iJar

Thursday, June 21, 2007

All video games should be Live

1:01 AM

Just got back from Video Games Live. It was AWESOME. Totally worth all the trouble to get there...which wasn't much trouble to begin with, but totally worth it.

I'm not really gonna go into too much detail right now...but a few comments:

Guitar Hero II Tournaments should not be held on Medium

If they are on Medium, then they should also have a separate tournament for Hard and/or Expert players. I played on Medium, and I did horrible (still got 5 stars, but Dillon beat me..'cause he plays on Medium). Why is Medium harder when you're used to playing Hard and Expert? Medium is slower for one thing. You might think that'd make it easier, but that's really not the case. Also, Medium doesn't contain all the notes of a song. It has way less notes than a song on Hard on Expert. So you may hear a bunch of notes in a song, and you'll want to play all of them, but only a few of them show up on Medium, so you end up playing notes that aren't there.

I should have played Advent Rising, the Myst series, Civilization 4, Medal of Honor, Warcraft, and Tron

The normal Zelda and Final Fantasy stuff was present...but a lot of the music was from games that are less popular games (in comparison) that I hadn't played before. The music sounded good, but I wasn't familiar with it, so it wasn't as awesome it could have been. Conversely, the Final Fantasy songs (especially One Winged Angel) sounded TOO familiar and no longer feel as epic as they once were.

No Castlevania music = phail

While the whole show didn't phail, there was a SEVERE lack of Castlevania music. That was very disappointing.

Cosplay...lol

There was costume contest there, and there were some good costumes...or like...3 good costumes, and those 3 were nominated to win an award. The person (I think it was a girl) dressed as Vincent Valentine won. It was a very nice-looking costume...too bad Vincent Valentine sucks (Dante > Vincent).

I thought up a great costume...I'd make a Servbot head, put it on, and say I'm Frank West from Dead Rising. :D

One Winged Angel and Liberi Fatali are not meant to be played on the piano

Martin Leung was there (obviously) and he played some Final Fantasy music. It was very cool...'til he started playing the "epic" songs. They sound like crap on the piano. Sadly, this was the only presence of Liberi Fatali. Speaking of which...

Liberi Fatali > One Winged Angel

Seriously. Daniel tried to argue that One Winged Angel is a more memorable or well-known song or something like that. Pshh. Yeah right. One Winged Angel is played at the END of Final Fantasy VII, and in crappy MIDI form with sung lyrics, during an interesting, but rather static battle with Safer Sephiroth. Liberi Fatali is heard at the BEGINNING of Final Fantasy VIII, and in awesome, orchestrated form with sung lyrics, during an AWESOME intro FMV with lots of cool action. You don't even have to finish FFVIII to hear the song.

Liberi Fatali is epic. More epic than One Winged Angel. I also read somewhere that Nobuo Uematsu considers Liberi Fatali his musical masterpiece. I'd say that's true.

I should've done less "research"

Since I had been looking into Video Games Live since when it was first conceived, I kinda ruined a lot of the "surprises" for the show, like the retro medley (my favorite part of the concert), the Space Invaders thing, the "Loading" of Act II, and Tommy's PSP comment. And I guess One Winged Angel might've been more enjoyable if I wasn't expecting it, but it's the encore of each show. It should've been Liberi Fatali, though. I saw a YouTube video of them playing that song, too. Why not in Dallas!?

Still, it was an enjoyable show. I'd like to go again. Hell, I'd like to go to more of these nerd gatherings. Who wants to go to a "con"? :P

Comments:

Danny G said:
Yes, VGL was awesome. Personally, I think I enjoyed it more than anybody from our group that went. I had almost no complaints. Being a HUGE Final Fantasy fan, I was pleased. That brings me to the subject: One-Winged Angel vs. Liberi Fatali.
I never will say Fatali is bad at all. In fact, it's one of my favorite FF themes among them all.
The only thing I stated is that OWA is more well-known, which is somewhat more fact than opinion. Why? Because more people are fans of 7, it came first, and the theme is played in more games. Plus, the final battle in 7 is the end to one of the first epic RPG's to put RPG's on the map in the first place. Thus, an epic game needed an epic theme for one of the most popular bad guys. You associate that theme with the bad guy. You know what it means. Even the name of the song fit the character...so people know it. Liberi Fatali? What's that for? Was that the name of the theme? Oh, it's the into to that other game I wanted to hurry up and start...not think about the music.
See, it's popularity. By the end of the game, your mind is used to what's to come and can be open to the surroudings more, thus the music, well, as I'd think.
Plus, if you look into the history of the creation of that piece of music, the intrique of what went into making it is better established. I mean, the lyrics mean something. Or, if all else fails, you know the song more because the battle can take forever and the song repeats, thus you know it too well, while Fatali comes once and only once. I liked 8, but the game didn't get as much attention....though I think it did deserve it; and yes, that song to me was a selling point; I like it just as much as One-Winged Angel and could go on like I am now for it; but now is not that time.
As for cons, yeah, I'm totally in.
Oh Vincent, never could see you as a chick, but now I look at you funny after VGL....lol.
Oh, and Dante is cool, but I like Vincent equally for different reasons. Dante is cool for what he does, and Vincent for what he does. However, neither are at the top of my favorites of all time list. There you go, I said it.

# 2:21 AM