As video game technology has evolved, graphics have been the measuring stick by which to chart its growth. Better graphics generally mean better processing power, which means, we would hope, a better console. Not so much with sound, on the other hand. While the graphics race has pretty much spiraled downward into contest to see who can put the most sparkly bloom over their grey-brown military shooter, sound quality peaked pretty early on in the videogame timeline. And this means that video game sound design has always been a realm for the artist rather than a popularity contest.
Cord Smith, the former director of marketing for Compulsion Games' well-known title We Happy Few, has gone through quite a change since leaving the studio. This is represented by his new indie platformer Always In Mind, which takes players into a bizarre dream world full of fantasies inside the head of a little boy named Teddy. Sector got the chance to ask the industry veteran a few questions about his inspirations for the game.
The outerhaven writes: The No Rest For The Wicked PC requirements have been released ahead of the game hitting early access. Is your PC up to the task of playing the game?
The Outerhaven writes: Learn how to restore health in Dragon's Dogma 2 with our detailed guide on effective healing strategies for you and your pawns.
I think Audio is very underrated. Bad company 2 audio was so awesome and they are continuing that very high quality with Bf3.
Any of you tried to play Dead Nation with light of with a 5.1 surround sound headset? You will jump the sound quality is always overlooked but for me always has been very important.
I have multiple 5.1 headset 2 sets of Ax360 that i use on my pc's and a wireless turtle beach X41 (7.1) for my Tv/gaming.
FF XII had pretty good voice acting too. The voices fit the characters spot on. It also had great music.
I'd also like to mention Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver from PS1, that game had awesome voice acting for it's time.
I find the whole article ridiculous and dripping in tinted-goggles nostalgia.
As much as I love NES classics and as much as Zelda midi music seemed eternal, listening to it in the latest Zelda feels like a hollow experience compared to modern game era - ones established after the 5.1 mixing founded about 10 years ago by the first Halo game. Even Mario Galaxy made this transition and now sounds leaps and bounds over prior Mario titles.
He also writes stuff like
"Less is more ... I can't remember what the final stage music for Halo: Reach was, but I can remember the Dr. Wily theme from Mega Man 3 note for note."
But forgets that the reason he can't remember the final stage music in Halo Reach is simply because there is no final stage music. This games mixed about 7 layers of music and dynamically switches between them so there is no single "final stage music" and it all depends on the player unique experience. Here's a good article about that:
http://www.popularmechanics...
But on the other hand, is there even a single gamer who played the game can't recognize the Halo theme from just a single note? And this applies to most other games: familiarity is what the main theme is for. But you can still have that and at the same time offer a rich experience.
Lastly, he also claims that previous generation games aside from MGS had crappy voice acting, but neglects the fact that even he himself positively mentioned the GTA voice acting, and that there are tons of other games who did superb voice acting even back in the 90's (Monkey Island 3 anyone?) without relying on famous actors. Hell, even today the best video game voice actors are ones who focus on this profession (Nolan North, Jennifer Hale etc) and not Holywood actors pimping games with their star power.
/rant