But sometimes, it's in these situations you find your spirit rapt in the sheer beauty and wonderment of the game's graphics and sound - you spend your time using your right thumbstick to circle around the environment and indulge in specular-map-speculation. But it'd mean nothing in silence - it's the music and ambient sound in these situations, these moments of downtime, that really send some shivers up the spine and get you pumped up for the game ahead.
The following are last generation's greatest kickin' aboot tracks from the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii (in my opinion). The choices I made were down to the sheer awesomeness, funkitude, and downright ambient sexiness that drew me into the experience. And they're just my opinions, mind. Don't be a dick and say I'm wrong, because you're wrong about me being wrong. Make your own blog to be wrong in, ye foul wrongster.
TOP FIVE KICKIN' ABOOT TRACK NUMBER FIVE: FAR CRY 3 BLOOD DRAGON: THE POWERCOLT THEME
I arguably love Blood Dragon more than the stand-alone Far Cry 3, though they are entirely unrelated beasts. It follows the adventures of Rex Power Colt, a surviving sergeant of Vietnam War 2, where a cyborg army intends to turn the world into Cyber Hell. In this 80s-infused LSD-tastic wet dream, Rex uses his machine arm to punch reactors, battles huge dragons with the ability to fire lazers from their retinas, and has a pistol suspiciously similar to that of Robocop.
The open world nature of it means that, depending on the level of alertness or hostility of the surrounding enemies, the Power Colt theme theme changes in tempo and vigour, but always remains a sexy level of eighties cheese, a syntheriffic bouncy electronic sound that makes every man from my generation pumped up to shoot lazer beams and battle cyborg sharks. In contemporary games, you might defuse a nuke, but in this game, you'd ride it like a wild stallion right into the enemy base, so when you hear this track as you attempt stealth, you soon abandon your sneaking and instead just get on with the punching.
TOP FIVE KICKIN' ABOOT TRACK NUMBER FOUR: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG ('06): SOLEANNA NEW CITY
"Aw, NAW! Tommy's surely went MENTAL, that game was GASH!" cried out Big Malky from Tullibody, who is a person that does not exist, but is the voice of reason nonetheless. Sonic the Hedgehog '06 is definitely a dire game. It's a game design nightmare, with some gameplay choices causing me actual migraines as I struggle to try to give Sonic Team the benefit of the doubt trying to be the mediator in the situation, but I just end up with an impacted face and a sullen, reluctant acceptance that, as a Sonic fanboy, this game is just like wiping your arse with a cactus.
So it's actually almost MORE painful that some of last generation's best music was in the game - with exciting, varied tracks ranging from house-metal hybrids to straight-up lounge jazz. This track, in kickin' aboot tradition, plays when you're merely chilling around the city, talking to strangers and trying to figure out which level you'd like to visit next.
It's almost way, way too funky for it's own good, with a punchy, slappy bassline that makes me do that "DAYYUM! frowny-face where I almost can't handle the sheer level of FAWNKAY. All just whilst you kick aboot.
It's such a pity, then, that the actual GAMEPLAY of this kickin' aboot comprises of talking to strangers requiring two (seriously, TWO) loading screens per stranger sub-mission and an almost defiant hatred of the laws of basic physics. Just stand still and enjoy the awesome music.
TOP FIVE KICKIN' ABOOT TRACKS NUMBER THREE: SUPER MARIO GALAXY OBSERVATORY
In my opinion, Super Mario Galaxy was when Super Mario returned to being magical and truly awe-inspiring again. For many a year I thought Super Mario Bros 3 couldn't be topped, and then Super Mario 64 came along and blew my mind. Amazingly, it would take eleven years for a Mario game to make me feel this way again with Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii. Sure, there were some corkers along the way, like the interesting Sunshine for the Gamecube, but Galaxy felt like Super Mario was a real adventure of the senses again, like I was a child once more.
This was definitely in no small part down the to exceptional soundtrack, with fully-orchestrated, sweeping, epic tracks that made every single planet Mario visited seem alien, unique, like anything could happen. Watching Mario's stubby little limbs thrust outward like a pair of sausage-wings as he soared through space filled my heart with joy.
So when kickin' aboot in the game's hub, Rosalina's Comet Observatory, hearing the gentle, waltz-like music made me feel so comforted and placated, the perfect foil to the main levels and their sweeping adventurous overtures.
Like a musical hug.
TOP FIVE KICKIN' ABOOT TRACKS NUMBER TWO: NiER GESTALT, HILLS OF RADIANT WINDS
Honestly, picking an amazing kickin' aboot track in this game was ridiculously difficult because the entire experience has moments of truly poignant downtime that are never boring, but often force the player to ponder their intentions before acting.
This game is the hardest on my list to define; part Zelda, part Drakengard, part... er, Ikaruga, I guess. In a game with real-time combat, farming, bullet-hell shooting and text adventuring in it, summarising this RPG as "an RPG" is almost like calling a combi-oven a toaster, because though it certainly DOES that, it's so, so much more than that. Christ, that was a laboured metaphor, was it no'? Combi-oven? I need to go back to analogy academy.
The game follows a man who has a daughter dying of an odd curse just as the world is being slowly overwhelmed by shadowy creatures resembling beings from the past. Along the way he meets a wise but grumpy sentient tome named Grimoire Weiss, a floating book with a superiority complex who dislikes your other companions, a young boy trapped within the frail body of a grotesque puppet, and a vicious warrior woman with a hidden agenda. This is pretty much the most tame elements the story contains, as Nier seeks to do anything to reverse the ailments of his daughter, taking him to dark places - physically and psychologically.
The track "Hills of Radiant Winds" is just one of the truly haunting songs the game has in abundance - straddling tones of optimism and sadness with the use of the completely-fabricated language of The Ancients. Though every word in the game is spoken from a series of incomprehensible runes in the Ancient tongue, by the end you actually begin deciphering certain words and phrases as it drags you in to experience the haunting, intoxicating world.
"Song of the Ancients" is the song that plays in the main village (with "Hills of Radiant Winds" playing in the adjacent fields), and by the end of the game, these two tracks will slowly start to mean something else to the player- and I'll leave it at that to avoid spoiling anything.
Plus, when you're kickin' aboot in this game, you can grow carrots and slay sheep with a big chib.
TOP FIVE OF KICKIN' ABOOT TRACKS NUMBER ONE: FINAL FANTASY 13-2 - RUN
I did not care for Final Fantasy 13. I dubbed it the "Prettiest Corridor of Fights" as I played through it, waiting for this fabled "good bit" everyone was on about. After about fifteen hours of playing, the game ceased to be a long, tiresome corridor of fights and cutscenes and became... well, a great big circle of fights. Everyone told me it would get infinitely more amazing when it went "open-world", but what they didn't say is that this "open" world would actually just be one big field where I could pick fights with things to grind levels before I opted to move into the final corridor of fights and end the game.
So when a pal said to me that the sequel changed everything up, I was hesitant. You can't put a flake into a shite and call it a 99, I thought, telling myself not to get sucked in. So when I picked up Final Fantasy 13-2 for a tenner, I thought, "let's give it a fair punt and not be a square cu... er... person."
And do you know what? It wasn't amazing. It wasn't even great, but it was definitely infinitely better than the original game, opening up not only space, but time as well, allowing the player to use the "Historia Crux" to travel between specific significant periods of time in the storyline.
And though there wasn't much to do whilst kickin' aboot, there was ONE thing I couldn't help but find myself adoring - the absolutely exceptional music. This particular track, "Run" is just when you're dandering through the grassy sections between towns. Yes, THIS is kickin' aboot music. The fact they'd given such effort to such an inconsequential portion of the game (and it's not just this part, the game is littered with these almost over-epic tracks) made even the simplest, tiny amount of kickin' aboot feel like I was part of a grand adventure.
If you listen to "Run", you'll instantly think, "oh, this is pretty good. Standard... oh, wait, that bit was cool. Oh, that bit was awesome. Wow, it's actually getting exponentially more awesome!" - as the track progresses every musician in the composition get their own little chance to go absolutely batshit crazy with a solo - the violinist, the pianist, guitarist - hell, even the drummer knocks your socks off with the solo provided - and then they all appear to say, "yeah, that's enough utterly face-melting solo stuff, let's crack on with the song!" and get back to the previous rhythm.
Kickin' aboot is rarely this exciting, and suddenly you'll realise you've just been running down a series of linear paths picking up random items, thinking you're on the most exciting, epic adventure a person ever embarked upon, Therefore, simply because Final Fantasy 13-2 seems to magnify the mundane to truly epic proportions, it's my selection for NUMBER ONE KICKIN' ABOOT TRACK OF LAST GENERATION.
So then, agree? Disagree? Kinda agree? Onegree? Twrogree? Let me know in the comment box below and perhaps add your own picks for your favourite kickin' aboot tracks of last generation.
Until next time, list-fans!
