Game Music Reviews

GoldfishX wrote:

I personally don't favor album reviews anymore, simply because the music is so easy to find and listen to. Back when most VGM was undiscovered, it was a good way to break people open to stuff that was relatively undiscovered. Now anyone can grab any of the super-rarities or just something they like the name of for their hard drive and listen for themself and form their own opinions (and *gasp* buy the album if they like it!).

Partly agreed, but I don't download whatever is in front of me and the reason why I try something I've not particularly interested in until that point is more than often not "because somebody says it's good", so I at least appreciate I catch what opinions other VGM shape. Granted, a small forum post is enough, but once I get into one soundtrack, it's definitely nice to read something longer.

I never even read Game Music Reviews, because I never agree with them anyway.
I have yet to meet a single person who has the exact same taste in music (I'm sure this goes for everyone), so someone else's opinion is never going to reflect mine accurately.

I'm in the same boat as the OP in that I'm not good at naming (sub)genres, but rather than asking people to write more technical reviews, I'd much rather see a concise reference guide to musical styles and genres.

I think I'd be biased so I won't say where I find my "favorite" reviews. If you're looking for technical expertise with descriptions of music though, I have found that Don Kotowski does a very admirable job depending on what he's reviewing. He's written for a number of sites, most prominently SEMO and OSV.

I had meant to update the original post to further specify on that subject. When I say I want technical terms used I think there are some basic ones that can be used like "dynamic", "pitch", "chord", "impact", or "timbre" that can be easily understood, and enhance the review, that are often left out of game music reviews. We could even put up a musical terminology page for reviews if requested. I am planning to learn about technical stuff to write my own advanced reviews. A lot of reviews I see are plagued with the simple "this sounds good" description. I do agree with you that we have to understand our audience and that's why I made the thread. Another undesirable effect to avoid would be reviews that sound pretentious or machinelike. So, reviews written by people who have full mastery of musical terminology (expert communicators) have more use to us, but ones that go way over our heads are of use only if we have a desire to understand them (a fun challenge to the reader).

Last edited by vert1 (Jun 09, 2010)

I have to admit that I only submitted a couple of reviews to SEMO but whenever I looked at the other reviewers I kind of felt sheepish about my skill. A bunch of the people obviously have a great deal of knowledge about music and are much more adept at conveying their particular feeling through the terminology or comparisons with certain music. Being that I've played alto sax from 6th grade on and I'm currently learning the guitar my knowledge is limited by the classes I have taken and whatever personal research I have done. Ultimately this kind of made me feel like I was kind of an underwhelming reviewer.

I do agree that including such jargon can really make a review more complicated than it has to be. I personally believe that reviews have enough terminology as it is. I also agree that the community can do the best job at reviewing. By disagreeing you would be saying that you think a site like IGN could do a great job at this. Ultimately when it comes to this kind of stuff the community is the only place with the passion of the subject and its expanding all the time.

Not everyone can really understand some of the more complicated terms. To expect a person to go to an online glossary or footnotes is ludicrous in my opinion. The desire to review is made by the people. If you want to review it you can just so you can kind of share your opinion in a more formatted manner.

By reading some of these I have gotten some wonderful opinions. When Juan2Darien decided to review the Symphonic Suites he went above and beyond with each album as he not only reviewed each song but each orchestra as well. As a result I have recordings of all London Phiharmonic versions with an extra disc for DQ 6 because the Tokyo Met did such a great job.

Thats one thing I believe when you read a review by someone you build a silent rapport with them. I've read gaming mags for years now and I always remember who wrote the review because I know I can trust that person. That also means that I kind of follow that person around when they defect or something.

If you like the technicalities and things of that nature then follow someone who already writes as much. You can also make requests to that person to review something. I'm sure that even if they don't review it they may find it flattering.

In this particular case vert I say please cast the first stone. Review something using more technical knowledge. I want to see its effective use and seeing how passionate on the subject you are I'm sure your a great candidate to do such a thing. I am at least knowledgeable enough to understand timbre and such.

Last edited by FuryofFrog (Jun 09, 2010)

Oh wow. I feel sheepish. At least I learned something new.

This is an interesting subject you bring up, and I can stand on both sides of it. I write for a game magazine myself, so if I can toot my own horn a little, I think I'm a pretty good writer. I've long lamented the lack of quality in the music portions of reviews for games as a whole. While there are a lot of both amateur and pro reviewers that could improve their reviewing of all aspects of games, I think music gets fudged up to the greatest degree. It really does break down to just "this is good" way too often, and it's pretty sad when I'm impressed to see what should be basic stuff like describing the genre, the instruments, the atmosphere the music conveys, and such. I know I can pull off all that at least, and I feel within the area of game reviews, I can do music sections quite well.

However, I remember a few years ago Chudah's Corner had a big push for reviews and I think there was a contest or something, and I decided to take the challenge of writing my first review solely on a game's music, which to this day is still my only. It's certainly not bad, but I feel it's a little weak compared to other stuff I've written. When I saw the winners, I knew I wasn't even in the same league, even if in general writing ability I'm sure I'm on par. I have no musical ability myself, and the complexity of the analysis by others is way beyond my knowledge. But then at the same time, I'm totally hearing the "pretentious" remark. Game reviewers sometimes fall victim of this, but I think I've seen it more among game music reviewers (although my knowledge of games vs. music may be skewing my perspective). I guess with games as a whole, what do you really have to flaunt? You can brag about how many games you've played or owned, but that doesn't really come off as pretentious. Usually pretentious game reviewers are just English majors that want to making their writing as pinky-up as possible using unnecessarily convoluted phrases and needlessly obscure words to show off how smart they are, which is totally removed from anything having to do with games. But a similarly arrogant music major does have something they can show off that's in relation to the actual subject at hand, so maybe the nature of game music reviews lends itself more to pretentious writing. But either way, you have to identify your audience. You can very well make the argument that your writing is only intended for the elite that can actually comprehend it all, but I'd say that's more likely to do a disservice in these fandoms. I think readers will be better served with a piece that is down to earth but still very smart, which is neither aimed to show off nor appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I am trying to move away from the superficial and banal language, which is why I am not sure how you've managed to equate "advanced" terms and specificity into superficial (fancy) terms. I do agree that the words can be used without much effect by poor communicators who simply substitute and trick users into attributing that something new/profound is being said. There are ways to describe sound problems by pinpointing areas of the track to others and to understand what musicians call certain sound structures is helpful. I haven't even gotten into the argument on how to "properly listen to music" aka getting the most enjoyment out of music listening. Anyhow, even the simplest technical terms can affect whether a game soundtrack is bought or not bought. Here's an example of a reviewer using what I would say is a non-fancy term for describing what is wrong in a game soundtrack through comparison to prior music.

seiferalmasy wrote:

I am afraid to anyone with a decent understanding of game music (vert1-this is not pretentious. It is frank.) should know that the BOF3 new releases (not the ones already released, they have just been slightly updated here), are crap.  The reverb is wrong, the bass is wrong, the quality on some of the tracks amazes me.

Whoever did the remastering job on the new BOF3 releases needs help.  Seriously I have a very good ear and I listen to BOF3 for hours before I made my final decision.

Bottom line, they ruined the new releases of BOF3.  The remixes that they used are awful such as ODORO..they must have been on drugs.

The idea of a game soundtrack is to stay true to the original sound and add clarity, not put it through a remixer or move instrument levels, reverb and bass.

Sorry but I will do their job for them when I record the lot digitally using adobe audition, optical cables and Playstation 2 Optical out, as I did with the metal gear solid 2 and 2 substance music, my server is here >>>

http://www.rpgamers.info/showthread.php … #post35699

Chow.

Now this reviewer could have simply said they altered the tunes and he doesn't like them. We'd implore as to why he doesn't like them. If he said they just don't sound good to him, we would then insist on asking what doesn't sound good (how it could be better). If he leaves us with another "it just doesn't sound good" we then ourselves have to investigate what the "problem" could be since he won't be specific. Thankfully, he doesn't do this (he cuts out the work for the reader; a review is supposed to do this) and speaks up by pinpointing a problem that a Capcom sound engineer could have fixed; He tells them to check the "reverb" (a term I want to see more of) and "bass". Now because of the inherent subjectivity of music the Capcom sound engineer could say that he has "enhanced" the sound. The reviewer disagrees with this notion by making clear to the reader that his expectations of soundtracks are those of containing original game sound and added clarity (i.e. like switching F-Zero X game music from mono to stereo for the soundtrack).

GoldfishX wrote:

So literally, my scores was either like 85 or more or 10 or below...very little inbetween.

The reason I am going to post my reviews here is because I like the star rating system. I am not a fan of rating systems that would confuse readers. At vmgdb, a discussion has taken place on what 5 star ratings are to users. This is why clarity is so important for reviewers to establish.

To love clarity and insight...

Last edited by vert1 (Jun 10, 2010)

GoldfishX wrote:

They are hurting your credibility. :p

No. They are hurting your credibility because every one sentence response to those well-written articles shows your lack of care to putting forth clear and insightful arguments.

This is off-topic.

Future note: I appreciate short responses when they are humorous or logical. So you achieved both to me in your response on how to listen to music. yay.

Last edited by vert1 (Jun 10, 2010)

I'd personally like to read in-depth reviews, I'd like to get to know the subject's historical context, how it compares to other works by the same artist, to other works at that time, to other works in the same genre, discussion about its approach, design and execution etc. But I honestly don't expect such writings to regularly appear for game music (or games themselves for that matter) so I'm not holding my breath. Where they exist I rather see such kind of reviews disappearing (or being diluted) in other areas outside of the academic circles since nobody really cares about them.

I'll just be forward and say I was anxiously awaiting someone saying "RPGFan has some great reviews!"

I guess maybe we need to focus more on quality than quantity.

Or maybe people are just enjoying arguing about technical terms.

I like the word "lietmotif." Everyone else hates that word.

vert1 wrote:

I think the community can do a better job and use more technical terms to describe game music. I myself often have a hard time identifying what genre of music certain games can be classified as like Axelay. I'm starting this thread to ask what reviews you all have been impressed by and what we can do to achieve better in-depth reviews.

I will be editing this starting post later.

Added: I have gathered from this thread that the only way to move forward now (although I disagree that we have exhausted the argument) is for someone, such as I, write an "advanced review" to show a higher quality standard we should aim for on vgm. I will be undertaking this event, but I cannot say how soon I can turn out my 4 planned soundtrack reviews. Also, I have not written a full review for a site. So not only am I asking others to challenge themselves, I myself am doing so as well.

Forgive me for saying so, but I'm struck by your highfalutin concept of the discussion of VGM as a joyless and burdensome exercise.

I fully support the proposition that we should be able to articulate why we like or dislike a piece of music, but is it possible that you're taking this way too seriously?  I submit that the possibility exists.