Bullshit. People seem to approach voice-acting as if it's simply the next step in gaming... as if it is inherently superior, and those who fail to do so are akin to developers who failed to move to creating 16-bit games after the SNES was released.
No. Voice acting is an aesthetic decision, and greatly alters the feel of the game. Some games definitely benefit from voice acting, but others call for a little more abstraction, and thus voice-acting can chip away at their charm, no matter the quality. Zelda definitely falls into that catagory.
Notice that Zelda already has plenty of voice actin. But in this case, "voice acting" isn't about content but expression of emotion. Instead of actually speaking content, the characters make noises that reflect their current state of mind. This splits up the emotion of the voice from the dry content. It is part of Zelda's greater abstraction, which I feel is key to its overall charm. Traditional voice acting would completely distroy that.
IE: Voice acting is an aesthetic decision on the part of the creators. It is not "missing", it was not included because the creators feel (as I feel) that it would partially destroy the games' charm, moving it toward the realm of cinema rather than the animated storybook quality they wish to portray.
Twilight Princess was, IMO, the best game in the series, because instead of concentrating souly on new gameplay elements, they actually gave the game a SOUL. In fact sometimes it felt like they transplanted it directly from the Final Fantasy series, which could explain the lack of soul in FF12 (as good as that game was). Every game is evolutionary, and they try expanding on a new area... this one was in story telling and character portrayal, and they get an A+ on this one. Wind Waker tried to experiment with a number of new gameplay elements, and while I applaud them on that, their new efforts were more like a B-.
To me, this sounds like an artical written by a disgruntled gamer who wasn't able to see TP for what it truly was, and while I respect his opinion, its hardly a reason for a call to arms. Does the series need an overhaul? After how good TP was... absolutely not.
TP was an evolutionary step in terms of gameplay, for the series. It added a few new elements (of which it did very well, I might add), but its main concentration layed elsewhere. The gameplay fanatics can probably look forward to Phantom Hourglass and the next Wii Zelda title for a boost in gameplay elements.
Funny, going to High School, I always thought it out be interesting to make a 3D model of my school and have a game in it. Not because I wanted to pretend I was fighting students, but because some schools (mine included), have fairly interesting architectural designs that would make for interesting maps. I wasn't trying to train for Columbine 2.0, I just thought it would be neat.
Are you kidding? That's one thing I HATE about Windows... and I use it every day, I can never find the menubar, because it's always changing location. Maybe they SHOULD put the menubar on both monitors (sorta like Windows should put the task bar on both monitors), but I'd kill for Microsoft to get rid of the idea that menubars should be attatched to parent windows.
I guess it's a matter of preference. For that much, it wouldn't be too difficult to develope an OS that allows for both, depending upon the user's preference... but that would begin to screw with people when they started going back and forth between different computers.
Yes, but what does the expand widget do? Tell me? Beacuse every window handles it differently. For some, it is the same as a windows "Maximize", for others, it expands the window out to encompass all content, and for others, it does even other things, or even nothing at all. And tell me what the gray oval button does? For some programs it shows/hides a drawer, others it does strange things to the windows.
Just because all the windows have the same buttons doesn't mean that they all function consistantly.
I will say this, though, most of the problems with the OS X interface began in the original OS X, and over time, they gradually have improved. I can't think of one instance where things have gotten worse from one version from another. Finally, brushed metal has been realed in, content placement has become more standardized, and generally things have become more uniform. But they still have a long way to go from the absolute mess they made of the original OS X UI.
There's a difference between "lying" and being unaware, get you're terms correct, fucker. I LOVE GOLDENEYE. My assessment was just based on the things I've heard from people online and friends I've met who are FPS gamers.
Why does everyone act as if I'm trying to bash GoldenEye, myself? I can't post anything contrary to the most popular of opinions, without people going off. It's goddamn annoying and a reason why people get driven away from web communities like this one.
Man, I wish Miyamoto had gotten to Kojima before doing the MGS games. Those games had serious viewpoint issues. In a game that should have been first person or 3rd person with a free-rotating camera, Kojima specifically picked the camera setting (3rd person fixed), that made the games the most obnoxious. My first outting was MGS3: Subsistance, which has a player controlled camera, and I wasn't aware of the fact that the others didn't have this... going back and playing the others is just brutal.
Mac laptops and iMacs have a while light that slowly fades on and off when they're asleep, almost like they're breathing. I find it really quite creepy. My mother finally had to put a piece of tape over her's 'cuz it was freaking her out. I'll throw a blanket over my laptop before I go to bed, sometimes.
I couldn't believe it. Back in the day, Marathon 2 was a huge breakthrough: weapons with two triggers, whole new lighting effects, holding two weapons at once, huge advancements in gameplay. And then Marathon Infinity came out... and what did it have? A new gun (which was only worthwhile underwater), and ONE NEW WALL TEXTURE! I mean, I saw people posting jpgs of the texture on message boards, and ooohing and ahhhing over it. I couldn't believe they were serious. Now, to their credit, Bungie did say that Marathon Infinity was basically an expansion pack on Marathon 2, and built on the same engine... but still!
Actually, I loved GoldenEye myself. I'm just speaking on behalf of the criticisms I've seen from PC FPS fans (of which I am not), and the tendancy I've notice (in person and online) was to bash GoldenEye for not being a "real FPS" due to its control scheme. I'll agree, I think this is bogus, it's just what I've witnessed firsthand.
You're completely right. A friend of mine and I got into a huge arguement over this a few months back. He was arguing about the narrative defenitions of viewpoint. But what I see, now, is that he was confusing Second Person with Third Person Limited. He argued that Warcraft and The Sims were Third Person, and that Mario 64 was Second Person. Warcraft is Third Person Omnicient, where Mario 64 is Third Person Limited. In Mario 64, the camera is actually a character, but this can be extended into any "follow shot" viewpoint.
Second Person narrative can never be described by any camera angle.
Damn, if I'd looked this up before, I could have spared myself months of grief.
Interesting, I was unaware of that. I was a real skeptic about Metroid Prime when I heard it was first person. Now, I'm incredibly glad it's not 2nd person (we need to stop calling it 3rd person). The fact is, 2nd person would have TOTALLY distroyed the atmosphere. Think about it, you have a moody, natural surrounding, and then you have a giant, orange & yellow robot suit standing in the middle of it at all times. It wasn't so bad in the side-scrolling days because the sprite didn't need to be very big, and it didn't interfere very much.
The thing is, I found that the reason I previously didn't like first person games wasn't because of the camera viewpoint, it was because I didn't like shooters. When applied to an action/adventure like Metroid, it was just as good as Zelda. When I think back on it, I wasn't big into Contra and the other side-scrolling shooters back in the day, either.
I'd like to hear Miyamoto's reasoning for suggesting a first-person viewpoint. He may have had some gameplay specific reasons as well, but my reason for liking first-person is mainly aesthetic.
Bingo. Sometimes things are popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator, and sometimes things are popular because they're good. But many times, the popular things that are good are NOT popular because they're good... they're popular because of something else, but they just happen to be good, too. Beattles or Radiohead for instance (take your pick, they both follow similar paths), both started out as pretty generic brit pop bands, that got popular simply because they gave the audience exactly what they wanted. But then they grew with their audience in a way that few other bands did. Had Sgnt. Pepper been the Beattles' first, or had Kid A been Radiohead's first, no one would have ever listened.
I knew somone was going to say that. But in the PC world, Goldeneye doesn't count because it doesn't use double input style control (keyboard/mouse or dual analog), which allows for similtaneous movement and aiming. Basically, anything, after Quake, which uses the older control scheme is regarded as highly inferior and not able to accomidate more advanced styles of play.
Basically, GoldenEye, while extremely popular among console gamers, was very frowned upon by hardcore PC gamers. As a console gamer myself, this is my biased perspective, but that's the impression that I've gotten, and I can kinda understand it, a bit.
Miyamoto has never had any dealings with Metroid... original series or Prime.
And seriously, MP is NOT a first person shooter. It may technically fit the bill, but that's only a technicality. The types of skills it requires and the fanbase are nothing like Halo or Counterstrike. It's basically a sci-fi Zelda where the camera happens to be first person... One look at the tastes of its fanbase will cue you in.
Here's a clue, if something's commonly called "the first-person shooter for people who hate first-person shooters". And people who love FPSs hate the game... then maybe it really ain't a first person shooter at all, it just looks like one.
Different genre. There are really two different RPG genres out there and they have almost COMPLETELY different fanbases. Trying to compare the two is really absurred. I'm not particularly defending FF7 here (I think it's highly overrated, myself... although I am a fan of the rest of the series).
Where you might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Baulder's Gate or Nethack", I might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Tales of the Abyss or Ar Tonelico". Seriously, we're talking apple's and oranges here.
East vs. West, Console vs. PC, RPG vs. jRPG... each side takes a different spin on tabletop gaming... jRPGs concentrate on the story element, western RPGs capitalize on non-linearity. Whichever you think works better is up to the audience.
I personally would fall asleep 10 minutes into Baulder's gate. Ar Tonelico might make you do the same.
No, but they ALWAYS remake V and VI after they do IV, it's just kinda a given. I could imagine them skipping V one of these times, since it wasn't originally released in the US, and thus, won't sell as well as a "classic remake". But VI is definitely a given, it's the best selling FF game prior to the PS era.
Yeah, Zelda: TP, stylistically, is one of my favorite games. The fact that it isn't HD doesn't really bother me (and I do have an HDTV) because it feels like they really were able to do exactly what they wanted to. It's not supposed to be photoreaslitic, if it was, it wouldn't have been as good of a game. The twilight realm was so incredibly beautiful, I was sad that I couldn't go back there after I got through about 1/3rd of the game.
Actually, my biggest problem with CCs soundtrack is how badly it interacts with the story. He continually "blows his proverbial load", with tear-jerking melodies that have no place being where they are. Example, the "Another World" overworld theme could have made for a wonderful sad event melody later on in the game, however, it's pulled out about 20 minutes into the game as the main overworld theme at a time in which there I found it absolutely silly to be portraying utter dispair (if you had just been thrown into an alternate dimension where you had died 15 years previously... would the first thing you do be to mourn your own death? I don't think so!) It's probably the saddest, most melancholy theme in the game, and could have been wonderful, had it been used in a more appropriately. Actually, this is a problem with the entire game, it's incredibly unfocused and can't decide, emotionally, what it wants to be... it's incredibly schizophrenic, but the music doesn't help.
One thing to remember is that film music and game music, while much of it can be good to listen to on its own, is also meant to serve a purpose along with the visuals... it can be the most wonderful piece of music ever written, but if it's a lovely romantic theme that was meant to play during a rape scene, it's BAD FILM MUSIC. That's how I feel about a lot of the music for CC... although some of it is still all-out "not good music".
Meh... personally, after years of waiting for the legendary "M2", I was a little letdown. I actually really like Six Degrees A LOT... I didn't really get into the epic, "6 degrees", though, until this year when they released the orchestral version, on their new live album, "Score", which is absolutely stunning.
Oh wow, Gilgimesh was in there??? I never knew! Where? I love his battle theme in FFV. Have you listened to the Black Mages version (Uematsu's progmetal band)? It's crazy good.
You have some valid points. But I can't stand James Horner these days. His early stuff was killer, but when he hit Titanic, I lost all respect for him. Overly-mellodramatic cheese-ball crap. I have a special hate in my heart for cheesy celtic-pop. He just milks the drama to the point where it feels forced.
I feel exactly the same way about Mitsuda, who I think followed exactly the same path as Horner. I loved his scoring with Chrono Trigger, and his work for Xenogears wasn't bad in spots, but then Chrono Cross hit, and I lost even more respect for him than I lost with Horner on Titanic. It's crazy bad, cheese-ball mellodrama EVERYWHERE. I'm all for intense-drama, but I felt like it was shoved in my face so much that I was bearly being allowed to think for myself. I found CCs soundtrack offensive, to say the least... to both my sense of musicality, and insulting to my intelligence. The only tune I walked away loving, in that game, is the background music to the Dragoon Tower, probably because it sounds like Uematsu with a bit more sonic experimentation. I hated all the dramatic stuff, it was like sticky, watered down cheese in a blender mixed with birch sirup... crazy bad. So now you know why I have a special place in my heart for Mitsuda. If I ever meet him in person, I'd probably say something I'll regret. Strangely, his work on the first Xenosaga, while being incredibly cliche, and he should be shot for making music using royalty-free sounds ("Song of Niphilem" is made from a voice clip that I heard a week later, used in a PBS special, and have heard a few times since), isn't half terrible. It's not great, but at least it wasn't insulting.
Now, Jerry Goldsmith, there's one I forgot to list, he's definitely one of the best.
I love John Williams. I didn't when I was younger, but when I started studying composition (and especially film music) in college, I developed an appreciation for him. Hitoshi Sakimoto, is nothing like JW, IMO. He lacks the thematic repetoire. He had no litemotifs, his character themes are uninspired, and his dungeon music is more background noise than music. He's too traditional, and not experimental enough for my tastes, either. I got into video games, entirely through Uematsu's work (not kidding), who I hold to being up there with Danny Elfman, John Williams, Yoko Kanno, and some of the other great film composers of our time. Uematsu's use of 70s progrock really works well too. He lacks a little bit of sonic depth that some electro-acoustic composers have (like the composer for the Shadow Hearts series, who is phenominal), but he makes up for it by having some of the most well-written themes ever composed, and then complimenting them with some very interesting arrangements. Hitoshi Sakimoto just feels like he's playing it safe all the time. I've gotta check out Vagrent Story, which I hear is by far his best soundtrack, but seeing as though I hated his work in FFT and thought his FF12 material was "meh", I'm not sure I'm going to like it. At least he's better than Mitsuda, though... who is laughably bad.
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Bullshit. People seem to approach voice-acting as if it's simply the next step in gaming... as if it is inherently superior, and those who fail to do so are akin to developers who failed to move to creating 16-bit games after the SNES was released.
No. Voice acting is an aesthetic decision, and greatly alters the feel of the game. Some games definitely benefit from voice acting, but others call for a little more abstraction, and thus voice-acting can chip away at their charm, no matter the quality. Zelda definitely falls into that catagory.
Notice that Zelda already has plenty of voice actin. But in this case, "voice acting" isn't about content but expression of emotion. Instead of actually speaking content, the characters make noises that reflect their current state of mind. This splits up the emotion of the voice from the dry content. It is part of Zelda's greater abstraction, which I feel is key to its overall charm. Traditional voice acting would completely distroy that.
IE: Voice acting is an aesthetic decision on the part of the creators. It is not "missing", it was not included because the creators feel (as I feel) that it would partially destroy the games' charm, moving it toward the realm of cinema rather than the animated storybook quality they wish to portray.
Twilight Princess was, IMO, the best game in the series, because instead of concentrating souly on new gameplay elements, they actually gave the game a SOUL. In fact sometimes it felt like they transplanted it directly from the Final Fantasy series, which could explain the lack of soul in FF12 (as good as that game was). Every game is evolutionary, and they try expanding on a new area... this one was in story telling and character portrayal, and they get an A+ on this one. Wind Waker tried to experiment with a number of new gameplay elements, and while I applaud them on that, their new efforts were more like a B-.
To me, this sounds like an artical written by a disgruntled gamer who wasn't able to see TP for what it truly was, and while I respect his opinion, its hardly a reason for a call to arms. Does the series need an overhaul? After how good TP was... absolutely not.
TP was an evolutionary step in terms of gameplay, for the series. It added a few new elements (of which it did very well, I might add), but its main concentration layed elsewhere. The gameplay fanatics can probably look forward to Phantom Hourglass and the next Wii Zelda title for a boost in gameplay elements.
Funny, going to High School, I always thought it out be interesting to make a 3D model of my school and have a game in it. Not because I wanted to pretend I was fighting students, but because some schools (mine included), have fairly interesting architectural designs that would make for interesting maps. I wasn't trying to train for Columbine 2.0, I just thought it would be neat.
I guess it's a good thing I never did.
Britpop / J-Pop / A-pop / Europop = "pop music of the region, of the time"
Are you kidding? That's one thing I HATE about Windows... and I use it every day, I can never find the menubar, because it's always changing location. Maybe they SHOULD put the menubar on both monitors (sorta like Windows should put the task bar on both monitors), but I'd kill for Microsoft to get rid of the idea that menubars should be attatched to parent windows.
I guess it's a matter of preference. For that much, it wouldn't be too difficult to develope an OS that allows for both, depending upon the user's preference... but that would begin to screw with people when they started going back and forth between different computers.
Well folks, I could care less about Halo, but at least now we have an approximate release date for Metroid Prime 3.
Yes, but what does the expand widget do? Tell me? Beacuse every window handles it differently. For some, it is the same as a windows "Maximize", for others, it expands the window out to encompass all content, and for others, it does even other things, or even nothing at all. And tell me what the gray oval button does? For some programs it shows/hides a drawer, others it does strange things to the windows.
Just because all the windows have the same buttons doesn't mean that they all function consistantly.
I will say this, though, most of the problems with the OS X interface began in the original OS X, and over time, they gradually have improved. I can't think of one instance where things have gotten worse from one version from another. Finally, brushed metal has been realed in, content placement has become more standardized, and generally things have become more uniform. But they still have a long way to go from the absolute mess they made of the original OS X UI.
There's a difference between "lying" and being unaware, get you're terms correct, fucker. I LOVE GOLDENEYE. My assessment was just based on the things I've heard from people online and friends I've met who are FPS gamers. Why does everyone act as if I'm trying to bash GoldenEye, myself? I can't post anything contrary to the most popular of opinions, without people going off. It's goddamn annoying and a reason why people get driven away from web communities like this one.
Man, I wish Miyamoto had gotten to Kojima before doing the MGS games. Those games had serious viewpoint issues. In a game that should have been first person or 3rd person with a free-rotating camera, Kojima specifically picked the camera setting (3rd person fixed), that made the games the most obnoxious. My first outting was MGS3: Subsistance, which has a player controlled camera, and I wasn't aware of the fact that the others didn't have this... going back and playing the others is just brutal.
Mac laptops and iMacs have a while light that slowly fades on and off when they're asleep, almost like they're breathing. I find it really quite creepy. My mother finally had to put a piece of tape over her's 'cuz it was freaking her out. I'll throw a blanket over my laptop before I go to bed, sometimes.
Sorta like Marathon Infinity was to Marathon 2.
I couldn't believe it. Back in the day, Marathon 2 was a huge breakthrough: weapons with two triggers, whole new lighting effects, holding two weapons at once, huge advancements in gameplay. And then Marathon Infinity came out... and what did it have? A new gun (which was only worthwhile underwater), and ONE NEW WALL TEXTURE! I mean, I saw people posting jpgs of the texture on message boards, and ooohing and ahhhing over it. I couldn't believe they were serious. Now, to their credit, Bungie did say that Marathon Infinity was basically an expansion pack on Marathon 2, and built on the same engine... but still!
Actually, I loved GoldenEye myself. I'm just speaking on behalf of the criticisms I've seen from PC FPS fans (of which I am not), and the tendancy I've notice (in person and online) was to bash GoldenEye for not being a "real FPS" due to its control scheme. I'll agree, I think this is bogus, it's just what I've witnessed firsthand.
You're completely right. A friend of mine and I got into a huge arguement over this a few months back. He was arguing about the narrative defenitions of viewpoint. But what I see, now, is that he was confusing Second Person with Third Person Limited. He argued that Warcraft and The Sims were Third Person, and that Mario 64 was Second Person. Warcraft is Third Person Omnicient, where Mario 64 is Third Person Limited. In Mario 64, the camera is actually a character, but this can be extended into any "follow shot" viewpoint.
Second Person narrative can never be described by any camera angle.
Damn, if I'd looked this up before, I could have spared myself months of grief.
Interesting, I was unaware of that. I was a real skeptic about Metroid Prime when I heard it was first person. Now, I'm incredibly glad it's not 2nd person (we need to stop calling it 3rd person). The fact is, 2nd person would have TOTALLY distroyed the atmosphere. Think about it, you have a moody, natural surrounding, and then you have a giant, orange & yellow robot suit standing in the middle of it at all times. It wasn't so bad in the side-scrolling days because the sprite didn't need to be very big, and it didn't interfere very much.
The thing is, I found that the reason I previously didn't like first person games wasn't because of the camera viewpoint, it was because I didn't like shooters. When applied to an action/adventure like Metroid, it was just as good as Zelda. When I think back on it, I wasn't big into Contra and the other side-scrolling shooters back in the day, either.
I'd like to hear Miyamoto's reasoning for suggesting a first-person viewpoint. He may have had some gameplay specific reasons as well, but my reason for liking first-person is mainly aesthetic.
Bingo. Sometimes things are popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator, and sometimes things are popular because they're good. But many times, the popular things that are good are NOT popular because they're good... they're popular because of something else, but they just happen to be good, too. Beattles or Radiohead for instance (take your pick, they both follow similar paths), both started out as pretty generic brit pop bands, that got popular simply because they gave the audience exactly what they wanted. But then they grew with their audience in a way that few other bands did. Had Sgnt. Pepper been the Beattles' first, or had Kid A been Radiohead's first, no one would have ever listened.
I knew somone was going to say that. But in the PC world, Goldeneye doesn't count because it doesn't use double input style control (keyboard/mouse or dual analog), which allows for similtaneous movement and aiming. Basically, anything, after Quake, which uses the older control scheme is regarded as highly inferior and not able to accomidate more advanced styles of play.
Basically, GoldenEye, while extremely popular among console gamers, was very frowned upon by hardcore PC gamers. As a console gamer myself, this is my biased perspective, but that's the impression that I've gotten, and I can kinda understand it, a bit.
Miyamoto has never had any dealings with Metroid... original series or Prime.
And seriously, MP is NOT a first person shooter. It may technically fit the bill, but that's only a technicality. The types of skills it requires and the fanbase are nothing like Halo or Counterstrike. It's basically a sci-fi Zelda where the camera happens to be first person... One look at the tastes of its fanbase will cue you in.
Here's a clue, if something's commonly called "the first-person shooter for people who hate first-person shooters". And people who love FPSs hate the game... then maybe it really ain't a first person shooter at all, it just looks like one.
Different genre. There are really two different RPG genres out there and they have almost COMPLETELY different fanbases. Trying to compare the two is really absurred. I'm not particularly defending FF7 here (I think it's highly overrated, myself... although I am a fan of the rest of the series).
Where you might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Baulder's Gate or Nethack", I might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Tales of the Abyss or Ar Tonelico". Seriously, we're talking apple's and oranges here.
East vs. West, Console vs. PC, RPG vs. jRPG... each side takes a different spin on tabletop gaming... jRPGs concentrate on the story element, western RPGs capitalize on non-linearity. Whichever you think works better is up to the audience.
I personally would fall asleep 10 minutes into Baulder's gate. Ar Tonelico might make you do the same.
No, but they ALWAYS remake V and VI after they do IV, it's just kinda a given. I could imagine them skipping V one of these times, since it wasn't originally released in the US, and thus, won't sell as well as a "classic remake". But VI is definitely a given, it's the best selling FF game prior to the PS era.
Yeah, Zelda: TP, stylistically, is one of my favorite games. The fact that it isn't HD doesn't really bother me (and I do have an HDTV) because it feels like they really were able to do exactly what they wanted to. It's not supposed to be photoreaslitic, if it was, it wouldn't have been as good of a game. The twilight realm was so incredibly beautiful, I was sad that I couldn't go back there after I got through about 1/3rd of the game.
Actually, my biggest problem with CCs soundtrack is how badly it interacts with the story. He continually "blows his proverbial load", with tear-jerking melodies that have no place being where they are. Example, the "Another World" overworld theme could have made for a wonderful sad event melody later on in the game, however, it's pulled out about 20 minutes into the game as the main overworld theme at a time in which there I found it absolutely silly to be portraying utter dispair (if you had just been thrown into an alternate dimension where you had died 15 years previously... would the first thing you do be to mourn your own death? I don't think so!) It's probably the saddest, most melancholy theme in the game, and could have been wonderful, had it been used in a more appropriately. Actually, this is a problem with the entire game, it's incredibly unfocused and can't decide, emotionally, what it wants to be... it's incredibly schizophrenic, but the music doesn't help.
One thing to remember is that film music and game music, while much of it can be good to listen to on its own, is also meant to serve a purpose along with the visuals... it can be the most wonderful piece of music ever written, but if it's a lovely romantic theme that was meant to play during a rape scene, it's BAD FILM MUSIC. That's how I feel about a lot of the music for CC... although some of it is still all-out "not good music".
Meh... personally, after years of waiting for the legendary "M2", I was a little letdown. I actually really like Six Degrees A LOT... I didn't really get into the epic, "6 degrees", though, until this year when they released the orchestral version, on their new live album, "Score", which is absolutely stunning.
Oh wow, Gilgimesh was in there??? I never knew! Where? I love his battle theme in FFV. Have you listened to the Black Mages version (Uematsu's progmetal band)? It's crazy good.
You have some valid points. But I can't stand James Horner these days. His early stuff was killer, but when he hit Titanic, I lost all respect for him. Overly-mellodramatic cheese-ball crap. I have a special hate in my heart for cheesy celtic-pop. He just milks the drama to the point where it feels forced.
I feel exactly the same way about Mitsuda, who I think followed exactly the same path as Horner. I loved his scoring with Chrono Trigger, and his work for Xenogears wasn't bad in spots, but then Chrono Cross hit, and I lost even more respect for him than I lost with Horner on Titanic. It's crazy bad, cheese-ball mellodrama EVERYWHERE. I'm all for intense-drama, but I felt like it was shoved in my face so much that I was bearly being allowed to think for myself. I found CCs soundtrack offensive, to say the least... to both my sense of musicality, and insulting to my intelligence. The only tune I walked away loving, in that game, is the background music to the Dragoon Tower, probably because it sounds like Uematsu with a bit more sonic experimentation. I hated all the dramatic stuff, it was like sticky, watered down cheese in a blender mixed with birch sirup... crazy bad. So now you know why I have a special place in my heart for Mitsuda. If I ever meet him in person, I'd probably say something I'll regret. Strangely, his work on the first Xenosaga, while being incredibly cliche, and he should be shot for making music using royalty-free sounds ("Song of Niphilem" is made from a voice clip that I heard a week later, used in a PBS special, and have heard a few times since), isn't half terrible. It's not great, but at least it wasn't insulting.
Now, Jerry Goldsmith, there's one I forgot to list, he's definitely one of the best.
I love John Williams. I didn't when I was younger, but when I started studying composition (and especially film music) in college, I developed an appreciation for him. Hitoshi Sakimoto, is nothing like JW, IMO. He lacks the thematic repetoire. He had no litemotifs, his character themes are uninspired, and his dungeon music is more background noise than music. He's too traditional, and not experimental enough for my tastes, either. I got into video games, entirely through Uematsu's work (not kidding), who I hold to being up there with Danny Elfman, John Williams, Yoko Kanno, and some of the other great film composers of our time. Uematsu's use of 70s progrock really works well too. He lacks a little bit of sonic depth that some electro-acoustic composers have (like the composer for the Shadow Hearts series, who is phenominal), but he makes up for it by having some of the most well-written themes ever composed, and then complimenting them with some very interesting arrangements. Hitoshi Sakimoto just feels like he's playing it safe all the time. I've gotta check out Vagrent Story, which I hear is by far his best soundtrack, but seeing as though I hated his work in FFT and thought his FF12 material was "meh", I'm not sure I'm going to like it. At least he's better than Mitsuda, though... who is laughably bad.