Tuesday, June 30, 2009

When two passions merge, pt 2

Earlier I've talked about my two favorite things; music and videogames; come together in holy matrimony. That was pretty cool in amongst itself. But then there are some music/videogame tie-ins are just not meant to be. And to my displeasure (call me a masochist) I'm gonna get into some detail on some of them. But not too much hopefully...

The first of these monstrosities that I'll dive into would be the Make My Video series of games for the Sega CD. These pile of feces were like taking the worst of the 90's and putting them in the form of a customizable editor booth to make their already crappy music videos even more crappy; by adding in stock footage of old silent movie era bits of film and whatnot to 'make your own video' of their crappy songs that no one really cared about. There were four games that were made in that series featuring Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, INXS, Kris Kross, and C&C Music Factory (which really wasn't part of the series, but just as equally crappy.) I would go deeper into this but, seriously, I just ate and I wanna keep what food I have left in my stomach if you don't mind.

The second of these fun-filled-failures is of a recent. The series of 50 cent games; Bulletproof and Blood in the Sand. As a videogame, the controls are choppy at best, the story is practically non-existent, and all and all, the game was a complete joke. As for the music, I was never much of a 50 cent fan, or fan of recent hip-hop to begin with. My allegiance will always be to the old school giants such as Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Naughty By Nature, Onyx, hell, even Body Count. These in my opinion is what made hip-hop cool; why? Because it wasn't hip-hop, it was RAP! The kind of music that was original in amongst itself taking the music industry to new heights. Now people aren't even ballsy enough to call their art rap anymore but still declare themselves rappers. That's major BS in my opinion and this game is a fine example of crap-on-crap action.

Another game that falls just short on this (barely) was the Def Jam series, in particular Fight for NY. This game was kinda like BET's 106 & Park meets EA Sports Fight Night (of course since it was produced by EA.) but what I think of that was it was a poor rendition of something that was already perfected one videogame generation before with Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. Both of which were fighting games that were at least mediocre, but with Wu-Tang you had a better soundtrack. It was the better game and it was for the PSone. That's a lot to say for the Def Jam series that tried and tried again; but kept on failing on its endeavors.

I'm not trying to be bias towards rock in games versus hip-hop and R&B in games, but there is a bit of tinge in these posts. But that's not to say that games that had rap/hip-hop isn't all bad. Take for instance the Grand Theft Auto series. Ever since GTA3 incorporating its radio in their cars, you can change from rock to rap with the push of the L or R button respectively for each console it was on. Another take would be the soundtrack to some of the most recent Madden games that were released in the past few years. Hell, if it wasn't for that, we probably wouldn't have even gave two craps about Avenged Sevenfold and all their pop-punk rock greatness (or at least popularity.)

But that's my rant on music and videogames at least for the time. I dunno, maybe I'll revisit it. But for now...

Bootleg sampler.. signing out...

No comments:

Post a Comment