Up front summary: If you're at all interested in FPS RPGs I highly recommend it. It's not a new genre, doesn't have a new setting or even a new story type, but Bioware has created a very compelling game despite all of it and I had a lot of fun playing.
Disclaimer: The judgments in this review are 100% applicable to me alone. If you are not me, applicability may and likely will vary. I also reserve the right to make up words as I need to explain what I'm thinking.
The good (in no particular order):
The quality of the writing and voice acting is very good. At times it's excellent, and it makes the overall experience that much better for it. Not nearly enough games devote enough time and resources to this, and that's a shame. If the popularity of Gears of War is any indication, it appears that anything better-written than the translation of Zero Wing qualifies as good enough statistically.
The graphics are fantastic. I played it at 1280x1024 and had most of the options turned on and didn't run into much in the way of bad visuals at all. There were also no slowdowns/frame rate drops when lots of things were moving and shooting at the same time. The facial animation is very cool, and at one point in a later mission when you're running out of exploding ruins, the way that they animated the main character stopping from fatigue after a long sprint was a 'wow' moment for me.
The story is exceptionally well done. Saving the galaxy wasn't a new idea 10 years ago, but the way it's put together is believable and more than entertaining enough to keep you playing. The ending is quite satisfying, if a bit over the top in places.
The game is polished overall. Like most gamers I know, I didn't read the manual ahead of time and tried to figure it out as I went. I was still able to get a good grasp of the interface and the controls fairly quickly. You can also see that a great deal of attention was paid to the interface, the inventory/skills screens, to the difficulty ramping, and to things like keeping the enemies at around your skill level so that no matter what order you complete the missions in the enemies remain dangerous but not out of your league.
The action is a lot of fun in places. I played it twice on Normal difficulty and I found that so long as I used cover when my shields were low I could take on the majority of the combat situations without tremendous difficulty. Vehicle fights were also very well done, and there was just enough that I never really got tired of it.
Finally, the game length was just enough that I felt I got my money's worth through the single-player campaign. I did just about every side quest offered and spent much longer than I should have getting lost in some areas and I still finished the game in about 35 hours. My second run-through didn't take half as long because I skipped all the side quests and just stuck to the main story. To the advertising that claims 100 hours, I don't see how that's possible. My 35 hours also includes time when I left the game unpaused to go and make food or tea or even watch football games. Regardless, I got the game length I wanted, so it goes in the "good" section.
The bad (some nitpicking, some real)
Even after applying the 1.01 patch the game suffered from occasional lock-ups, occasionally in combat, most often in elevators. By the end I got into the habit of quick-saving just before going into elevators just in case. It's always frustrating to have to re-do stretches of gameplay you've just completed, but it wasn't frequent enough to be a deal-breaker for me.
Graphics. I know I said they're fantastic and they are, but there are some areas where it's clear that they cut corners, I assume because the game was ported from the 360. One example is staircases. Mass Effect staircases are very clearly flat ramps covered with a single texture shaded to look like stairs. I admit that it's a total nitpick and maybe this just stood out more with the visual effects maxed out, I don't know. I also don't know that I've ever played a game where footsteps on stairs were handled completely realistically, but this just stood out to me as a curious shortcut, perhaps because it sits in the context of obvious visual polish elsewhere. It's also not lost on me that if my biggest complaint with the visuals in any game is a freaking staircase, it's not a legitimate complaint unless the game is about staircases, so let's move on.
Controls. The mako was occasionally difficult to control, making very severe turns when you don't want to, and occasionally some issues while crossing jagged terrain. That it let you climb surfaces steeper than 45 degrees made up for it, though. Take that, physics!
And that's about it. Overall, I found Mass Effect a bargain for my gaming dollar (I got a sealed copy in trade for my used copy of The World Ends With You) and I recommend it to anyone even peripherally interested in the idea of a sci-fi FPS RPG.
For me, though, the reason I know Mass Effect is well done is that when I finished it I felt a little sad because it was over, I was enjoying it that much. I also immediately started the game over again, another rarity.
FWC's Tips for people inspired to play after reading this pseudo-glowing review:
• To make things the easiest for me, I always chose (when I could) to have Ashley and Tali in my squad. Ashley is pure combat and Tali is pure tech, meaning that fights were rarely very difficult and Tali should be able to help you unlock/decrypt every container/probe in the game.
• After starting a new game, go to the Options menu and turn off auto-leveling. This allows you to max out your squadmates' abilities in things complimentary to your skills.
• Decryption is a high-priority skill to have, as there's at least one item on every planet you need a high Decryption skill to open. As long as one member of your party has a skill, you'll all be able to use it. I chose to level up Tali's Decryption skill.
• Re: Money. For the first 2/3 of the game you really don't need to buy anything except licenses at vendors, because you'll generally find better stuff in combat than you'll get in a store. By the time you start to find level 5 and better equipment/weapons, you'll be able to sell your stuff for more money than you'll be able to use. You can't have more than 10 million in credits anyway, and I spent most of the second time through maxed out. You'll need to buy the high-end spectre gear, though.
• Easy XP: You get a lot less experience killing stuff in the mako than if you're on foot. To use this to your advantage, use the mako to bring enemies to near death, then jump out and finish them off on foot. I did this and it made gaining levels very easy.
• Use appropriate ammo. Anything that gives a bonus against synthetics is good to use for most of the game. The rest of the time, anti-organic stuff is best, especially in missions where you're fighting mercenaries. Makes battles go much faster.
Showing posts with label nerdery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nerdery. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
2007 FWC Blog Awards
Welcome to the 2007 FWC Blog Awards, where the categories are arbitrary and the decisions even moreso.
Without any further ado, let's begin, shall we?
Category: TV Series Most Stuck Up Its Own Arse
The Winner: 24
I started watching this show a couple of weeks ago when my wife's maid of honour brought season one over on DVD. We managed an entire episode and a half before we switched it off, shortly after Jack Bauer cut off the finger of a dead guy.
In its favour, the idea of a real-time show is good. The idea of multiple things going on at once is also good. Unfortunately, the way they did it was not. I'll buy a Sutherland in the main role, but way too much stuff happened that kept me from getting into the story. The multiple boxes on the screen? Nice idea if you only do it maybe once an episode, but every 5 minutes? Come on, this show has way too big a budget not to be more creative with this.
In all, the show came off to me like a version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but with terrorism and US politics as the setting. The only really competent person in the entire show is the main character, and everyone else seems to be in constant danger because of their own stupid decisions and only Jack Bauer can save them all, but he can only do so much at once, even if you put him in all four boxes on the screen at the same time.
Please keep in mind that I'm not saying the show is without merit. If 24 didn't try so hard to be The Greatest Show Evar I think I'd have been able to get in on the ground floor. However, the flaws I mentioned plus a helping of self-importance and the constant adding of danger music when nothing ends up happening in a scene were just too off-putting for me.
Runner-up: Lost
Category: TV Series That I Didn't Expect To Like But Did
The Winner: Weeds
My wife and I started watching season one at around 7 or so in the evening a couple of months ago. 11 hours of episodes later that same night we went to bed.
It's hard to explain why in one sentence. It's not that Weeds is the most amazing show evar (see the efforts of 24 above). It's pretty straightforward about what it is, and that's nice. Weeds takes its time, but the story moves pretty quickly, if that makes sense. The characters are caricatures, but not to the point of distracting from the story. In all, it's entertaining because it's not too much of one thing. The actors, the story and even the theme song all grow on you, if that's not too close to a plant joke.
The show itself starts out about a widow (Mary-Louise Parker) in white Californian suburbia that starts selling marijuana to the rest of the nearby suburbanites. The idea is compelling enough to get you to start watching and then the good writing takes over. Watch 3 episodes (they're only a half hour each) and see if you don't find yourself watching through the rest of the season.
Category: Worst Fantasy Football League Owner, 2007
The "Winner": Me!
WARNING: This section is full of self-pitying rants. Feel free to skip to the next category if you don't want to see them, and you can't say you weren't warned otherwise.
To be honest, this wasn't even really close. I should have known better, but I decided that maybe the last 8 or so times I played fantasy football to all be coincidences.
My fantasy teams have two common themes, and those are underachievers and injuries. Well, I suppose finishing last is common as well, but I figured that kinda goes without sayign.
I have an impressive collection of careers I've ended during my fantasy football history, with highlights including (but not limited to):
Randall Cunningham: Drafted 1st overall, injured Q1 of game 1 (thanks, Bryce Paup)
Steve Young: Drafted Round 1 the year he started collecting concussions.
The list of underperformers is much longer if not more impressive, including Jerry Rice, Steve Smith, Ahman Green and so on.
2007 was special for me, as I managed injuries and near-suspensions and underperforming all at the same time, including the loss of the top 4 running backs I drafted to injury.
Here's the short list:Larry Johnson: Underperformed until he could manage an injury.Travis Henry: Did well for a few weeks, then injured a knee and failed a marijuana test. He won the appeal and is allowed to play, but can't because he's still injured.
Ronnie Brown: Did nothing until mid-season, then went on IR after two good games.
Marshawn Lynch: Injury after injury after injury.
LaMont Jordan: Played 2 good weeks, then a back injury ended his season.
Lee Evans: Played 2 good weeks, but only after I cut him and he was picked up by another team.
Drew Brees: Managed 3 good weeks this season, and wasn't starting on any of them.
Matt Schaub: Completing 75% of your passes and still being useless in a fantasy league takes genuine effort, I think. Then he separated his shoulder.
Matt Leinart: Underperformed AND went on IR.
Vince Young: Underperformed, traded, still underperformed.
Santonio Holmes: All the promise in the world, 2 good weeks on the field. The season is 14 weeks long.
Brandon Marshall: To see the guy break tackles in-game you'd think he's the next Jerry Rice. He still hasn't shown up on the stats sheet.
This also doesn't count the kickers and defenses that are enough reason on their own to make an alcoholic out of me.
In the true spirit of a Leafs fan, however, I'm sure I'll do better next year. (:
(head shake) Enough of the whining, however, and on to the next award.
Category: Cinematic surprise of 2007
The Winner: The Wife getting into horror flicks!
My wife is amazing at a great many things. Keeping her cool when watching a horror flick not among them. Not that she'd scream at the top of her lungs when something happened, but she seemed to shy away from them on principle, until this year, after she remembered that that she enjoyed really tense movies like Session 9 and decided that apart from the special-effects "gore because we can" kind of movies (your Saws and Hostels), she wanted to see if she had the stomach for some good classic horror movies. These included the original Friday the 13th, the original Exorcist, 1408 and a few others, and it turns out that she loved them. I'm very proud of her for this, because people tend to decide at an early age that they do or don't like horror movies and tend not to re-evaluate that stance afterward.
She jumps at the right moments and reacts the way people making these kind of movies hope you will. She also loves it, and I look forward to seeing some more classics with her soon.
Category: Crack of 2007
The Winner: Guitar Hero III
I've played a lot of games over the past year. I've played OCD tests like Rune Factory (which I finished without ever getting close to getting married in the game), Final Fantasy III (All the grinding you could ever want without learning how to weld) and Picross (still the best instant multiplayer game I've seen for the DS).
I'd played GHII at a friend's house enough to be able to beat YYZ on medium difficulty, and was pretty proud of that. Then GHIII showed up and I've made it to Hard difficulty.
To explain the jump from Medium to Hard difficulty, do you remember the scene in the movie Airplane where the sick kid starts convulsing and the nurse slaps him and then other people start joining in slapping him and the camera pans to the lineup up the aisle with people waiting their turn holding blunt objects and various weapons? If you start in on Hard difficulty immediately after the first time you beat the final boss fight in Medium you'll think that queue of people is lining up for you. It's that steep of a curve. Luckily I'm also a video game masochist in addition to susceptible to OCD-tests, so I've been in the Practice mode nearly as much as I've been playing the actual songs in order to get the the galloping triplets section in Knights of Cydonia or the brutal fingering in 3s and 7s.
It's also a game that just about everyone in our nerd circle of friends enjoys playing a lot. If it wasn't for the fact that staring at dots moving down the fret board makes your eyes tired after a while, there would probably be genuine fights over who gets to play next.
Releasing extra controllers for the Wii version so all the addicts can play multiplayer would also be nice, but I digress.
So, yeah, crack. If you pick it up, at least you can't say you haven't been warned.
Unmentioned Runners-Up: Lunar Knights, Brain Age 2
Category: Band I Like That Would Ruin My Credibility If I Recommended Them
The Winner: DragonForce
I have an inner 6-year-old.
This 6-year-old will laugh at every 3 Stooges Sketch. He has seriously considered buying a box set of Rocky movies (and has seen Rocky IV at least a half dozen times and had the final training montage music on cassette). He loved a very bad show that only ran for 2 seasons in the very early eighties called Automan. He cheered the Hoff in Knight Rider and wished he owned Kitt. He watched and cheered for Airwolf, he loved Beowulf and every Die Hard movie. He watched horrible shows like this one and this one and this one and loved every one of them. You get the picture.
By cheered, by the way, I mean literally stood up and cheered out loud.
In short, my inner 6-year-old is responsible for just about every embarrassing enjoyment in my life.
Dragonforce is a English rock band that wrote the song Through The Fire And Flames which is used as credit music after each difficulty level in Guitar Hero III.
The first time I heard this song my adult brain cringed and my inner 6-year-old exalted. This could not end well.
It is not good music. My adult brain gave some ground and hoped to stop where this was going by finding the discography and listening to it end-to-end.
First, the good. Dragonforce is a very high-energy band, and by that I don't mean they play faster than most, I mean they play ferret-on-a-double-espresso fast. The guitarist plays almost at the speed of Yngwie Malmsteen. Oh, just look him up.
They're an honest band. They're not going to make a dance remix of anything, they're not going anywhere near jazz that I can tell, and even both of their "slow" songs (they have 2 on 3 albums) are 150bpm. They play aggressive guitar rock and they're amazing musicians, talent-wise. How they'd play at the pace they do in a live concert for 3+ hours is beyond me. The thought of a Dragonforce mosh pit is enough of a deterrant that I am going to pass on going to their live shows to find out, even if they weren't all in Europe.
Finally, their sound is intentionally loud and for what it is, it sounds well balanced to my ear.
With all of that going for them, why are they in the Embarrassing category instead of Highly Recommended? Let's look at that now.
That song I told you about earlier? That's their sound, and it's their only one. If you listen to enough of their music, it all blurs into one song with arbitrary pauses to let the musicians go outside and set fire to things, I imagine. It's fine if you're using it as background music while you do work. On its own, however, if your band has as much variety as that of highland dancing arm movement, something is wrong.
Nearly every lyric is sung by all the vocalists at once, and they never vary the arrangement. It sounds stolen from Carry On My Wayward Son, now that I think about it. There may have been some solo singing in one song, but I might've been imagining it. Also, the drumming begins to sound more like galloping than drumming after a while.
Next, the song titles physically hurt me to read. It honestly sounds like a mix tape put together by the Crown Prince of EmoTown. Here's the track list for their latest album, just so you don't think I'm cherry-picking titles:
1 - Through The Fire and Flames
2 - Revolution Deathsquad
3 - Storming The Burning Fields
4 - Operation Ground and Pound
5 - Body Breakdown
6 - Cry For Eternity
7 - The Flame Of Youth
8 - Trail of Broken Hearts
See?
Given their obvious skill at wordsmithery when it comes to song titles, I'm sure you can only imagine the quality of their lyric-writing. Even my inner 6-year-old doesn't get behind the lyrics, they're that bad. I won't risk my single-digit readership any further by actually typing out any of them, but please do take my word for it, they're....appropriate for the music and song titles.
And that's Dragonforce. If you like a balanced fast-paced guitar rock sound and can avoid reading the titles or paying attention to the lyrics or thinking about the lack of variety throughout, then my inner 6-year-old highly recommends them.
Well, there you have it, I'm officially out of rants for the time being. Shouldn't be out for long, though.
Without any further ado, let's begin, shall we?
Category: TV Series Most Stuck Up Its Own Arse
The Winner: 24
I started watching this show a couple of weeks ago when my wife's maid of honour brought season one over on DVD. We managed an entire episode and a half before we switched it off, shortly after Jack Bauer cut off the finger of a dead guy.
In its favour, the idea of a real-time show is good. The idea of multiple things going on at once is also good. Unfortunately, the way they did it was not. I'll buy a Sutherland in the main role, but way too much stuff happened that kept me from getting into the story. The multiple boxes on the screen? Nice idea if you only do it maybe once an episode, but every 5 minutes? Come on, this show has way too big a budget not to be more creative with this.
In all, the show came off to me like a version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but with terrorism and US politics as the setting. The only really competent person in the entire show is the main character, and everyone else seems to be in constant danger because of their own stupid decisions and only Jack Bauer can save them all, but he can only do so much at once, even if you put him in all four boxes on the screen at the same time.
Please keep in mind that I'm not saying the show is without merit. If 24 didn't try so hard to be The Greatest Show Evar I think I'd have been able to get in on the ground floor. However, the flaws I mentioned plus a helping of self-importance and the constant adding of danger music when nothing ends up happening in a scene were just too off-putting for me.
Runner-up: Lost
Category: TV Series That I Didn't Expect To Like But Did
The Winner: Weeds
My wife and I started watching season one at around 7 or so in the evening a couple of months ago. 11 hours of episodes later that same night we went to bed.
It's hard to explain why in one sentence. It's not that Weeds is the most amazing show evar (see the efforts of 24 above). It's pretty straightforward about what it is, and that's nice. Weeds takes its time, but the story moves pretty quickly, if that makes sense. The characters are caricatures, but not to the point of distracting from the story. In all, it's entertaining because it's not too much of one thing. The actors, the story and even the theme song all grow on you, if that's not too close to a plant joke.
The show itself starts out about a widow (Mary-Louise Parker) in white Californian suburbia that starts selling marijuana to the rest of the nearby suburbanites. The idea is compelling enough to get you to start watching and then the good writing takes over. Watch 3 episodes (they're only a half hour each) and see if you don't find yourself watching through the rest of the season.
Category: Worst Fantasy Football League Owner, 2007
The "Winner": Me!
WARNING: This section is full of self-pitying rants. Feel free to skip to the next category if you don't want to see them, and you can't say you weren't warned otherwise.
To be honest, this wasn't even really close. I should have known better, but I decided that maybe the last 8 or so times I played fantasy football to all be coincidences.
My fantasy teams have two common themes, and those are underachievers and injuries. Well, I suppose finishing last is common as well, but I figured that kinda goes without sayign.
I have an impressive collection of careers I've ended during my fantasy football history, with highlights including (but not limited to):
Randall Cunningham: Drafted 1st overall, injured Q1 of game 1 (thanks, Bryce Paup)
Steve Young: Drafted Round 1 the year he started collecting concussions.
The list of underperformers is much longer if not more impressive, including Jerry Rice, Steve Smith, Ahman Green and so on.
2007 was special for me, as I managed injuries and near-suspensions and underperforming all at the same time, including the loss of the top 4 running backs I drafted to injury.
Here's the short list:Larry Johnson: Underperformed until he could manage an injury.Travis Henry: Did well for a few weeks, then injured a knee and failed a marijuana test. He won the appeal and is allowed to play, but can't because he's still injured.
Ronnie Brown: Did nothing until mid-season, then went on IR after two good games.
Marshawn Lynch: Injury after injury after injury.
LaMont Jordan: Played 2 good weeks, then a back injury ended his season.
Lee Evans: Played 2 good weeks, but only after I cut him and he was picked up by another team.
Drew Brees: Managed 3 good weeks this season, and wasn't starting on any of them.
Matt Schaub: Completing 75% of your passes and still being useless in a fantasy league takes genuine effort, I think. Then he separated his shoulder.
Matt Leinart: Underperformed AND went on IR.
Vince Young: Underperformed, traded, still underperformed.
Santonio Holmes: All the promise in the world, 2 good weeks on the field. The season is 14 weeks long.
Brandon Marshall: To see the guy break tackles in-game you'd think he's the next Jerry Rice. He still hasn't shown up on the stats sheet.
This also doesn't count the kickers and defenses that are enough reason on their own to make an alcoholic out of me.
In the true spirit of a Leafs fan, however, I'm sure I'll do better next year. (:
(head shake) Enough of the whining, however, and on to the next award.
Category: Cinematic surprise of 2007
The Winner: The Wife getting into horror flicks!
My wife is amazing at a great many things. Keeping her cool when watching a horror flick not among them. Not that she'd scream at the top of her lungs when something happened, but she seemed to shy away from them on principle, until this year, after she remembered that that she enjoyed really tense movies like Session 9 and decided that apart from the special-effects "gore because we can" kind of movies (your Saws and Hostels), she wanted to see if she had the stomach for some good classic horror movies. These included the original Friday the 13th, the original Exorcist, 1408 and a few others, and it turns out that she loved them. I'm very proud of her for this, because people tend to decide at an early age that they do or don't like horror movies and tend not to re-evaluate that stance afterward.
She jumps at the right moments and reacts the way people making these kind of movies hope you will. She also loves it, and I look forward to seeing some more classics with her soon.
Category: Crack of 2007
The Winner: Guitar Hero III
I've played a lot of games over the past year. I've played OCD tests like Rune Factory (which I finished without ever getting close to getting married in the game), Final Fantasy III (All the grinding you could ever want without learning how to weld) and Picross (still the best instant multiplayer game I've seen for the DS).
I'd played GHII at a friend's house enough to be able to beat YYZ on medium difficulty, and was pretty proud of that. Then GHIII showed up and I've made it to Hard difficulty.
To explain the jump from Medium to Hard difficulty, do you remember the scene in the movie Airplane where the sick kid starts convulsing and the nurse slaps him and then other people start joining in slapping him and the camera pans to the lineup up the aisle with people waiting their turn holding blunt objects and various weapons? If you start in on Hard difficulty immediately after the first time you beat the final boss fight in Medium you'll think that queue of people is lining up for you. It's that steep of a curve. Luckily I'm also a video game masochist in addition to susceptible to OCD-tests, so I've been in the Practice mode nearly as much as I've been playing the actual songs in order to get the the galloping triplets section in Knights of Cydonia or the brutal fingering in 3s and 7s.
It's also a game that just about everyone in our nerd circle of friends enjoys playing a lot. If it wasn't for the fact that staring at dots moving down the fret board makes your eyes tired after a while, there would probably be genuine fights over who gets to play next.
Releasing extra controllers for the Wii version so all the addicts can play multiplayer would also be nice, but I digress.
So, yeah, crack. If you pick it up, at least you can't say you haven't been warned.
Unmentioned Runners-Up: Lunar Knights, Brain Age 2
Category: Band I Like That Would Ruin My Credibility If I Recommended Them
The Winner: DragonForce
I have an inner 6-year-old.
This 6-year-old will laugh at every 3 Stooges Sketch. He has seriously considered buying a box set of Rocky movies (and has seen Rocky IV at least a half dozen times and had the final training montage music on cassette). He loved a very bad show that only ran for 2 seasons in the very early eighties called Automan. He cheered the Hoff in Knight Rider and wished he owned Kitt. He watched and cheered for Airwolf, he loved Beowulf and every Die Hard movie. He watched horrible shows like this one and this one and this one and loved every one of them. You get the picture.
By cheered, by the way, I mean literally stood up and cheered out loud.
In short, my inner 6-year-old is responsible for just about every embarrassing enjoyment in my life.
Dragonforce is a English rock band that wrote the song Through The Fire And Flames which is used as credit music after each difficulty level in Guitar Hero III.
The first time I heard this song my adult brain cringed and my inner 6-year-old exalted. This could not end well.
It is not good music. My adult brain gave some ground and hoped to stop where this was going by finding the discography and listening to it end-to-end.
First, the good. Dragonforce is a very high-energy band, and by that I don't mean they play faster than most, I mean they play ferret-on-a-double-espresso fast. The guitarist plays almost at the speed of Yngwie Malmsteen. Oh, just look him up.
They're an honest band. They're not going to make a dance remix of anything, they're not going anywhere near jazz that I can tell, and even both of their "slow" songs (they have 2 on 3 albums) are 150bpm. They play aggressive guitar rock and they're amazing musicians, talent-wise. How they'd play at the pace they do in a live concert for 3+ hours is beyond me. The thought of a Dragonforce mosh pit is enough of a deterrant that I am going to pass on going to their live shows to find out, even if they weren't all in Europe.
Finally, their sound is intentionally loud and for what it is, it sounds well balanced to my ear.
With all of that going for them, why are they in the Embarrassing category instead of Highly Recommended? Let's look at that now.
That song I told you about earlier? That's their sound, and it's their only one. If you listen to enough of their music, it all blurs into one song with arbitrary pauses to let the musicians go outside and set fire to things, I imagine. It's fine if you're using it as background music while you do work. On its own, however, if your band has as much variety as that of highland dancing arm movement, something is wrong.
Nearly every lyric is sung by all the vocalists at once, and they never vary the arrangement. It sounds stolen from Carry On My Wayward Son, now that I think about it. There may have been some solo singing in one song, but I might've been imagining it. Also, the drumming begins to sound more like galloping than drumming after a while.
Next, the song titles physically hurt me to read. It honestly sounds like a mix tape put together by the Crown Prince of EmoTown. Here's the track list for their latest album, just so you don't think I'm cherry-picking titles:
1 - Through The Fire and Flames
2 - Revolution Deathsquad
3 - Storming The Burning Fields
4 - Operation Ground and Pound
5 - Body Breakdown
6 - Cry For Eternity
7 - The Flame Of Youth
8 - Trail of Broken Hearts
See?
Given their obvious skill at wordsmithery when it comes to song titles, I'm sure you can only imagine the quality of their lyric-writing. Even my inner 6-year-old doesn't get behind the lyrics, they're that bad. I won't risk my single-digit readership any further by actually typing out any of them, but please do take my word for it, they're....appropriate for the music and song titles.
And that's Dragonforce. If you like a balanced fast-paced guitar rock sound and can avoid reading the titles or paying attention to the lyrics or thinking about the lack of variety throughout, then my inner 6-year-old highly recommends them.
Well, there you have it, I'm officially out of rants for the time being. Shouldn't be out for long, though.
Monday, October 29, 2007
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