Mix Tape: SMTIV

After reeling from the blow taken by my adopted home's baseball team last night (the postseason is a fickle mistress), I came to this morning feeling like I need a win. As a non-sports guy that's finally beginning to understand what the fuss is about, you might think that my adopted home's gridiron squadron is what I should now be paying heed to, especially with a game tonight. Alas, they will only let me down if recent history is anything to go by. Is this pessimism? No, it is Cleveland; a higher power's playground when it decides it needs to just kick something (pro sports-wise).

So let's return out our first love: Video games. A few months ago, I wrote about the songs that would creep into my noggin during my time in Skyrim. People seemed to like it. So, since I'm fairly deep into another long game with a very distinct aesthetic, Shin Megami Tensei IV, I thought I'd go back to the well a little bit, but in a more expansive way. Maybe I was strangely inspired by this week's Retronauts episode (your homework, BTW). Regardless, I present to you the SMT IV Mix Tape:

"Ode to Isis"/ "Will You Smile For Me Again" by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
This one is guilt by association, actually. When Trail of Dead released the album Worlds Apart in 2005, it was only about four months after Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne was released in North America. These two opening tracks sounded like, well, the world was about to end, which is exactly what happens in the numbered SMT games. Every time I play a game in the series now, be it one of the "proper" ones like IV (and even Strange Journey) or offshoots like the Digital Devil Saga or any given Persona, these songs always come to mind. A short symphonic arrangement with dramatic chanting, "Ode to Isis" sounds very apocalyptic in that sort of traditional Hollywood way, and makes for an appropriate kick off to Trail of Dead's fifth album; one that played a little faster and looser with style and genre compared to other indie rock bands of the time (it's also seen as their first "prog-like" record). It leads well into "Will You Smile", a song that lives and breaths on its fierce guitar/ drum attack intro and conclusion that bookends something of a quiet, but unnerving midsection. It's a pair of tunes that never really pop to mind unless I'm playing these specific games, and I think that says something about how well they couple with SMT.

"Idle Hands" by The Gutter Twins
It's hard to not to think of songs that associate with religious imagery when you're playing through a game that takes place in a Tokyo already overrun by angels and demons. This song, taken from a superb Greg Dulli/ Mark Lanegan side project rife with these images, finds itself being very stirring boss battle music, if only for its very straightforward rock sound perhaps. Produced to make the synth and string arrangements sound just as surface as the Dulli's lead guitar, it was a very apropo single for the duo's band, maybe even the best example of how both musician's tastes gelled into a cohesive whole. While the majority of the album seems more in line with Dulli's Twilight Singers work (which is not a detraction), "Idle Hands" is a driving, snarling stomp that feels satisfying when you're doing just that to a cyclops whom just told you to fuck off.

"Big Time" by Randy Newman
This is a little bit of a new one, but still sort of an old fave. A cover by Newman for his end of the Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back/ I'll Scratch Yours covers project (and only one of which is what we can consider pretty good --sorry, Pete), Newman's "Big Tim"e adds something a little sinister to Gabriel's ode to greed. While the original, something of a classic from Gabriel's most commercially successful album (So), had a wry smirk its way of poking fun at the Gordon Gecko mentality of the time when it was written. As with all great covers, Newman takes this concept and makes the song his own, singing it with the tired groan of a man that might have felt that hunger for more than he needed at one point. I feel as though this song fits in with much of the music already found on SMTIV's soundtrack with some of its jazzier tracks. While I certainly wouldn't consider this song completely in line with that, it seems to fit, and comes to mind when I'm wandering the Tokyo "overworld."

"Between Sun & Moon" by Rush
Yes, I swear a Rush song dug (clawed?) its way out of my subconscious. And it's a Rush song from an album that, from what I understand, is deeply maligned by the hardcore Rush set, AND it's something I probably hadn't heard in close to 10 years. Way to go, video games. You always let the weirdest shit percolate. Honestly, I have nothing to say about this song; it's an okay album track, but after digging it out to listen to it after all these years, I can't even say it's one of the tunes I remember liking. Still, SMTIV decided that I needed to stroll down the most nerdy alley of memory lane. Let's all take a moment and be glad that it's not in a subdivision of something potentially worse. And no, that's not another Rush reference.

End of Side 1.

Grand Theft Hair

So are you at home playing GTA V? I am not. That isn't to say that I'm opposed to taking the -day- week off of work to play a monumentally hyped game is a bad idea, but you know, Grand Theft Auto never did it for me. In general, really, open world games don't really seem to be my bag. No one trait of these games -- be it the driving to the fighting -- never really seem built well enough that I could forgive so many other flaws, so I tend to get bored with them quickly. I do like the writing, though, and I used to love watching friends of mine drive aimlessly through Vice City at night while listening to Mr. Mister, but from a raw gameplay perspective, I guess my interests always lay elsewhere.

But I can't exactly say I'm playing better right now. Yes, the emphatic arm-waiving that resulted in the first five hours of Shin Megami Tensei IV has since cooled. It was as hot and heavy as you'd find in a freshmen dorm, now cranked down to conversations about whose turn it is to fold the laundry. Still, I'm plugging along through it in hopes that things pick up now that I'm kicking it in Tokyo, so let's keep our demon fusing fingers crossed. Outside of that, it's been Hitman: Absolution, which is yet another game I would have never played if it weren't for PlayStation+. Stealth murder games are really just large, elaborate puzzles staring bald men in black suits, a concept that doesn't change my life into a Maxell ad. It's fine so far, but, you know.

Anyway, I hope all of you mischief-making bank robbers out there are showing Los Santos what's what.

Summoning

Last night, after much hemming and hawing, I finally began to play Shin Megami Tensei IV. Why the long wait since I mentioned starting it July? Mostly because I'm an idiot, apparently. I only wanted to play through the introduction and found myself, four hours later, finally tearing myself away from it because the 3DS battery was giving me the blinking red Morse code of "turn it off and go to bed." Even now, several hours removed, I want to run right over to my handheld wonder machine and get back to demon fusing.

That's not a feeling I get very often anymore. I find that it's probably because I'm getting older and have had enough video game experiences at this point that very little surprises me. So why the strange excitement to play (and, therefore, expound upon) SMTIV? Maybe I'm like Don Draper and only like the beginnings of things (in that non-infidelity sort of way), I guess. Everyone likes new games that they just start, I suppose. But when I think about it, and remember my mindset last night, it seems as though this new(ish) 3DS JRPG is scratching an itch that I've been having for months now.

Myself, I'm something of a lapsed JRPG apologist. For years I would defend them to anyone whom would listen, and if you took a peak at my library of games, you'll probably find a 60/40 ratio of this specific genre vs. a mishmash of everything else. But the vast majority of them are from the PS1-PS2 era --something of an Eastern role playing Age of Fire. It represented the better part of 10 years of my life where I was learning how to clearly identify the aspects of what made video games good and bad. Nostalgia aside, the trajectory of qualities I appreciated in the games within the genre has followed a slow, steady descent that's basically hit a subbasement sewer system in this current generation. Am I saying that gameplay for a JRPG these days is necessarily bad? No, I enjoyed playing Eternal Sonata and Final Fantasy X-2 on the merits of their combat alone. But as the last 10-15 years have gone by, the writing commonly found in these games began to bottom out, and as I get older, I cannot, in any way, justify sinking the time required to play one of them with a story that basically talks down to me. I have felt this way since finishing Final Fantasy XII; not the best, or even most compelling plot in the series, but it was one told in such a way that my intelligence and good taste weren't insulted. Since then, it's been a rapidly drying sea of pandering idiocy.

2009, then, was the year that I basically threw in the towel. BioWare released Dragon Age: Origins, which finally gave me the interactive storytelling I never knew I wanted, and Atlus published FromSoft's Demon's Souls --perhaps my favorite game of this generation-- that stripped away what had felt like unnecessary bullshit for years. Both were meaty, satisfying experiences from different sides of the RPG continuum that, essentially, ruined the traditional Dragon Quest/ Final Fantasy need that fueled not only a large chunk of my video game buying, but almost embarrassingly bigger chunks of my free time.

Last night, as I am wont to do around this time of year, I had a serious jones to play some Final Fantasy XII, but I can't; my (second) backward-compatible PlayStation 3 died on me about a year ago, and I'm stuck looking at around 50 games that are basically doing me as much good as a pet rock. Because I couldn't think of anything else to do with myself, in went SMTIV, and back came the memories. It was a tidal wave that I don't want to stop, and at this point, my expectations for the rest of the game are so high that it can only possibly let me down.

But it's only been about 4 hours, so who knows? Either way, I'm more excited to find out than I have been in years.

I Could Sleep

As of 4:00pm EST, I will be on vacation for a week. This means that I'll finally have sufficient time to finish Etrian Odyssey IV and maybe start on Shin Megami Tensei IV. It will be saucy and nerdy. Also, I'll probably go to the Zoo.

Hopefully some book-writing will also continue as well since I'm narrowing in on a good method to finish things out. More news on this to come.

So, I suppose I'm saying that I might not post anything, but let's pray that Lara Croft's further adventures through Right of Passage Iisland are not further stymied so I can tell you all about it.

Your homework is to go to a comic book site --any comic book site-- and read about actual comic book news that comes out of the San Diego Comic Con. If you have to ask what I mean by this it means that you read far too much Entertainment Weekly.