to. If you're a hardcore Pink Floyd fan and like ambient music, then this will almost certainly be a treat, but, for everyone else, this is probably not worth picking up, as it's not what Pink Floyd fans will be looking for and will leave people who aren't Pink Floyd fans even more confused as to what the big deal about the band is.
I normally would provide a rating on this album, but I feel that I cannot provide one and be sure that I've fairly managed to represent the album within the style of music it is in, so I shall not include an official one for this review. I personally would like to represent the album with a score of a 4 out of 10, but I'm strictly running by what I'm used to and am not able to compare it to similar albums, so consider the importance of the actual words of this review to help you to make a decision as to whether to purchase this album (if you haven't got it already: this WAS the most pre-ordered album in Amazon UK's history!) and make your decision based upon that instead of my unofficial score.
...And yet Pink Floyd, surprisingly, have never been a band that I've really liked. Don't get me wrong, I never hated Pink Floyd, but I was more fond of punk and simpler styles of music as a kid, so progressive music and me have always been more like that weird neighbour you have who you never speak to, but keep hearing about in passing: you know that they're well liked and keep meaning to give them a chance, but you still know that you're not likely to get along, so you don't give them a shot. While I will admit that progressive music has SLOWLY been gaining some interest from me in recent times (Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Seventh Wonder, Kansas and Rush have been making their way up my list of favourite bands in the last year or two), Pink Floyd simply have never gained my interest before now.
So, why am I looking at this, their long awaited fifteenth studio album? Two reasons: one, my mum's a Pink Floyd fan and I figured she would want to get the album anyway, so I got it to stop her from complaining about how much music I get and two, I've been checking out a few of their songs like "Pigs On The Wing (Part 1)" and found them at least enjoyable, so I figured it would be worth taking the plunge into a full on album by them, and where better to start than with the album that the band themselves seem convinced will be their last one?
...Stop typing that message calling me an idiot, I know it's dumb logic as well!
Anyway, this is going to be an interesting album to review for several reasons. Not only am I coming to this album as a relative outsider to the band's music, but I also have little knowledge or interest in ambient music, which is what this album is mostly made up from. Since this is also somewhat new territory for the band as well, this means that I not only have to review an album that many would have a valid reason to say is one which I am unqualified to give an opinion upon, but it is also one which is breaking new ground for the band in question.
...This could well be the worst review I've done to date, bearing that in mind. Ah well, I'm nothing if not a brave fool, so let's do this!
Anyway, let us start with the cover art for this album. It's...well, really plain, in all honesty. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it leaves me asking a lot of questions like "who's the guy on the gondolier?" and "Why is there a boat travelling across clouds?", none of which, admittedly, are essential questions! I guess one could say that the idea is based upon the imagery of the River Styx combined with the typical image of heaven being a bunch of clouds and the man is presumably meant to be Rick Wright sailing over the clouds, but I'm not sure how accurate that would all be. It's possible I'm over-thinking it a bit. Anyway, the idea is certainly interesting, I just think it feels like it's lacking something.
Now, before I start, I'm going to discuss the box the album comes in, as I got the CD and DVD two disc set. You can confidently skip the next two paragraphs if you just want information about the album, but I feel that I should review the set.
The outside of the set is a fairly large white box (about the same size as the set that Kamelot did for Silverthorn) with the cover art on the front and, on the back, the track listing on the album, as well as the full contents of the set. I do find it a bit odd that the track listing of the album is noted down as four sides in the same fashion as a vinyl record, considering this is the CD version of the set, but I imagine vinyl fans will get a kick out of it, so take that complaint with a pinch of salt.
The contents of the set is comprised of several things which will be of interest to most Pink Floyd fans. There is a small 40 page book that mostly is made up of photos of the band, presumably during the original recording sessions for the album in the 90's due to Rick Wright being present in most of the photos. I imagine that fans of Pink Floyd will find this great to look through, but none of the photos have captions, so, for a person like me who isn't familiar with the band, it's not going to be much help at all. It also makes it hard to confirm when the photos were taken, so having a larger book with some information related to the photos would have probably been the better idea. The book also includes the details of the songwriting credits and all of the other stuff you'd expect to see in the liner notes of the album. Also included in the box (aside from the DVD and CD themselves, but I'm getting to them) are three postcards with interesting designs. I don't get why they're described as being for collectors, as it's not like they're rare or anything like that, but, for what it's worth, the designs on them are very enjoyable. One of them is an image of two members of the band (presumably David Gilmour and Nick Mason), one of them is a shadow of the statue from the cover of The Division Bell and the final one is one of those weird ones where, if you move the postcard, it changes what is on it. While I doubt most people who buy the set are likely to ever use the postcards as postcards, they're certainly a very nice addition to the set. Finally, we get to the CD and DVD. It is the way that the CD and DVD have been provided in the set that I have to make my biggest complaints, as they're provided in cardboard sleeves. For a set like this, I feel that this is maybe a bit cheaply done, as they don't really provide much protection for the CD and DVD and don't really give the feeling of a set made with proper care and attention to making it a high quality set. I'm not necessarily demanding that they be done in digipack forms, but a more secure way to store the CD and DVD would have been a better idea for a set like this, as even recessing their container into the set doesn't necessarily make them more secure. So, as an overall set, it's actually not too bad, I just think that there are a few things that a bit more care and attention to detail should have picked up upon and improved for the sake of making a set worthy of mention in and of itself.
Well, now I've got my gripes out about the set itself (and, no doubt, proven myself to be the TotalBiscuit of music reviews...), let's start with the material on the album! I'm not going to review the DVD, as I imagine most people aren't interested in that much, so consider this a review of the CD only from this point onwards!
With the exception of the final track ("Louder Than Words"), the whole album is instrumental, which places the emphasis on the band's music in a very interesting way that I'm not sure the band have done before now (or, at least, not for the majority of an album!). Now, the problem with instrumental music is that it's very tough to do it right, which is why most bands tend to avoid writing them simply because they're actually far harder to write than you'd think: you have to make the music interesting, but make it able to avoid sounding like a song. This means avoiding common music structures that you hear in songs (you know, the verse-chorus pattern) and often writing the music to be memorable in ways which do not sound so melodic that people can picture it as a song (which may well require writing with an almost progressive viewpoint on the structure of the music and, as such, will require not writing anything that repeats enough to count as a chorus). That's a surprisingly tough thing to get right, even if you're doing stuff with an emphasis on atmosphere like ambient music, and even a skilled musician is going to struggle to write an instrumental properly, ESPECIALLY if they're used to writing songs.
Pink Floyd seem to get around this simply through not having a structure to ANY of the music on the album. The end result feels more than a bit like a long jam session than anything else, which is perfectly fine if you like that kind of thing, but I personally just found it somewhat dull. In fact, I found myself yawning while listening to the album whenever I tried to listen to it more than once in one sitting. Granted, the ambient style of music is generally a style which implies a heavy amount of atmosphere and a soothing sound to it, so you could argue that the band pulled the style off perfectly by making me start to feel sleepy while listening to the album, but I'm not sure that the band aimed for the album to be a cure for insomnia! It's all incredibly pleasant, but I feel that it mostly lacks anything of real interest to make it become actually memorable. There are various moments which are certainly interesting, but they don't stand out enough to prevent the whole album from blending together and becoming a bit of a bore, if I'm totally honest. Again, I'm not really knowledgeable about ambient music and Pink Floyd were never a band who I held to be among the bands that I felt I had to listen to, so this could all be me speaking from a lack of experience, but the whole album feels like it's trying to do something which it simply can't deliver on. I've read some other reviews which indicate that there are quite a few hints towards earlier songs in Pink Floyd's history, but I honestly couldn't pick them up at all! For most of this album, the album simply goes in one ear and out of the other, leaving no real impression upon you. Even repeated listens don't help it to improve the songs memorability: most of them simply don't improve much with repeated listens. It's hardly bad, but I think most people would be forgiven for losing interest very quickly while listening to the album, as there's just not a lot that's really going to stand out to most people.
The performances, luckily, are still incredibly good! While I don't think the music is really that memorable, it's certainly very well performed and I imagine that hardcore Pink Floyd fans will be pleased with the performances on the record. The only performance that I think will be questionable is Gilmore's vocals (and the lyrics to the same song, come to think of it) on "Louder Than Words", as his voice is...I hesitate to say that his vocals are band, but they're certainly not that great. I think the true star of the album, though, is Rick Wright. Now, this is going to sound odd if you've not heard the album, but Wright manages to support the music on the album perfectly while still managing to stand out in his own very interesting way. As a tribute to the guy, this album's only flaw in the lack of memorability: I otherwise feel that this is an album which truly highlights the ability of the late musician and makes his contributions to the band heard in a way which cannot be missed!
The production on this album is really great: it's got dynamics, it's got audible bass, all of the instruments are placed great in the mix...no complaints at all! I'd really love to hear more albums with production like this, as it's just great to hear an album with this type of production.
So, overall, what do I think of this album? Well, it's just...there. I wouldn't call it a terrible album by any measure and, with this being so far out of my comfort zone, I accept that my opinion on this album is going to be useless to most people (and, in fact, I would really encourage you to take my review on this album as just a bemused outsider's opinion on the album instead of that of a real critic), but I ultimately don't see this being an album that most people are going to want to listen to. If you're a hardcore Pink Floyd fan and like ambient music, then this will almost certainly be a treat, but, for everyone else, this is probably not worth picking up, as it's not what Pink Floyd fans will be looking for and will leave people who aren't Pink Floyd fans even more confused as to what the big deal about the band is.
I normally would provide a rating on this album, but I feel that I cannot provide one and be sure that I've fairly managed to represent the album within the style of music it is in, so I shall not include an official one for this review. I personally would like to represent the album with a score of a 4 out of 10, but I'm strictly running by what I'm used to and am not able to compare it to similar albums, so consider the importance of the actual words of this review to help you to make a decision as to whether to purchase this album (if you haven't got it already: this WAS the most pre-ordered album in Amazon UK's history!) and make your decision based upon that instead of my unofficial score.
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